The Boyfriend List (Ruby Oliver #1) by E. Lockhart

BookTalk

Ruby Oliver is 15 and has a shrink…take it easy on her…she’s had a rough 10 days…

So far she has: Lost her boyfriend, lost her best friend, lost all other friends, did something suspicious with a boy, did something advanced with a boy, had an argument with a boy, drank her first beer, got caught by her mom drinking said beer, had a panic attack (or 10), lost a lacrosse game, failed a math test, hurt Meghan’s feelings, became a social outcast, had graffiti written about her in the girls’ bathroom (let’s not think about what’s written in the boys!), and accidentally lost a list entitled “the boyfriend list”.

But before anyone reading this thinks to call Ruby a slut – or even just imagines she’s incredibly popular know that this is a tale of one fishnet wearing, thrift shop diving, four eyed, semi popular, “normal” teen who finds herself having panic attacks. Once her parents freak over this mental distress she’s shipped off to spend a few hours a week with Dr. Z. A woman who tries tracking Ruby’s view on life through her experiences with boys. A combination of embarrassing moments, sweet scenes, and frankly almost unimportant situations with frogs. Ruby is going to sort through this mess she’s gotten herself into…Because while therapy is helping, I’m sure Dr. Z and Ruby never intended the list of 15 names to become public…

Review

I loved that when this book started I didn’t have the full details of Ruby’s damaging social drama. I was so intrigued to meet the players in the story and to find out exactly what went down in that horrible week. There were times that I thought Ruby did a lot of damage to herself based simply on her passive personality. But I really wanted some of the mean girls to get what was coming to them…and that doesn’t really happen. At least not in this book.

I’m sorry, but if this whole story basically hinges on the “stealing” of one’s boyfriend then I have no idea why Ruby’s friends would side with Kim. Seriously, on page 131 all I could think of was ‘B**ch, no you didn’t!”. I wanted to leap into the pages and stand up for Ruby; maybe a little reader smack-down. Ruby is just so normal, you connect to her so easily. Her situations with guy range from a crush to her first actual boyfriend. Any girl will find sympathy and a pang of knowledge. Trust me, you’ve been there.

I think that the biggest lesson I took away from this story was what really makes a person good/or bad in our public judgement. I’m not talking someone who is doing evil things, like maiming puppies or some such practice. I’m talking about our friends, our acquaintances. Especially in high school often times we label people as being good or bad based on shallow acts. The girl who always smiles and does tons of charity work is good. The girl who thinks for herself, makes a social snafu is bad. So much of high school politics (both in high school and the world beyond) asks us to withhold what we’d like to say…we have to follow rules set down socially that allow for no amendments. It’ll make you think twice about that gossip you just heard. And it really makes you feel for Ruby, nobody is meaner than a teenage girl. Kids really are cruel.

But quirky Ruby will rise above. The book ends on a note that really feels like a beginning for this series. You’ll finish this book wondering what is in store for our newly psychologically aware heroine. With the hope that she’ll wake up and find a few new friends. It’s a good thing that this series has been out for awhile…you can pick up the rest of Ruby’s adventures without delay.

Rating: 4/5 A funny teen read, Quirkily written about a Quirky girl

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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

BookTalk

This book is an original thriller with a taste of Sweden’s dirty not-so-little secrets the first of a trilogy introduces a provocatively odd couple: disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist, freshly sentenced to jail for libeling a shady businessman, and the multipierced and tattooed Lisbeth Salander, a feral but vulnerable superhacker. Mikael’s prospects appear bleak until an unexpected (and unsettling) offer to resurrect his name is extended by an old-school titan of Swedish industry Heinrik Vanger. The catch–and there’s always a catch–is that Blomkvist must first spend a year researching the mysterious disappearance of Vanger’s great-niece. A case that has remained unsolved for nearly four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander. The duo gradually uncover a festering mass of family corruption—at the same time, Larsson skillfully bares some of the similar horrors that have left Salander such a marked woman.
Little is as it seems in Larsson’s novel, but there is at least one constant: you really don’t want to mess with the girl with the dragon tattoo.

Review

This should really be called “my thoughts” instead of a review..I read this book so long ago! But I just wanted to share the book talk. I used it for seniors with the warning that there were some graphic scenes. I also encouraged the students who chose the book for their outside reading project to finish the series. I think that the graphic nature of the first book is mitigated by the trial scene in the final book, The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. The series while a thriller/mystery in genre is really about the coming of age of its main character Lisbeth Salander. She starts as a weird, tortured little girl and ends up a woman. It’s totally awesome to see her use brains to outwit brawn.

Another warning I like to give for the series is that it does take between 50 and 100 pages to really get into the story. Even as a devoted reader, there were points in the beginning that were tough to wade through. Of course it all ends up being worth it. You’ll be left with only a hazy memory of a struggling start. The rest of the series is simply that good.

Rating: 5/5 A mystery trilogy with the weirdest, coffee drinking, kick butt, tattooed girl around

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The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

BookTalk

I want you to meet Charlie. Charlie is a little odd. A little different. We all know a Charlie…Well, we don’t know our Charlies, but we see them. The quiet kids, the filler kids, the Wallflowers. I guess we always think that these people are just quiet, maybe a little weird…Heck, to be honest with you all, we don’t ever really think much about these kids. Our thoughts and eyes just skip over them. Not even a blip on our radar.

But Charlie has found you. You are now not just a blip on Charlie’s radar, you’re going to become his closest confidant. Charlie is going to write you letters.

Charlie is just beginning his first year of High School. And he’s a Wallflower that’s decided to put some effort into participating. As he slowly begins to take a step away from the proverbial wall you’ll get to see his most intimate thoughts, his confessions, his fears, and the truths he hides for others. Charlie is weird and a genius and deeply confused and naive and able to see what others miss and incredibly unable to see what everybody else sees. This is a book about a journey. It’s about the life of a person you and I skip over in life. This is a book that will change how you see your world.

Review

This is the first book in a long time I’ve read cover to cover. It’s 12:15 am and all I can say is Wow. This is what good YA is. It was a journey and smart and quirky and really quiet at times. And because it’s 12 am I’m just jumping in…try to keep up, lol.

Ahh, the scene where all of Charlie’s friends sit around and stare after he gives his Christmas gifts, spot on. Seriously, it was like for the first time these people looked up and saw this Wallflower as a person. Someone who was watching so intently he was able to give the perfect gift to each friend. Charlie is someone so quiet they never really noticed him.

I loved the characters of Sam and Patrick. What perfect people. I never wanted their friendship to end. The innate understanding these two people had for Charlie was amazing. Through them Charlie began to enter the world. The world at large is place where Charlie had never fully “participated”. In the end by being Charlie’s friend they created a really great friend for themselves as well. It makes you want to look at every, ‘slightly off’ acquaintance in your midst and hold out a hand, lend an ear, give that attention that is like water and plant food for the Wallflower.

It isn’t until later in the book you see what an impact Bill, the teacher, is truly having on Charlie. Because the Charlie’s letters are stream of consciousness you know that Charlie must be kinda weird…but normal enough to function and do fairly well in school. It ends up being the barely sketched Bill who in the final section gives an adult viewpoint we can trust because of its sudden fullness of explanation.

And while Charlie’s own ending is slightly predictable I think that by the time you reach the climactic plot point you’ll have realized that it was never the point of the book. For all the issues held within its 200 odd pages (everything from date rape, to homosexuality, to drugs) Charlie’s journey is the whole point. If there were unique circumstances, not all good, that gave such a fresh take on the world, then I can only bless the broken road that this character travels. Because it was a journey that, strangely, gives you hope for having taken.

Rating: 5/5 It’s a YA Classic for a reason people…Just read it!

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The Beginning of After by Jennifer Castle

BookTalk

“Anyone who’s had something truly crappy happen to them will tell you: It’s all about Before and After.” (6, ePub ed.)

So begins this tale of After. Laurel Meisner and her once-friend-turned-bad-boy neighbor David ditch their respective families plans to grab ice cream after a seder dinner. David claimed calculus homework with a friend. But given the fact that he’d practically quit school this past year…his excuse was fooling no one. Laurel, however, was in the middle of an intense round of SAT studying. I.E. unyoke: meaning to separate. During Before her SAT Prep mental image for the word was separating the yoke from the white of an egg. When a police officer appears at Laurel’s home hours later to inform her of the car accident that has killed her family her first thought is that she now has a whole new SAT Prep image for unyoke: to separate.

Now begins the After. The grief, the breakdowns, the breakthroughs, and the survival skills. Laurel’s journey is real and at times it’s not pretty. Best friends don’t always know how to be supportive. Hot guys are just trying their best. And maybe the one person she should not fall for is the one she does. After is a hard place to be…but theres no going back to Before. And Laurel will learn that living her life on her own terms is exactly what she needs.

Review

This story was just so real. I personally lived through a death in my family while I was in High School. Granted it wasn’t the mass casualty situation that Laurel lived through, but losing my sister was more than enough to have me empathizing with the main character. So much of what Castle was writing was exactly how I remember feeling. Laurel was doing things and responding to stuff the same way I did.

I mean I had no major breakdowns in public places. And I didn’t hit the low that Laurel did but some of the little things. The allowing yourself moments of pretending everything was ok…that the people  you loved were still here…just out, or down the hall, or asleep. I got that.

I know that this book has had some mixed reviews. And it’s for sure not everyone’s idea of a pleasant read. But I think that as adults we sometimes forget that teens can feel a need to and/or even enjoy watching a fictional character go through something tragic. It’s what realistic fiction is all about. Watching a person deal with a situation in a true life kind of way. It appeases that voyeuristic need in all of us.

Really, that’s about it. There is no big bang, no perfect coming of age, no white horse to save the day, or paranormal angel to reconnect the family. What I can tell you is that this book is real. So real it makes me feel like Castle must have experienced something similar in her own life. When Laurel’s potential boyfriend hugs her delicately she thinks “Seriously, Joe, you can touch me without breaking me. In fact, you might even put me a little bit back together.” (142, ePub). My own potential boyfriend at the time showed up at my house during my own day After…he gave me the biggest, warmest, most crushing,  bear-hug I’d ever had. It was a hug that touched me so deeply I wrote about it in our wedding vows 9 years later.

In the end this book might not be for everyone. But if you’re a lover of realistic fiction this well written novel will fit like a glove.

Rating: 9/10 One of the best realistic fiction novels I’ve ever done.

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Putting Makeup on Dead People by Jen Violi

BookTalk

Donna Parisi has been wandering through her high school years. She’s acquainted with a nice group of people but they really aren’t friends. She gets good grades and is accepted to the University of Dayton, but her heart’s not in the choice. Donna is drifting. She prefers finding solace in her father’s memory rather than live a life in reality.

Then Donna attends another funeral. For the first time back at the funeral home that held her father’s own wake Donna sees the place with new eyes. Donna decides that she could be very good at this whole funeral director thing. She could be really good at Putting Makeup on Dead People.

With the support of her new amazingly cool best friend Liz, the guy with a secret crush Charlie, and a super supportive team of brother morticians, Donna is about to leave the nest. After years of wandering this sudden change in focus and direction causes a ripple effect through the family. Donna’s mother is worried about the freaky career choice, her sister responds with a green hair dye job, and her brother is about to announce his own life changing choice. The Parisi family is in for a wild ride. A struggle that will give them a new lease on life.

Review

The synopsis that I had read for this title make it seem as though this tale is about Donna’s coming of age. But really this book encompasses an entire family’s rebirth. The Parisis lost their father to cancer a few years before the beginning of this novel and the plot opens while the family is still in some sort of stasis. The mother remains loyal to her husband, not dating, not socializing. The younger sister, Linnie, is rebellious in the form of wild hair color choices, and Donna herself is slightly withdrawn and maybe a little morose. Only the eldest brother seems to have cleanly moved on succeeding at college and a healthy relationship.

It was a quiet novel. What starts as Donna being portrayed as a quiet girl is slowly revealed to be a girl changed by her father’s early death. She’s very much in her own head throughout the book. I think that’s why you don’t notice how little interaction with others Donna really has; I felt like at first she could just be super quiet. Her reactions to things are quirky and unexpected. When her new BF Liz is called a ‘spitfire’ Donna asks if this means Liz is like a dragon. Perceptive, yes…normal response, no.  Donna’s mother would like nothing more than to see her daughter at the local University of Dayton working towards a degree in communications. Apparently under the misunderstanding that a communications degree will help Donna learn to interact with people better, lol. But it’s this unusual view, the inability to present to the world what they want to hear that allows her to become such a sympathetic mortician.

Yep, Donna’s great goal in life is to become a mortician. Lets just say that a girl withdrawn after her father’s death becoming obsessed with a career in funerals freaks everyone out. Freaks! But seeing how well Donna takes to the job’s unusual skill set, how happy the job makes her, clears away any stray thoughts of the depressing. It also helps that the brothers running the local funeral home are happy, normal, and super supportive. It was cool to see the insight into this career the book gave. It really seems like it could be super rewarding…That is if you can get over putting the makeup on dead people.

Also the afore-mentioned best friend, Liz, really jump starts Donna’s transformation. Liz helps bring Donna back into a relationship with her Aunt Selena who is a witch. Another sub-theme of this book is a discussion of religion. Donna’s family are devout Catholic. Thus, Aunt Selena has been banned from the family because of her Wiccan religion. While Aunt Selena’s views on life may not be Donna’s, a big part of Donna’s coming of age is understanding her own religious viewpoint and how it may differ in some ways from her traditional upbringing.

Like I said, this was a quiet read. I think it remained realistic and could have a great impact on someone if read at the right time in their life. Someone on the brink of change, heading off to college or dealing with the death of a loved one. For myself, while I understood the text, and felt for the characters…it didn’t pack as big of a punch. Though I’ll chalk it up to reading it at the wrong time. Put this one in your back pocket for a rainy afternoon or a suggestion for a teen dealing with a lot of change in their life.

Rating: 6/10

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