Review: The Tragedy Paper by Elizabeth Laban

Title: The Tragedy Paper
Author: Elizabeth Laban
Year Published: 2013

Genre: YA fiction

Pages: 305

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Location (my 2013 Google Reading map): USA (New York)


FTC Disclosure: I borrowed this book from my school library

Summary (from the inside flap of the book): Tim Macbeth is a seventeen-year-old albino and a recent transfer to the prestigious Irving School, where the motto is "Enter here to be and find a friend." Time does not expect to find a friend; all he really wants to do is escape his senior year unnoticed. Despite his efforts to blend into the background, he finds himself falling for hte quintessential it-girl Vanessa Sheller, girlfriend of Irving's most popular boy. To Tim's surprise, Vanessa is into him too, but she can kiss her social status goodbye if anyone finds out. Tim and Vanessa begin a clandestine relationship while looming over them is the Tragedy Paper, Irving's version of a senior-year thesis, assigned by the school's least forgiving teacher, Mr. Simon.

Review: Another book based at a boarding school (I recently read Looking for Alaska by John Green and Black Boy White School by Brian F. Walker) and this one is quite different again. It feels so good to be on a great reading streak of YA books!

I like the format that this book takes: Tim has already graduated from the Irving School the previous June, but has left behind audio CDs that tell his story. It is through these CDs, and their new owner, Dunan, that the reader learns about Tim, Vanessa, Patrick (the boyfriend), and the events that make up the basis for the novel. Most chapters are Duncan listening to Tim's CDs, but we also get a few chapters of Duncan's current life in the dorms and how listening to Tim's story is affecting him.

And the Tragedy Paper is ever-present. I suppose it's a character all its own, really. All seniors write one, it looms over them from day one, and it connects neatly with Tim and Duncan's experiences of the previous year. In the author's acknowledgements he says that his school had a Tragedy Paper assigned to seniors and that's where the idea came from. I love it when the author's life inserts itself as the basis for the novel and they admit it!

The story and characters are believable, the cover fits the book really well, and I was pulled into the world of the Irving School from the very start.

Review: Level 2 by Lenore Appelhans

Title: Level 2
Author: Lenore Appelhans
Year Published: 2013

Genre: YA dystopian

Pages: 281

Rating: 4 out of 5

Location (my 2013 Google Reading map): Purgatory and Germany


FTC Disclosure: I borrowed this book from my school library

Summary (from the inside flap of the book): Since her untimely death the day before her eighteenth birthday, Felicia Ward has been trapped in Level 2, a stark white afterlife located between our world and the next. Along with her fellow prisoners, Felicia passes the endless hours reliving memories of her time on Earth and mourning what she's lost--family, friends, and the boy she loved, Neil. Then a girl in a neighboring chamber disappears, and nobody but Felicia seems to recall she existed in the first place. Something is obviously very wrong. When Julian--a dangerously charming guy Felicia knew in life--comes to offer Felicia a way out, she learns the truth: a rebellion is brewing to overthrow the Morati, the guardians of Level 2.

Felicia is reluctant to trust Julian, but then he promises what she wants the most--to be with Neil again--if only she'll join the rebels. Suspended between heaven and Earth, Felicia finds herself in the center of an age-old struggle between good and evil. As memories from her life come back to haunt her, and as the Morati hunt her down, Felicia will discover its not just her own redemption at stake...but the salvation of all mankind.

Review: I can't believe I am reading another YA dystopian novel! Apparently I haven't had enough of this genre since I keep coming back to it again and again.

This novel has some of the standard dystopian elements:

• Felicia is a strong female main character who seems to have been chosen to do great things or make a major difference in her world
• The plot takes place in a world controlled by a mostly unknown entity
• There is a rebellion made up of mostly young people
• Felicia has a love interest (or two)
• This is book one in a trilogy

However, this novel is different from most other dystopians in that it takes place in the afterlife. Well, in purgatory. Level 1 is our life on Earth, Level 2 is the in-between where people wait until they are ready to move on, and Level 3 is whatever comes next. The author is very careful not to say what Level 3 is or how long it takes people to get there. Level 3 is referred to as heaven, but only a couple times and heaven is unknown to all the characters so there is no description of it, at least in this first book.

There is much religious imagery in the story such as angels, purgatory, heaven and hell, and even the five rivers of Hades play a role. Appelhans is clever with words as evidenced in her use of Morati, who are the bad guys in Level 2. I wasn't sure it came from and a quick googling of it shows it is the plural for moratus (Latin), which means delayed or lingering. Perfect! The Morati are trying to gain access to Level 3, but so far are denied.

The ending of the book is good for the first in a trilogy because there is a sense of closure (I won't reveal it here), but it also leaves the door open for a second book since so much is still unknown.

Review: Black Boy White School by Brian F. Walker

Title: Black Boy White School
Author: Brian F. Walker
Year Published: 2012

Genre: YA fiction

Pages: 246

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Location (my 2013 Google Reading map): USA (Ohio and Maine)


FTC Disclosure: I borrowed this book from my school library

Summary (from the back of the book): He couldn't listen to music or talk on the phone without her jumping all over him about what they listened to up in Maine, or how he better nto go up to Maine and start acting ghetto. Maine. Anthony's mother didn't even know where it was until he'd shown it to her on a map, but that still didn't stop her from acting like she was born there.

Anthony "Ant" Jones has never been outside his rough East Cleveland neighborhood when he's given a scholarship to Belton Academy, an elite prep school in Maine. But at Belton things are far from perfect. Everyone calls him "Tony," assumes he's from Brooklyn, expects him to play basketball, and yet acts shocked when he fights back. As Anthony tries to adapt to a world that will never fully accept him, he's in for a rude awakening. Home is becoming a place where he no longer belongs.

Review: Great debut novel! The story is compelling, the characters interesting, and it pulled me in. At first I felt like the African Americans were just stereotypes (gangsters, poor, using the "n" word with one another, selling drugs, drinking at a very young age, etc). I was afraid this was going to be a book of stereotypes and predictability. Boy was I wrong.

First off, I decided to read the blurb about the author. Turns out he was the boy from East Cleveland who ran with gangs and ended up at an elite boarding school! Trust me, that gave the book and the story much more clout.

Black Boy White School deals with a lot of issues and does it in a realistic way. Anthony confronts racism from classmates, townspeople, and teachers as well as his own prejudices about white people, rich people, and Maine. Both sides have a lot to learn and they don't necessarily do it by the end of the book.

Friendship is also an important theme in this book. Anthony's friends in Cleveland would do anything for one another even though they are playing a dangerous game and putting each other in harm's way. In Maine, Anthony has to choose who he will be friends with: his roommate and other (white) classmates who are very different from him or the 5 other African Americans on campus. Either choice has its drawbacks.

If you're looking for a book that makes you think, this is a good one.

Review: Period.8 by Chris Crutcher

Title: Period.8
Author: Chris Crutcher
Year Published: 2013

Genre: YA fiction

Pages: 276

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Location (my 2013 Google Reading map): USA (Washington state)


FTC Disclosure: I borrowed this book from my school library

Summary (from the back of the book): Period 8. An hour a day. You can hang out. You can eat your lunch. You can talk. Or listen. Or neither. Or both. Nothing is off-limits. The only rule is that you keep it real; that you tell the truth. Heller High senior Paul Baum--aka Paulie Bomb--tells the truth. Not the "Wow, that's an ugly sweater" variety of truth, but the other kind. The truth that matters. It might be hard. It often hurts. But Paulie doesn't know how not to tell it. When he tells hsi girlfriend Hannah the life-altering, messed-up, awful truth, his life falls apart. The truth can get complicated, fast. But someone in Period 8 is lying. And Paulie, Hannah, and just about everyone else who stops by the safe haven of the P-8 room daily are deceived. And when a classmate goes missing and the mystery of her disappearance seeps beyond P-8 and into every hour of the day, all hell breaks loose.

Review: Ah, Chris Crutcher. He's done it again! Period.8 is gripping, moving, intriguing, and a great read. I am not doing any reading challenges this year since I am trying to read and blog for me, but last year I signed up for the Chris Crutcher challenge (try to read all his books) and I will see that one through.

Crutcher's main character is usually an athlete and often a swimmer. I like that since I was a swimmer and there aren't a whole lot of books with swimming in them. This time the character's distance swimming comes in handy, but I can't tell you why or it would ruin the story.

Logs is the Period 8 teacher. Every school has a teacher similar to Logs: the classroom where the students hang out for fun; the teacher who seems to know more about the students' social life than the rest of the staff; the teacher who bends the rules for students; the teacher who often oversteps the acceptable boundaries of student-teacher relationships (but not in a sexual way). I do have a difficult time with that since I believe there needs to be a line between teachers and students. At first I had a hard time with this, but by the half way point in the book I realized it was necessary to make the story work.

This book has friendship, romance, intrigue, mystery, bad guys, confused guys, and people who are just trying to hold it all together through high school. This is where Crutcher excels: the relationships and getting the angst right. This book sucked me in from the beginning and held on to me until I was finished two days later. What a great read!

Review: Deadly Harvest by Michael Stanley

Title: Deadly Harvest
Author: Michael Stanley (website and facebook)
Year Published: 2013

Genre: Adult Mystery

Pages: 472

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Location (my 2013 Google Reading map): Bostwana


FTC Disclosure: I received a copy of this book for review through TLC Tours

Summary (from the back of the book): A young girl goes missing after getting into a car with a mysterious man. Soon after, a second girl disappears, and her devastated father, Witness, sets out to seek revenge. As the trail grows cold, Samantha, a new detective (and the only woman) with the Botswana police force--is reminded of a childhood friend who had gone missing, and she devotes herself to keeping the first case open. She suspects that the girl was killed for muti, the traditional African medicine usually derived from plants and sometimes animals. But recent evidence shows that the human parts are being incorporated into certain potions to conjure up a supposedly more potent formula. Detective Kubu joins forces with Samantha to take the investigation to the next level.

Meanwhile, Witness is convinced that his daughter, too, was murdered for muti--for a potion to ensure an election victory for opposition leader Marumo. On the night of Marumo's win, Witness waits outside the politician's home and murders him before fleeing town. Now Kubu and Samantha have yet another murder investigation on their hands, and the search of Marumo's home yields a sample of muti that confirms their worst fears: the formula includes traces of human DNA and remains. Kubu and Samantha are thrust into a harrowing race to stop a serial killer or killers-and those who would pay for their special, lethal muti.

Michael Stanley!

Review: This is the second Michael Stanley novel I've read, the first being The Death of the Mantis, which I enjoyed as well.

One of the things I like the most about these books is the setting and the things I learn from them. The book is set in Botswana and the authors are really good at including cultural and factual information about the country and the people. This book emphasized AIDS, AIDS orphans, the witch doctors and muti.

Muti is the the spells created by witch doctors that include herbs, animal parts, and in rare cases, human remains. The human remains work best when gotten from a live person, supposedly giving the keeper of the muti more power. This is crazy! But, apparently this is a real problem in Botswana.

The story is really compelling with lots of interesting characters, fascinating culture, a great mystery, and some real surprises. I stayed up late to finish this book and am so glad that I did! The end was gripping and has stayed with me for days.