Clean (by Amy Reed)

Amy Reed’s debut novel Beautiful didn’t much leave an impression on the cat. However, when a student tells you that the book they just read was “one of the best books they’ve ever read”, you  better make sure you order more of that author, because you know they’ll come back for more, so I had to go out and order Clean.  Unfortunately, this sophomore book didn’t leave any lasting impression, either… (by which I in no way want to belittle this particular student’s reading experience!).

Beautiful still had a certain focus and drive, and that is exactly what Clean misses in my opinion. In Clean we meet 5 teens in rehab, each with their own drug of choice, each with their own background, each with their own set of problems. The only thing they have in common is their addiction.  The way we meet them is too disjointed, though, to make me really care about any of them. I mean, when you read about 5 teenagers in rehab, I guess you should at least feel some of their pain, some of their anger, some of their fear, some of their emotions… but sadly, I didn’t feel anything at all. The fragmentary structure of this novel is just not working for me. Once you get somewhat familiar or close to one of the protagonists, their narrative is cut short for another patient’s narrative or a snippet from their group sessions. This type of structure seems too haphazard for the topics dealt with, despite the fact that Reed’s flow (as in Beautiful) will get you through this in no time.

Most of all, though, this book felt unfinished and underdeveloped. It was more like a draft of a book, than an actual fully developed novel, with 5 clear protagonists who each have their own equally important storyline. If Reed had focused on just Olivia, or Christopher, or any of them really, this book could have been a lot more powerful and I may have cared more about the characters than I did…, which was lukewarm, at best.

Finally, I also think Clean was not researched as well as it should have been. Olivia, for instance, has more than one life-threatening condition, and treating one, but not the other while it’s so abundantly clear to everyone that she is starving herself, is just not how “real” therapy would work. Olivia would not just have been in a regular “rehab” center!

If students come up to me and ask for more Amy Reed stuff, I’ll order it, for sure, but I think I’ll pass on reading them myself, thank you very much…

 

PS. no special cover this time…

I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You (by Ally Carter)

For a book about a bunch of kick-ass girl spies, this book is terribly uneventful. The premise and the blurb, not to mention the teen testimonials at the beginning of the book set this up as a killer (literally) of an adventure book. One teen even goes so far as to say “JK Rowling meets Jacqueline Wilson”, but it’s a really boring JK Rowling and a not so humorous Jacqueline Wilson, that we’re getting. This book really misses something: it misses the spunk and the bangs that I expect when I’m promised a book about an all-girl spy school!

Cammie – the Chameleon (her talent is to blend in! Imagine that!) – is the child of two former spies. Her dad died on a mission and Cammie’s mother retired from the CIA to become headmistress of the Gallagher Academy,  a school for spies. Incidentally, no one on the town where this academy is located, knows that it’s a spy school, instead everyone in town assumes it’s a boarding school for rich girls. On one of the very few occasions when the Gallagher girls are allowed to go into town (something for their CoveOps class), Cammie meets Josh. For the first time ever, Cammie is in a situation that’s more dangerous than any mission she’s likely to embark on in the future: she falls in love.

Not only is the plot completely underdeveloped, what probably irked me the most what the lack of character use in this little novel. Case in point, Macey McHenry. In the beginning we’re introduced to a new girl at the school, snooty and snobby Macey who has all the potential to shake things up, but…nothing happens… Or, Cammie falls in love with a boy, Josh. But rather than getting to know Josh, the reader basically has to believe that this is real love (where is the relationship development??). Lots of telling, very little showing. Another example is Dillon, Josh’s best friend. For some reason he (and the rest of the town?) hates Gallagher Girls, but rather than giving some back story or developing some sort of subplot, the reader is just presented with a cardboard character who hates GG for the sake of hating GG. A lot of what is going on in the book, and a lot of what we are supposed to believe about the characters is just that: we are supposed to think they are this or that. We are supposed to take everything for granted. Don’t think, just move on.

Meanwhile, there’s no big adventure, there’s no big mission, there’s not even a teeny tiny explosion. It’s a very lackluster affair for a spy novel! I think this was supposed to be Alias for teenage girls (btw, no way is Cammie 16! She totally behaves like a 12-year-old!), but we didn’t even get wigs!! Color me disappointed!

 

PS. This book also has one of the worst titles ever!

PPS. Photo of cover taken at the renovated Bruggenhuis.

Short cuts continued…

Bone by bone by bone (by Tony Johnston)

Tony Johnston’s Bone by Bone by Bone sketches what it was like to grow up in the 1950s is Tennessee in an atmosphere of racial inequality, tension and outright hatred.  David is 10, has a best friends who’s black, Malcolm, and a racist dad who threatens to kill Malcolm if he even sets a foot in the house. Bone by Bone by Bone will undoubtedly be compared to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, but it misses the urgency and poignancy of that  powerful novel. Moreover, the characterization of the side character leaves a lot to be desired, as does the undeveloped ending.

2.5 stars

Heist Society (by Ally Carter)

Another book that has a perfect movie counterpart is Ally Carter’s Heist Society, which could be best described as Ocean’s Eleven with teens in the lead roles. Obviously this means you have to get past the ludicrous premise that a couple of 15 and 16-year-olds would have the means, not to mention the opportunity to travel all over the world (Unaccompanied Minors much?) to steal all that important art. Anyway, once past that, the book is fairly enjoyable.

Katharina Bishop comes from a family of conmen and thieves. At 15 she’s ready to put that life behind her, but alas, an emergency involving her dad, a couple of lost paintings and a mysterious villain call her back to her old tricks and she sets up her very own “heist society” to make things better for her dad again. Ally Carter hasn’t really sold me on the third person authorial narrator, though.   Especially not because almost ever chapter starts in the *exact same way* (E.g. Kat didn’t know it yet but… or “She would later realize that…”). Anyway, fun while it last, but nothing more…

PS. There are however a few too many typos in this editions!

3 stars

Where she went (by Gayle Forman)

The cat started off by giving this book a solid 3 stars, but the more time passes, the more she just can’t see the point of this book. Where She Went is a sort of sequel to Forman’s much acclaimed If I Stay about a girl, Mia who’s in a terrible accident that kills her parents and her 8-year-old brother. Mia herself is in a coma where she has to decide whether she should stay and live, or not…  It’s been a while, but the cat remembers If I Stay as a powerful book dealing in a very credible way with grief and the threat of losing everything. Both Mia and Adam (her boyfriend) lived music. Mia was a classical cellist, Adam played in a rock band… two completely different social circles, but the music is what united them.

In Where She Went we meet Adam again 3 years after Mia left him. In those three years a lot has happened. Adam’s band Shooting Star has made it big time, but Adam doesn’t feel happy … all that fame and fortune, you know. He’s never gotten any sort of explanation why Mia left him, and despite having a gorgeous young actress as his girlfriend, it’s obvious he’s not over Mia. He has so many unanswered questions that it has left him depressed, self-destructive, lonely, unable to move forward. Surrounded by millions of fans, Adam feels alone, is mopey all day long, is on all sorts of anti-anxiety drugs, has fallen out with the other members of his band, picks fights with journalists, sleeps around with groupies…yet nothing works to get over the loneliness…  Where She Went sort of switches between a chance meeting right now between Adam and Mia in New York and flash backs of the three missing years. :::big sigh::::…200 pages of a character moping is a lot to take…

The cat can’t really see the point of this sequel, which is really just an oversized epilogue to If I Stay. It’s not like Mia is a big part of the book here. If anything she comes off as obnoxious and you get some sort of character assassination with the way she’s portrayed here. Where She Went is all about Adam and his inability to move on with his life, and that’s just sooooo incredibly tiresome! Emo complaint rock sadness black eyeliner tiresome. I wish I could say the writing itself redeems it all, but in a book where nothing really happens and where the characters have but one character trait, the writing has to be over the moon spectacular.  And the writing here? OK, but not good enough so that it can make me forget how whiney Adam really is! 2.5 stars max!

Virtuosity (by Jessica Martinez)

Carmen is 17 and one of the best violinists in the world. She’s already landed a Grammy and has a scholarship to Juilliard. She also has the privilege to play on a 1-million-dollar violin (!) – courtesy of her uppity grandparents – and now she’s ready to get into and win the prestigious Guarneri violin competition. Raised by a former opera singer, Carmen was destined to become a great musician. From a young age, her mom sheltered her, homeschooled her, overprotected her and basically molded her into this picture perfect violinist, the star she herself couldn’t be any more after a throat surgery ruined her voice. Now, with the Guarneri competition, Carmen’s talent gets matched by that of British prodigy Jeremy King. It doesn’t take much for Carmen to feel threatened by Jeremy. And yes, the two kids also feel an attraction…

Unfortunately, Virtuosity, though definitely not the worst book the cat’s read, is just so… bland, to be considered a thrilling read and anything more than ‘a filler read’. The romance between the two is sweet-ish , in that instant attraction sort of way (from feeling threatened and severe distrust to butterflies and kisses all in the span of an evening!). The ending felt very deus ex machina, like Martinez didn’t want either of her protagonists to lose out. There were also plenty of elements in the book that just didn’t work to be believable (the pills, what mom did to the competition).

Virtuosity is the book version of an X-Files MOTW-episode… Obviously there are no real monsters here, but it’s a bit of a filler in between really great books. For a book that’s supposedly all about the way something (in this case, music) makes you feel things (both Carmen and Jeremy liken their playing music to flying), the cat felt very little of that. Too plain, too obvious, too … mèh…