Very LeFreak (by Rachel Cohn)

Rachel Cohn came to the cat by way of David Levithan. Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist and Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares are up there with some of the coolest, hippest, and genuinely touching books in contemporary YA. However, it has become all too obvious now that Rachel Cohn is at her best when she’s collaborating with another writer/editor. Very LeFreak even seems too much a rehashing of the Cyd Charisse books, and the hipster-speak that seemed kinda cool in those books, now just feels as hollow and fake as the hipsters she’s describing… at the very least the language employed by Cohn here  is a true reflection of the shallowness that is the character of Very LeFreak.

I may have fallen out of love with Rachel Cohn, because this book… not the first time I was majorly let down with what I’d hoped to be a fresh take on an old tale: addiction. In Very’s case the addiction is to “new technology”, you know the hipsters whose iPhones and iPads and whathaveyous are merely extensions of their otherwise meaningless bodies and no-original-thought brains? But by the time you actually get to the addiction part of the plot, readers have to spend about a 100 pages with the uber-obnoxious egomaniac that is Very LeFreak…  And that is a tough 100 pages to get through, when *nothing* really happens,  nothing but establishing Very as this unlikeable character (that, for one, is something Cohn has achieved: establishing her main character).

However, my main issues with this book are the plot and the dramatic structure, the minor characters (who basically serve no other purpose than to orbit around Very) and the convoluted language. I don’t care if a (main) character is “unlikable”. I mean, seriously what’s to like for instance about Bounce in Adam Rapp’s The Children and the Wolves?  I do care about how that character is used in the plot of the book, in what way the other characters are developed (or not) and what their purpose is in the book, and the language and style used to make me, the reader, believe that what I read is true, honest, as genuine as can be.

As for the plot and its structure? The dramatic structure (and the pacing!) is cleverly hidden amidst Very’s abundance of mocca-frappa-cino-lattes . I already mentioned we get about a 100 pages of establishing Very as a character… then there’s the big intervention thing that makes her go into rehab, and then at the very end of it all there are things thrown into the plot so randomly, that it’s hard to think that a serious editor had a closer look at this book! The pacing here is so incredibly off!

And the language? What I’d once called witty and sharp, I can now only describe as annoying and too try-hard.  Cohn has a tendency to write run-on sentences. You haven’t even hit page 2 and you’ve already had to stomach something like: “Hey, she wasn’t even bothered that yesterday she’d been fired from her work-study “security” job checking student IDs – a feat that, contrary to her university career services advisor, was not, like, impossible to pull off – yet Very probably could be counted on later today to blow the remaining credit on her maxed-out card for primary wants like new headphones rather than for secondary needs such as food and tuition.” Oh, I get what she’s saying, that’s not it. But imagine reading page after page after page after page of this type of sentence… oh, now I get it, *that* is where the plot was hiding!!! So these overly long and intricately plotted (Get it? Get it?) sentences just stand in the way of genuineness.

Rachel Cohn, get your butt in gear, find that great editor who brought out the best possible writer in you and be great again! And no, I don’t mean that lackluster uninspired dystopian ditty you’ve been working on!

Beta (by Rachel Cohn)

The name Rachel Cohn used to be synonymous with contemporary urban YA fiction with a bit of a edge. Her Gingerbread series starred the rawer than raw punky teen rebel Cyd Charisse, and when she wrote together with David Levithan, it was Cohn who added the edge, resulting in almost perfect contemporary YA romance novels (Nick & Norah, and Dash and Lily especially are prime examples). In more ways than one Rachel Cohn seems to break with that reputation with her upcoming series of books, of which Beta is the first.

Genre-wise, Beta is nothing like anything Cohn has ever written (or published at least). For the first time, Cohn is well on her way to write dystopian romance (yes, that old thing again). With Beta we enter the perfect world of Demesne, where clones are created from a First (a dead person) in a laboratory with the sole purpose of serving the super-rich inhabitants of the perfectly engineered island. Elysia is a Beta, a new type of teen clone. Like all the other clones, though, she was engineered to be soul-less and to serve. In her case she is bought by a rich family who wants her to be a (more) perfect replacement for their daughter Astrid who’s gone off to the mainland to study (Astrid, BTW, is the absent character of this book – I’ll bet you she’s going to be majorly important in the sequels). Clones are designed not to feel real emotions, but to mimic feelings and emotions based on certain bio-engineered implants they have. However, Elysia not only starts to really feel certain things, she also has memories of her First, something which should be impossible… and yet.

From the very beginning of the book it is clear that these soul-less clones do have a certain form of self-consciousness. When Elysia feels sad for leaving another Beta she says: “I know the reaction occurs because my chip knows how to mimic human responses, and not because I am capable of actually missing Becky. We feel nothing for one another. We don’t need to. I don’t know why my stomach also experiences a hollow emptiness at the thought of leaving this other Beta. There is so much for me to learn – about this island, about my own body chemistry. I am so new.” (p.6).  The observant reader of course knows that Elysia is really feeling anxious for what is going to happen to her. The fact that the story is told in the first person, by Elysia, is an early indication that creating soulless, emotionless beings – even clones – is an illusion, and Elysia will indeed encounter numerous ‘Defects’, just like her. Elysia, the new-born clone is the perfect metaphor for the life of the teenager she was created from: looking at things with fresh eyes,  having incomprehensible conflicting emotions, thinking of rebelling against established orders, making the wrong choices (like e.g. deciding to break free because of a boy, not because it is her own choice – which I for one, was very disappointed by to read!). Elysia is the perfect empty art canvas, and being a teen clone, she is ‘still under development’, just like a regular teenager.

Elysia’s voice is in the beginning of the novel the perfect vessel to set the scene: we get to know the idyllic Demesne the way she gets to know Demesne. Her voice is detached, cool even, which is in tune with the soul-less aspect of being a clone. Through her voice, we learn that Demesne was designed to be perfect: there is, for example, oxygen-enriched air to give “the human body and mind a constant feeling of bliss” (p.22), The air on Demesne is its very own soma. Despite the blissful state of affairs, teens on Demesne still feel the need to transgress by doing “‘raxia”, though, a type of drugs designed to reach true ‘ataraxia’ (happiness)…well, it sort of mimics the effect chocolate has on the brain… The fact that there are such detailed descriptions and elaborate explanations of life on Demesne, causes the book  to have a fairly slow start. It takes a good 150 pages before the story can really take off.

The story we get in the second half of the book is unfortunately not the most original one (kind of AI meets I Robot) and Elysia’s story is prone to rely on coincidences to really advance. Actually to be honest, the whole book feels too formulaic, and that is because one crucial element is missing: Rachel Cohn’s voice. I know, we see what Elysia – the newborn clone – is supposed to see, and as such this book works the way it is supposed to work. It’s Elysia’s voice: from cool and detached to something more than that at the end when it’s clear she’s not just a teen Beta, and has real emotions, can fall in love and yearn like any other teenager. However, that doesn’t exactly make for the most exciting reading material. Oh, the story flows and ebbs nicely enough, but there is very little that sets it apart from other books in the same genre – not even Elysia’s ‘new voice’. What I need in especially this beaten down genre of dystopian romance is something that sets it apart from the rest. I don’t want middle-of-the-road stuff, I want a unique reading experience.

I’ve known Rachel Cohn to be a writer with a unique voice, one whose voice can lift teen romance to a real ‘raxia type of reading experience. *That* is what I want. I don’t want great writers being content with yet another dystopian series just because it’s hot at the moment. It might sell (just like e.g. Lauren Oliver’s Delirium sells like hotcakes), but in my opinion, it doesn’t show the author on top of her game.  I have the exact same objections I had with Beta as I had with Lauren Oliver’s Delirium. I don’t want yet another one of those books. I want a Rachel Cohn book, with Rachel Cohn at the top of her game, not something derivative or formulaic.

Beta is scheduled to come out on 16 October 2012.

Review based on ARC received on NetGalley.

Cupcake (by Rachel Cohn)

In this third and last installment of Rachel Cohn’s Cyd Charisse series, there isn’t a lot of new to discover for fans of either CC (Cyd Charisse) or Rachel Cohn. That doesn’t mean however, that Cupcake is a book you should miss, because this book proves that the Little Hellion is capable of growth … albeit not the type of growth that she may have expected herself.

Cyd Charisse has moved from San Francisco to New York where she stays in her bio-brother Danny’s apartment, looking for the perfect coffee, the perfect cupcake, only maybe a good culinary school (her mother’s plan, not hers!), but above all a way to deal with the whole Shrimp situation. Cyd said no to Shrimp’s marriage proposal at the end of Shrimp, and both of them decided on a clean break, with Shrimp being off to New Zealand, surfing and writing haiku, and Cyd in New York in search of some serious caffeination. When CC finally feels she’s on the right track, Shrimp turns up at her doorstep.

Though CC has not been able to shake off that brazen over-self-confidence of hers, by the end of the book she’s learned a little bit more about herself. Hopefully that means that she will be able to function without her True Love Shrimp… at least that is what Rachel Cohn seems to suggest, which is a big bonus, because no one, not even or especially not sassy Cyd Charisse should define themselves wholly through one other person. With Cyd Charisse, Rachel Cohn has managed to create a female character who the reader may not always like, but at least can respect for her total honesty and ‘do not settle for less’ attitude.

Gingerbread / Shrimp (by Rachel Cohn)

There are only a few books a year that leave such an impression that you want to read as much as you can by that particular author: John Green, Barry Lyga, A.S. King… Last year, the cat was completely enchanted by the Cohn/Levithan collaboration Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares. The result was first checking out what David Levithan was capable of all on his own… The result: Boy Meets Boy, the perfect antidote to doom, gloom and vampire books. Rachel Cohn’s solo-efforts were a little harder to come by for the cat, though, as both Gingerbread and Shrimp were no longer available, except as discarded library books (like, for real???) for the incredible price of 0.01£ each + shipping charges (again, for real??).

In Gingerbread Cyd Charisse gets kicked out of a fancy New England boarding school after a couple of indiscretions with a certain boy, which also, but not exclusively involved drugs, and returns to San Francisco, where she’s better known as the Little Hellion, a true attestation of her rebellious spirit. In San Francisco, she continues her wild adventures, involving coffee and a boy called Shrimp who she is convinced is her True Love. Cyd’s mother clearly cannot handle Cyd and after she’s been up to one too many tricks she has to spend the summer with her biological father Frank, who she’s seen only once in her life, when she was five, and whose only claim to fame was that he gave her a rag doll – Gingerbread – which Cyd still carries around everywhere, and that he helped her deal with a certain Problem she had. Enter a summer in New York City. In Shrimp, Cyd is back in San Francisco after having spent that summer in New York with her bio-dad and her brother Danny and his boyfriend Aaron. Set on rekindling the romance with her True Love Shrimp, Cyd also has to make decisions about her future: college or no college, Shrimp or no Shrimp.

The question whether Cohn’s books are worth the £0.02 is indisputable (I mean, seriously?). In the Cohn/Levithan collaborations it was never a question as to whose writing the cat preferred, because both authors wrote so convincingly and in character, that it was hard to pick a favorite. But after reading solo work by both authors it’s not difficult to see that Levithan is where the heart lies and Cohn is where the edge is: Cyd Charisse is nothing if not an individualist, tense to the max, outspoken in her opinions, and pushes boundaries like no other. Definitely a character that you can’t like all of the time, lots of angst going on there, almost all of the time!

The beauty of the Cohn/Levithan collaboration, though, is that they make each other better in what they are already good at. This is especially true for Rachel Cohn. Cyd Charisse is the definition of edge. But the edge in Cohn’s writing is definitely toned down by Levithan’s heart. Luckily Cohn doesn’t lose the edge, of course, but it’s quite understandable that for some the Cyd Charisse series might come over as too harsh, too gratuitous, too much like your typical teen rebel story with a character you will love to hate. However, the typical teenage antics that Cyd is up to, are just that: typical teenage antics, hiding away a lot of anger and especially fears and insecurities (there’s a lot of stuff that is unresolved, especially concerning her ‘Problem’ with the boy of the boarding school).

Gingerbread was Cohn’s debut novel. There are a few issues, of course, but Cohn’s witty brilliance definitely shines through, and with Cyd Charisse she’s created a character that you will love to hate at first, appreciate and understand later (Shrimp is definitely more fleshed out than Gingerbread), and maybe even love by the end of the trilogy (don’t know, still need to read Cupcake). Still prefer the collaborations with David Levithan, though…

Best Books Read in 2011!

In almost no particular order, this is the cat’s list of favorite books, read in 2011. (Books marked * were also published in 2011)

Please Ignore Vera Dietz (by A.S. King)

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party (by M.T. Anderson)

 Going Bovine (by Libba Bray)

The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian (by Sherman Alexie)

Everybody Sees the Ants (by A.S. King) *

A Monster Calls (by Patrick Ness and Jim Kay) *

Divergent (by Veronica Roth) *

Boy Toy and Hero Type (both by Barry Lyga)

An Abundance of Katherines (by John Green)

Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares (By David Levithan & Rachel Cohn)

The Chocolate War (by Robert Cormier)

Boy Meets Boy (by David Levithan)

The Knife that killed me (by Anthony McGowan)

The Invention of Hugo Cabret (by Brian Selznick)