Hell House comes alive in YA novel Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker

This book is so so good. I think the trick to writing a YA novel like this is you can't come across like you have all the answers (okay, any novel, really). You can't make fun of your characters. You can condescend to them. You have to live them, you have to make the reader empathize with them even if they don't know what they're talking about. I didn't grow up in a tiny town with nothing to do and had no idea what Hell House was until a few years ago when Julie Klausner acted in the play (make of that what you will, you don't learn a lot about these things in Teaneck or Berkeley). But Lacey wanting to play "Abortion Girl?" I'm so with her. I like Lacey Anne Byer as a character a lot. The first paragraph I quote below, if we take it away from the context of Hell House, well, what teenager hasn't wanted the spotlight? What adult for that matter, whether on a small scale or a big one?

Melissa Walker nails a lot of things, and one of them is teen alienation, even for good girls. It's gripping and I'm only sad I don't have more time to devour this ASAP. Here's the review in the New York Times, which they wisely gave to Carlene Bauer, author of Not That Kind of Girl, who could bring her evangelical upbringing into it.

See also: USA Today, "Young adult novels explore religion:"

The novel was inspired by an article Walker did for ELLEgirl magazine on Hell Houses, haunted houses often run by fundamentalist Christian churches. Their emphasis: people who don't accept Jesus as their savior are condemned to hell.

Also, the heart in the apple on the cover? Genius. Read it!

From Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker:

Last year I watched Julia Millhouse play a pregnant teenager. When the lights went up in the nursery, where they staged her scene, she said her lines with so much emotion that people in the audience started to cry. I'd see them come through the lobby after the show and hear them talking about her performance. I want that spotlight. I want to be able to affect people that way too.

I've grown up with Hell House all my life, but Dean's cousins in the next county over think it's something weird that religious nuts do. It's not. It's a way to show people the right path. My dad always plays the devil--he thinks it's funny to be the children's pastor and the Antichrist. And Pastor Frist's Jesus bathes Hell in white light at the very end, leading the audience into Heaven (also known as the church library, all done up in white sheets and cotton clouds), where they get decision cars. Most people fill out the cards and agree to at least explore a Christian life. It's a magical weekend and an incredible outreach, especially for young people who don't have a path to Christ like I've grown up with. Mom always reminds me how lucky I am to have that.

I'm sitting with Starla Joy and her sister, Tessa, who's finger-coming her wavy brown hair as we wait to hear about this year's production. Tessa played and EMT last year in the drunk driving scene, and she got to say, "I'm sorry, Mrs. Kerner, your daughter is dead." Everyone thinks she'll get a big part this year since she's pretty much the senior girl with the most rank here. Even in church--especially in church--there's a social hierarchy.

Want to read: Fins are Forever by Tera Lynn Childs

Fins are Forever has been at the top of my 2011 want to read list and has been; I pre-ordered my copy and am eager to dig in to this sequel to Forgive My Fins. I got hooked on Tera Lynn Childs' work with her YA novels Oh.My.Gods. and Goddess Boot Camp and have enjoyed every one since. Plus she sends cool swag (I have these bookmarks and temporary tattoos on me, so just ask for one if you see me at an event):





Official description below. Click here to read an excerpt and see author Tera Lynn Child's collages she made for inspiration (and a most excellent example of an author website done perfectly, with everything neatly organized, easy to navigate, fun extras and more)!

On Lily Sanderson’s eighteenth birthday she’ll become just a girl—still a mergirl, true, but signing the renunciation will ink Princess Waterlily of Thalassinia out of existence. That leaves plain old Lily living on land, dating the boy she loves, and trying to master this being-human thing once and for all.

Now that Lily and Quince are together, mer bond or not, she’s almost content to give up her place in the royal succession of Thalassinia. But just when she thinks she has everything figured out, the waves start to get rough. Lily’s father sends a certain whirlpool-stirring cousin to stay with her on land. What did Doe do to get herself exiled from Thalassinia and stuck in terraped form, when everyone knows how much she hates humans? And why why why is she batting her eyelashes at Lily’s former crush, Brody?

The seafoam on the raging surf comes when a merboy from Lily’s past shows up—Tellin asks Lily for something that clouds her view of the horizon. There’s a future with Quince on land, her loyalty to the kingdom in the sea, and Lily tossing on the waves in the middle. Will she find a way to reconcile her love, her duty, and her own dreams?

And I just found out she's in New York tonight:

* June 28, 2011
* Readers For Life Booksigning
* 5:30-7:30pm
* Marriott Marquis Times Square
* 1535 Broadway
* New York, NY

* July 8, 2011
* Blue Willow Bookshop
* 7:00pm
* 14532 Memorial Drive
* Houston, TX

* July 9, 2011
* Katy Budget Books
* 3:30-5:30pm
* 2450 Fry Road
* Houston, TX


If you're into YA or know someone who is, do check out her work; I have a feeling you'll be hooked too!

And just because it's so gorgeous, here's the cover of Forgive My Fins again and my review. Click here to read an excerpt.



Spoilers. Forgive My Fins features Lily, a half mermaid, half terraped, with the soul of a teenage girl who's desperately in love with Brody. The only problem is, she gets kissed by Quince, the annoying boy who's always spying on her. This wouldn't be such a big deal except that in her world, that means they are bonded for life unless her father, King of Thalassania, gives them a special separation agreement. First, Quince has to learn to swim, as well as absorb the news that Lily is actually a mermaid.

This story was beautifully told, and while elements of special powers will be familiar to readers of Childs' previous books, this one is special and, dare I say, even better and more romantic. Lily insists on thinking that her feelings for Quince are only due to the bond that's been placed on them, which allows them to read each other's thoughts. The reader is treated to umpteen examples of Quince's gentlemanly charm, but Lily persists in her delusions, while also trying to acclimate to being back underwater after three years away at a regular high school. The push/pull between Quince and Lily is beautiful and touching, as he, the supposed tough guy, puts his heart on his sleeve again and again and risks so much, including life on land, to prove his passion for Lily.

This is a charming, delightful book, and I will indeed be reading the 2011 release Fins Are Forever. The only off note in my opinion was the very end, which dealt with a side character, Lily's cousin Dosinia, and seemed to come out of nowhere; it gives a preview of what's to come but I was still blissed out on Lily finally figuring out what's in her heart. Watching stubborn Lily reject Quince again and again, coupled with her fish puns and the descriptions of the magical underwater world, where tears make a mermaid's eyes sparkle, was great fun.

Want to read: Uncommon Criminals by Ally Carter

Uncommon Criminals is the second in a new Ally Carter series and it's wonderful! I both want to read it and am already reading it, almost done. It's a fast-paced read about teenage thieves; in the last book, they were stealing back stolen Holocaust art. This one involves a 97-carat emerald and all sorts of security measures, plus family and romance, but mainly heists. Click here for Ally Carter's book tour dates and visit Heist Society on Facebook to read an excerpt from Uncommon Criminals (it opens with Kat in Moscow stealing from the KGB!).

I read it while getting a pedicure:



I recommend all of Ally Carter's YA novels, both her Gallagher Girls series and this series!

Official description:

Katarina Bishop has worn a lot of labels in her short life: Friend. Niece. Daughter. Thief. But for the last two months she’s simply been known as the girl who ran the crew that robbed the greatest museum in the world. That’s why Kat isn’t surprised when she’s asked to steal the infamous Cleopatra Emerald so it can be returned to its rightful owners. There are only three problems. First, the gem hasn’t been seen in public in thirty years. Second, since the fall of the Egyptian empire and the suicide of Cleopatra, no one who holds the emerald keeps it for long — and in Kat’s world, history almost always repeats itself. But it’s the third problem that makes Kat’s crew the most nervous, and that is . . . the emerald is cursed. Kat might be in way over her head, but she’s not going down without a fight. After all, she has her best friend — the gorgeous Hale — and the rest of her crew with her as they chase the Cleopatra around the globe, dodging curses and realizing that the same tricks and cons her family has used for centuries are useless this time. Which means, this time, Katarina Bishop is making up her own rules.

Want to read: What We Keep Is Not Always What Will Stay

Found this YA novel, What We Keep Is Not Always What Will Stay by Amanda Cockrell, via her guest post The Contemps. Dear Wall Street Journal - YA fucking matters.



Description from Amazon:

Angie never used to think much about God—until things started getting strange. Like the statue of St. Felix, her secret confidant, suddenly coming off his pedestal and talking to her. And Jesse Francis, sent home from Afghanistan at age nineteen with his leg blown off. Now he's expected to finish high school and fit right back in. Is God even paying attention to this?

Against the advice of St. Felix (who knows a thing or two about war), Angie falls for Jesse—who's a lot deeper than most high school guys. But Jesse is battling some major demons. As his behavior starts to become unpredictable, and even dangerous, Angie finds herself losing control of the situation. And she's starting to wonder . . . can one person ever make things right for someone else?

From the post:

The germ of the plot was my college senior thesis, a play in verse heavily under the influence of Christopher Fry. It concerned a girl who has been praying to the statue of a saint, which suddenly comes alive, claiming that God has de-sainted him for not being holy enough. I don’t write blank verse nearly as well as Christopher Fry did, and there is not a lot of market for historical plays in verse. But years later I thought the premise still had possibilities, and we were in the middle of a war - again - and I thought the saint probably had some old battle scars of his own.

War is a very different thing when you are fighting it than when you are supporting the troops on the home front with “Power of Pride” bumper stickers and magnetic ribbons on your car. Angie, my heroine, is fifteen, and anyone her age has grown up with these wars. Even Jesse, who was hot to join the Army at seventeen, was a child when it started. For them, it’s always been there. And yet I wonder how real it seems to teens if they aren’t in a military family. I’m reasonably sure that Jesse didn’t know what he was getting into. I looked at the pictures of young people cheering when Osama Bin Laden was killed, as if they were at a football game, and I had a sense that to them it was a game.

During the Vietnam War, it was clearly no game because any male might get drafted and sent to fight. At first you could get a deferment by staying in college, but after a while it became clear that the war was unfairly taking the boys who couldn’t afford college, and so they began a lottery – literally. Numbers were drawn once a year corresponding to birthdays. If your birthday got a low number, you were gone. Every man I know of that generation has some scar left over from it, whether he was drafted, volunteered, protested the war, or even went to Canada with the draft board and the FBI on his heels. Even the unscathed ones have a sort of survivor guilt about that. But now, I wonder. We have no draft, and I thought that it was likely that for someone like Angie the war would only get suddenly and extremely real when someone she knew got hurt or killed.

Want to read: What Would My Cell Phone Do?

I've actually started this YA novel, What Would My Cell Phone Do?, by Micol Ostow and it's a fun sendup of Dr. Phil and a cute romance. I recommend it! The back cover is also pretty chihuahua-tastic.

From YA Book Central:

When Aggie Eckhart's family moves from Miami, Florida, to Denville, Alaska, because of her father's job, Aggie feels like a fish out of water.

Not only is frozen Denville a far cry from sunny Miami, but she's got no friends, her mother is driving her crazy, and she loses her cell phone within the first month - cutting off her lifeline to civilization.

But when an online search for her phone (using the schmancy built-in GPS tracker) reveals that the cell is enjoying life up north much more than Aggie is, she adopts a whole new outlook. No more woe-is-me, now it's all WWMCPD (What Would My Cell Phone Do)? And before Aggie knows it, things are looking a whole lot brighter in this charming, fun, and lighthearted YA romance.

Want to read: A La Carte by Tanita Davis

I found out about A La Carte by Tanita Davis because I'm on a bunch of publisher newsletters regarding teen books. The first cover is the new paperback one, the other is the hardcover version. This looks wonderful and I love the unique subject matter. I have plans to write my own YA novel, which I will not say any more about until the manuscript is done and it's sold (my goal is by the time I'm 36th in November, or end of this year), but either way, I love reading books for kids, from board books to tween and YA.

Official desscription via Amazon, where you can also read an excerpt (paperback is out June 14th):

SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD LAINEY DREAMS of becoming a world famous chef one day and maybe even having her own cooking show. (Do you know how many African American female chefs there aren’t? And how many vegetarian chefs have their own shows? The field is wide open for stardom!) But when her best friend—and secret crush—suddenly leaves town, Lainey finds herself alone in the kitchen. With a little help from Saint Julia (Child, of course), Lainey finds solace in her cooking as she comes to terms with the past and begins a new recipe for the future.

Peppered with recipes from Lainey’s notebooks, this delicious debut novel finishes the same way one feels finishing a good meal—satiated, content, and hopeful.





And two reviews, via Amazon as well:

From School Library Journal

Grade 8 Up—Seventeen-year-old Lainey has an uncommon dream: to be the first African-American celebrity vegetarian chef. She shows promise, helping out in the kitchen at her mother's Bay Area restaurant and concocting mouthwatering dishes in her spare time. (Hand-written recipes are included.) Cooking is her salvation; she turns to the kitchen when things aren't going well, particularly in her precarious relationship with Simeon Keller. While she cares for him as a friend, she overlooks the way he uses her. When he runs away from a bad situation at home, she offers him brief sanctuary in her home, giving him $500 and food before he jets out of town. Lainey's mom hounds her for details about his disappearance, details that she withholds for weeks. When Sim returns, months later, she's more self-assured and certain of her own plans for success. While Davis's first novel at times suffers from awkward wording and slow moments, it's still a book with a lot of heart. Readers will relate to Lainey, who doesn't always say the right thing, who has a love-hate relationship with her mother, and who finds her dreams realized at the novel's end. Secondary characters, like Lainey's formerly dorky family friend, ring true and add depth to the novel.—Jennifer Barnes, Homewood Library, IL
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

How many African American female chefs have their own vegetarian cooking shows? High-school senior Lainey, with help from her mom’s gourmet restaurant and St. Julia (Child), is well on her way to being the first. Though she never wavers in her dedication to her culinary future, Lainey suffers a blow when her lifelong friend, Simeon, borrows $500 and runs away. Sim’s departure leaves Lainey feeling alone and strains her relationship with her mother, who disapproves of Lainey’s loan. When Sim finally returns, thoughtful, likable Lainey faces the truth about her friend’s character and the role she really played in his life. Davis’ first novel shows much promise for good things to come. Too few novels feature well-drawn, well-educated, middle-class African American characters like Lainey and her family. The text is seasoned with Lainey’s original recipes, and Lainey’s use of cooking as a means of meditation and self-expression may encourage readers to embark on their own kitchen experiments. Grades 7-10. --Heather Booth

3 June books (and 2 others) I cannot wait to read: Ink Flamingos, Uncommon Criminals, Fins are Forever

Here are three books I'm thrilled will be coming out in June and cannot wait to devour. Like, plan to buy on release day or stalk in case I can find them sooner.







2 more YA books I also want to read:

2 young adult novels whose covers sold me: Populazzi and Shut Out

I'm working on lots of posts for you, including 5 books I'm reading now and very excited about that (I can multitask like that) and trying to write things (trying being the operative word these days) but I wanted to share 2 YA book covers of books I'm very excited about. And if you wanted to be awesome, you could click over to Populazzi author Elise Allen's blog and leave a comment mentioning my name. Whoever gets the most namechecks wins a galley of her book! Book titles/covers link to Amazon, where you can pre-order.

I'm posting these specific covers because they each made me want to read the book before I even knew more about them, which I think is the job of a good book cover.

Author site: Elise Allen



Populazzi

Cara has never been one of those girls: confident, self-possessed, and always ready with the perfect thing to say. A girl at the very top of the popularity tower. One of the Populazzi.

Now, junior year could change everything. Cara’s moving to a new school, and her best friend urges her to seize the moment—with the help of the Ladder. Its rungs are relationships, and if Cara transforms into the perfect girlfriend for guys ever-higher on the tower, she’ll reach the ultimate goal: Supreme Populazzi.

The Ladder seems like a lighthearted social experiment, a straight climb up, but it quickly becomes gnarled and twisted. And when everything goes wrong, only the most audacious act Cara can think of has a chance of setting things even a little bit right.

Author site: Kody Keplinger



Shut Out

Most high school sports teams have rivalries with other schools. At Hamilton High, it's a civil war: the football team versus the soccer team. And for her part,Lissa is sick of it. Her quarterback boyfriend, Randy, is always ditching her to go pick a fight with the soccer team or to prank their locker room. And on three separate occasions Randy's car has been egged while he and Lissa were inside, making out. She is done competing with a bunch of sweaty boys for her own boyfriend's attention.

Lissa decides to end the rivalry once and for all: She and the other players' girlfriends go on a hookup strike. The boys won't get any action from them until the football and soccer teams make peace. What they don't count on is a new sort of rivalry: an impossible girls-against-boys showdown that hinges on who will cave to their libidos first. And Lissa never sees her own sexual tension with the leader of the boys, Cash Sterling, coming.

3 novels I'm reading: Abandon, family, Skinny

No time to go into more about these books that are all different from each other. Probably, even though it's paranormal and based on Dante's Inferno, Meg Cabot's Abandon is the lightest. family not only has chilling subject matter, but it's told in a chilling way that's also disconcerting (lowercase "i"s). You can read an excerpt of Skinny at Jezebel (I'm not anywhere near that part yet) and an interview at Crushable. If you're wondering, I got all these in the last two days. I'm also reading a few books I'm reviewing, and want to blog soon about the extremely fascinating Bobby Fischer biography Endgame by Frank Brady which was utterly engrossing. And I bought the first two, a copy of Skinny was sent to me by the publisher, Harper Perennial.

Author sites and Twitter feeds:

Meg Cabot (@megcabot)

Micol Ostow (@micolz)

Diana Spechler (@dianaspechler)

Cover image links go to Amazon, where I got the plot descriptions from:


Abandon by Meg Cabot

Though she tries returning to the life she knew before the accident, Pierce can't help but feel at once a part of this world, and apart from it. Yet she's never alone . . . because someone is always watching her. Escape from the realm of the dead is impossible when someone there wants you back.

But now she's moved to a new town. Maybe at her new school, she can start fresh. Maybe she can stop feeling so afraid.

Only she can't. Because even here, he finds her. That's how desperately he wants her back. She knows he's no guardian angel, and his dark world isn't exactly heaven, yet she can't stay away . . . especially since he always appears when she least expects it, but exactly when she needs him most.

But if she lets herself fall any further, she may just find herself back in the one place she most fears: the Underworld.


family by Micol Ostow

It is a day like any other when seventeen-year-old Melinda Jensen hits the road for San Francisco, leaving behind her fractured home life and a constant assault on her self-esteem. Henry is the handsome, charismatic man who comes upon her, collapsed on a park bench, and offers love, a bright new consciousness, and—best of all—a family. One that will embrace her and give her love. Because family is what Mel has never really had. And this new family, Henry’s family, shares everything. They share the chores, their bodies, and their beliefs. And if Mel truly wants to belong, she will share in everything they do. No matter what the family does, or how far they go.

Told in episodic verse, family is a fictionalized exploration of cult dynamics, loosely based on the Manson Family murders of 1969. It is an unflinching look at people who are born broken, and the lengths they’ll go to to make themselves “whole” again.


Skinny by Diana Spechler

After her father’s death, twenty-six-year-old Gray Lachmann finds herself compulsively eating. Desperate to stop bingeing, she abandons her life in New York City for a job at a southern weight-loss camp. There, caught among the warring egos of her devious co-counselor, Sheena; the self-aggrandizing camp director, Lewis; his attractive assistant, Bennett; and a throng of combative teenage campers, she is confronted by a captivating mystery: her teenage half-sister, Eden, whom Gray never knew existed. Now, while unraveling her father’s lies, Gray must tackle her own self-deceptions and take control of her body and her life.

Other bloggers' book recommendations: Jen Lancaster and Stephanie Klein

I wish I could spend all day telling you about awesome books, but I have to write my own, so I will share links to book recommendations by bloggers Jen Lancaster and Stephanie Klein that got me to want to read and to buy some of their recommendations. Soon I hope to be as on the ball about recommending books as they are, because I am always reading.

Jen Lancaster's book recommendations - Most of these sound like I might like them, but young adult novel Here Lies Bridget intrigued me because of the premise, because Paige Harbison is the daughter of bestselling author Beth Harbison and she's, yes, 21! Oh, and the first line of her official bio on her site is "I am kind of a snarky bitch." Yes, I'm so reading her book ASAP.



Stephanie Klein's book recommendations - I ordered Epiphany as an impulse purchase immediately after reading this. These days I can use all the inspiration I can get, though generally, ideas aren't my problem, it's following through on them.