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When CG Silverman’s family moves to a decidedly more affluent town, she decides to reinvent herself. Before she knows what is happening, she has befriended Alona, Grace, and Sammie, the resident “popular” girls. A simple game of Truth or Dare at a sleepover sets in motion a chain of events that CG could never have anticipated.

When I began reading It Started with a Dare, I anticipated a funny, sometimes poignant coming-of-age story. In the barest of senses, this book delivered on that front. What I didn’t realize: That CG’s personal journey would be powered by pathological lying, smugness, and an often callous disregard for others. CG finds herself, all right–after lying to everyone around her for months, the chickens finally come home to roost and she becomes a total outcast at school. The alone time forces her to confront her bad behavior, but at no point does her remorse feel particularly genuine. Even when pondering the way she has hurt people, she finds ways to make digs at them, to keep them firmly rooted in villain roles (e.g., referring disparagingly to Alona as “Her Majesty,” insinuating that Grace is stupid after pulling a truly vicious MySpace prank on her, etc.).

I had a strong reaction to this book. I am, as I have indicated in other reviews, a character-driven reader. If the protagonist doesn’t grab me, I have a difficult time getting through a story. Unfortunately, that was the case here. I went out of my way, grasping at straws, to find something to like about CG. I never did.

The chief problem for me in this book was characterization. The characters herein are, for the most part, caricatures–typecast people with a typecast set of traits/problems. The rich people are snobby and bad. The poor people are genuine and misunderstood. So not only does this story break no new ground while exploring the high school social hierarchy, but it falls into some pretty egregious stereotyping. Throughout, I found that CG behaved just as badly as, if not worse than, her rich friends, but let herself off the hook because she was poor and shopped at Salvation Army. In other words, because she was poor, her bad behavior was somehow less bad.

At one point, after the unpopular Glory takes a now-equally-unpopular CG back as a friend, CG eviscerates her former frenemy behind her back: “Grace is nowhere near as smart as she seems. I thought she had a brain in there somewhere, but she let me down. As far as I can see, she’s always gonna be somebody’s puppet, whether the one pulling the strings happens to be Jordan or Alona or some other unlucky schmuck she’s only using to fill the hole inside her soul. And she’ll never stop exploiting that emptiness as her excuse to be a first-class bitch.” (300) This is tough to swallow. CG perpetually exploits her socioeconomic status as an excuse to be, at times, an even bigger “bitch” than Grace. Because she wears Janis Joplin T-shirts, however, she is somehow justified in her lying and vicious pranking.

Perhaps most alarming is Glory’s and CG’s kvetching about Sammie, who is undergoing treatment for bulimia. Glory dismisses her erstwhile best friend as “chronically image-obsessed” (301), even after schooling CG earlier about how Sammie’s eating disorder is a disease she can’t control.

This encapsulates my other problem with this book: at various junctures, there is real potential for depth, and the book takes a more surface-skimming route. Instead of pursuing the eating disorder angle in any depth, the “heroines” resort to trashing the afflicted behind her back. Instead of showing us why CG feels like nobody (the emotion that incites her “incredible” journey), the narrative simply tells us repeatedly that she feels like nobody. Instead of pushing the boundaries of the high school hierarchy, the book falls comfortably into well-traveled character types. Instead of condemning some of the uglier behaviors of high school girls, the book inadvertently validates them [e.g., CG continuing to trash the girls she has betrayed behind their backs, and dismissing the English teacher whose life she almost destroyed with an ongoing prank as a "total dorkmonger who bores me to tears" (182)].

The responsibility of a coming-of-age comedy like this one is to establish a character whose happy ending we crave. It is what keeps us turning the pages. However, when CG’s life finally began to work out in her favor, I was plagued with the lingering conviction that she deserved none of it. The problem: the story takes too long to showcase her remorse (which isn’t particularly genuine, anyway–even when her parents confront her about her lies, she finds ways to manipulate their emotions), too long to give any indication of why CG behaves as she does, too long to probe the characters in any depth.

An aside: My linguistic diet consists of enough salt to give a healthy person a heart attack, but even I found the cussing in this book to be excessive, perhaps even gratuitous.

Lindsay Faith Rech is a strong writer with enormous potential. The dialogue in this book was snappy, the underlying concept compelling and worthy of exploration. The problem, for me, lay in the character development. I never connected with CG. In fact, when Alex finally kissed her, I found myself thinking, “He’d be better off with someone like Glory.”

(Disclaimer: I received the galley proofs of this title from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for review.)

A Long Walk to Water offers up a fictionalized version of Sudanese “Lost Boy” Salva Dut’s life. Though Linda Sue Park tweaks certain elements in the name of narrative progression, the crux of the story is true: Salva escaped a war-torn 1980s Sudan and returned years later to help not only the tribe he once left behind (the Dinka), but also a rival tribe (the Nuer).

Throughout the course of this story, Salva witnesses unspeakable horrors as he trudges through Sudan, into Ethiopia, and finally into Kenya. Among them are death, disease, hunger, and gunfire. He cheats death several times, somehow summoning the necessary survival instinct to dodge both literal and figurative bullets. On top of this, he must contend with his own fear, hunger, and grief.

Running parallel to Salva’s narrative is that of Nya, a fictional member of modern-day Sudan’s Nuer tribe. Her people, struggling with a perpetual water shortage, eventually find a solution from an unlikely source.

Perhaps my only complaint about this book was its length. At a lean 120 pages, it is somewhat on the sparse side. At one point, Salva’s narrative skips ahead six years, with only a section break to denote the time jump. This abrupt mid-chapter jump means a glossing over of Salva’s years in an Ethiopian refugee camp.

Overall, A Long Walk to Water tells the story of a Sudanese Lost Boy in language that is simultaneously accessible and educational to young readers. It provides a great gateway for young readers unfamiliar with the past and ongoing plight of the Sudanese (which, although not mentioned in this book, includes Darfur).

(Disclaimer: I received the galley proofs of this title from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for review.)

Piers Le Gris, a rather ascetic writer of pulp fiction, is boarding at widow Nelly Reboul’s house in Avignon while researching his next novel. When Nelly’s young niece, Magali, moves in, her presence upsets the precarious balance in the household. Her presence stirs up repressed desires (in Piers) and memories (in Nelly). It is her presence that forces various characters to confront what they would rather deny. She herself is entangled in a bizarre love triangle between stormy Moroccan Mouloud and the enigmatic Piers.

Piers’ Desire is, above all else, an exploration of “hopeless love” (177). There is Mouloud’s hopeless love for Magali, Nelly’s hopeless love for Roland, and Piers’ hopeless love for Magali. This is, to put in Magali’s words, “a family with no history of love” (202). These characters find solace in one another, often substituting one for the other–as if people were interchangeable, as if some displaced outburst of sexual expression could fill the gnawing void left behind by unfulfilled obsession.

The writing broods, contemplates, philosophizes. It reminisces. Ackerman has managed, with relatively few words, to create a story that is simultaneously dreamlike, with frequent (sometimes jarring) shifts in perspective to keep the reader alert, and Gothic in mood. Dark obsessions and unresolved feeling preside here. The reader must pay close attention not to the climactic events of the story, but its strong undercurrents, which pull relentlessly at Piers, Magali, Nelly, and Mouloud.

(Disclaimer: I received the galley proofs of this title from McArthur & Company for review.)

Meet Teagan Wyllston. She is a high school student with aspirations to become a veterinarian. She spends most of her free time at the zoo, working with chimpanzees. Her life changes when her not-quite-cousin, Finn, moves in with her family, bringing with him some unfriendly supernatural baggage.

The Celtic mythology that drives this story is fascinating. The reader is taken on a journey that includes goblins, the multiverse, Irish Travelers, hellhounds, angels and assorted other supernatural elements.

There were, however, some significant pacing problems in this book. At one point, the narrative jumps ahead several months, completely bypassing a significant event and mentioning it in retrospect, with only a chapter break in between. It seems to me that a time jump of this magnitude, particularly one that glosses over an event of enormous significance for Teagan, ought to have cued a “Part II” rather than a new chapter. Because of this jump, we never experience Teagan’s reaction to this event–or countless other events that should evoke strong emotion.

Moreover, the story contains disproportionately more dialogue than exposition. There were so many points when I wanted a glimpse inside Teagan’s mind–to understand her, to know her more intimately, to forge some kind of connection with her. Instead, this book tended to skim her surface, rarely illuminating her depths. In the early pages of the book, the piece of narrative real estate that represents the best chance to make a character memorable, we are given a conversation dominated by best friend Abby rather than Teagan. In some places, she feels downright incidental to the unfolding story.

This inability to connect with Teagan left me wondering: Why is this story told from her point of view when she is consistently outshined by other characters? Finn is a much more compelling character. This is certainly not the first time I have encountered a young adult story that opts for a nondescript female narrator over a more compelling male narrator. I think the story took a hit by not developing Teagan in sufficient depth to justify her position as the narrator/protagonist. It is not until the very end of the book that, finally, we experience her as a full-bodied character.

If you are looking for an page-turning, action-driven book, Tyger Tyger will definitely be your speed. The story moves quickly, particularly given the abundance of dialogue, and achieves some nice tension in the process. The ending leaves the door wide open for a sequel and lays the groundwork for plenty of future conflict, both of the action-oriented and interpersonal varieties. However, I was disappointed that this book wasn’t more character-driven, a crucial element for me.

(Disclaimer: I received the galley proofs of this book from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for review.)

I spent much of my time reading this novel in a sensory haze. The writing herein is plush, evocative, and sensuous. Sirine, Han, Nathan, and Aziz aren’t always likable, but they exist on so many dimensions that we forgive them their flaws. The story, which might have been soap-operatic in less capable hands, is intricate, complex.

One passage of particular interest to me, from both a narrative and feminist standpoint, comes when Sirine stumbles across some candid photographs of her and Han together. She muses, “It is as though the whole of their relationship has been somehow invisibly noted and catalogued. Hans is the hero and Sirine the love interest” (327). This is a jarring marginalization of self. Most of the story unfolds from Sirine’s point of view, with a few brief forays into Han’s past. It is interesting, then, that she downplays herself as a mere “love interest” when it is her character who drives the story. This is reflective of a larger insecurity that plagues her throughout–no matter how close she gets to Han, no matter how many men show romantic interest in her, she sees herself as simple-minded, inferior. Perhaps she can thank her parents–dead now, but neglectful when she was a child–for these issues.

This book began as an exercise in sheer “cover appeal” for me. I have contemplated reading Abu-Jaber’s Origin many times, but had never before seen Crescent on the shelf. It was a shallow choice that paid off. Crescent is a complex love story. It is a treatise on family. Perhaps above all else, it is a probing exploration of the Arab-American immigrant experience.

Your Republic Is Calling You is more than just a piece of Korean literature. It is, on some levels, a Korean Ulysses.

Like in Ulysses, events unfold over the course of one day. In this case, the day is divided into chapters with timestamped titles. A husband and wife (along with their teenage daughter) diverge at the beginning of the story, not to reconvene until the end of the day after coping with their greater geocultural reality. Ma-ri, embroiled in an affair with a younger man, is not unlike Joyce’s Molly Bloom. Her lover, Song-uk, is no Blazes Boylan, but he is similarly superfluous, more of a distraction to Ma-ri than a genuine partner. Perhaps most striking is Ma-ri’s soliloquy at the end, a smaller-scale version of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy, unveiling long-suppressed emotion and a sudden rediscovery of self.

Ki-yong, Mari’s husband, has been suppressing some things himself. For starters, he is no native South Korean; he is a spy for North Korea, trained on an elaborate stage set of Seoul. Hyon-mi, the daughter, is finally setting into a normal school routine after quitting competitive Go tournaments and remains unaware of what a seminal day this is for both parents.

The novel explores aspects of Seoul’s and Pyongyang’s respective cultures–the differences, but also some uncanny similarities between the two. Japan looms large, making cameo appearances in the form of cinema, anime, and literature (namely, Mishima and Soseki). Though Japan’s occupation was a century ago, its strong influence endures. The west plays no small role, either. There are ample allusions to western films, books, food items, and thinkers. In this regard, Young-ha Kim’s South Korea lacks a cohesive identity, instead drawing inspiration from both the east and west (and, in some regards, the immediate north). It is as dazed and confused as the characters who populate it.

Several characters in this novel are as divided as Korea itself; there is a recurrent theme of “splitting.” Ki-yong has spent exactly half his life in North Korea and the other half in South Korea, and is no longer certain which country represents his true self, which half is his true half. Elsewhere, the teenage Jing-guk creates an alter ego, whom he passes off as his [imaginary] orphaned friend, to give voice to his most troubling impulses.

Your Republic Is Calling You seems destined for greatness. Young-ha Kim has done for Korea what Ma Jian and Gao Xingjian have done for China: illuminated the good-bad-and-ugly of his country with insight and awareness that an outsider could never achieve.

(Disclaimer: I received the galley proofs of this book from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for review.)

Wyatt Hillyer is a magnet for tragedy. When he is a teenager, his parents commit suicide on the same day, driven to such extremes by their mutual romantic entanglements with a neighbor. This is only the first of a string of personal tragedies to befall him over the next several years.

What Is Left the Daughter (a title referencing the concept of inheritance) is an epistolary novel, written by a father to his daughter. It chronicles World War II Canada, zeroing in on the anti-German sentiment that presided there during the Holocaust. So much of the tragedy that befalls Wyatt involves this very prejudice. It is also a story of unrequited love.

Epistolary novels always have the potential to win big or fail miserably. This one falls somewhere in the middle. The writing is clean, even lyrical in places. However, the very format that propels the narrative also inhibits it. Because this is a letter from Wyatt to a daughter (Marlais) whom he barely knows, there is a certain detachment from the events that transpire. What was most frustrating about this story was its ample, but unrealized, potential for character exploration and development. Some pretty heavy things happen to this young man, but he never lets us in. We never feel their after-effects resonating within him.

Wyatt is, instead, a lens through which we observe Canada at this historical juncture, often deflecting the spotlight from himself and casting it upon secondary and tertiary characters. Sometimes, these vignettes are effective. Other times, they make the narrative feel unfocused and even scattered. Wyatt’s own letters contain two lines that elucidate my own frustrations with this story, the first spoken by Cornelia and the second by Wyatt himself: 1) “‘In her letters she refers to intimate things but doesn’t describe things intimately’” (197), and 2) “I realize I’ve sometimes raced over the years like an ice skater fleeing the devil on a frozen river” (223). Wyatt is, apparently, aware that he has shared little of himself in this story, and has at times glossed over events of enormous personal and historic magnitude.

The author’s writing is compelling. I would be curious to read other works by him. However, again, I found the epistolary format of this particular narrative to be limiting. Wyatt had the potential to be a rich, multifaceted character. Instead, he felt like a virtual stranger. Perhaps this was deliberate. Perhaps Norman wanted the reader to feel the same estrangement from him that Marlais, the daughter who grew up not knowing him, must have.

(Disclaimer: I received the galley proofs of this title from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for review.)

As I was reading this book, a strange feeling overwhelmed me: I couldn’t wait to review it. I couldn’t wait to share it with others. In fact, I opened up a blank Notepad file and began typing this review with 40 pages left to read. This is the same feeling I had when I first read Emily Giffin and made the startling discovery that chick lit didn’t have to be vapid–that it could be engaging, intelligent, and introspective.

Celine is a divorcée, mother, and professional matchmaker. Though her own romantic life has always been fraught with uncertainty, it is her job to forge romantic connections between clients. She was married to Mike for over a decade, but always harbored unresolved feelings for Patrick, the man with whom she had a brief-but-passionate affair in Vietnam fifteen years ago. The name of her business, The Love Market, is a direct allusion to her romance with him. Soon after her divorce, the two reconnect and embark on a second chance at love. However, when Mike hires her to find him someone new, she realizes that Patrick is not the only man for whom she harbors unresolved feelings.

The Love Market isn’t perfect. By its very nature, it can’t be. Celine can be somewhat wishy-washy as she navigates her complex relationships with Mike and Patrick. And what woman wouldn’t feel conflicted when she is in love with two men, both integral parts of her past and present? What makes this book resonate is its honesty, and the care with which this complicated love triangle is crafted. So often, authors fall prey to an annoying, lazy tendency to vilify one love interest while sanctifying the other in love triangles, stacking the deck in the future “winner’s” favor. Mason does not fall into this storytelling trap. She presents two men that any woman could love and exposes them for the lovable, flawed people they are.

Mason’s writing flows beautifully. The book is simultaneously a comedy that knows when to be serious and a drama that knows when to be funny.

Because this is a spoiler-free review, I won’t comment specifically on the resolution of this book. All I will say is that I was satisfied. Deeply, deeply satisfied. The story presents two equally compelling potential endings, but the actual ending was, for me, the only viable one. There are no “neat red bows” here. Some things are left unresolved, but the story resolves enough to give the reader closure.

(Disclaimer: I received the galley proofs of this title from McArthur & Company for review.)