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Burned was an apt title for this one. I felt burned and a little exploited after reading it.

I love Ellen Hopkins. Her “Crank” trilogy is one of my favorite YA series because of its rawness. I feel like I say this in a lot of reviews, but what works about “Crank” is that it doesn’t resort to cheap sleights of pen to evoke a thrill. It puts forth, in experimental verse form, a candid view of crystal meth addiction.

This book’s greatest misstep is its failure to recognize that Pattyn’s crisis of faith, her father’s abuse, and her relationship with Ethan are compelling enough; the story doesn’t need cheap twists and shock value to be effective.

Perhaps the most tragic element of this story, though, was its ultimate betrayal of its own ideals. Pattyn’s aunt spends so much of this book teaching her that there are options for women beyond marriage and motherhood. But, ultimately, Pattyn finds her self-worth and purpose in a man (albeit, a very kind-hearted, loving one). In this regard, she isn’t all that dissimilar to her mother, who chose “true love” over college. It isn’t that Ethan is unworthy of “forever love,” as the book calls it, but Pattyn is just seventeen. The love story is touching, if not somewhat rushed, but also a bit hard to take–in a matter of weeks, she can’t live without him and finds self-worth when she regards herself through his eyes.

As for the ending? Talk about narrative contortionism. This is a spoiler-free review, so I won’t comment further on that.

I’m not worthy of reviewing a book like this. Really. Seven Types of Ambiguity is huge, both physically and contextually.

Read this book if:

–You like Rashomon-like explorations of the subjective nature of truth.
–You like overlapping narratives that do more to obfuscate a given event than illuminate it.
–Deep characterization is your bag.
–You have ever harbored even a passing interest in critical theory.
–You love Billie Holliday.
–You are are passionate about health care issues (this book explores Australia’s shift to managed health care).

Do not read this book if:

–You like morally unambiguous characters who are always on their best behavior.
–You have a short attention span.
–You hate ambiguity (and, really, the title should tip you off there).
–You like concrete, “big-red-bow” endings.

What else can I say, really?

This trilogy goes fast. I started it after dinner last night and didn’t finish before bed only because I decided to take a break and do some writing. The entire series is approximately 600 pages in length — 600 pages of staccato, sparse prose and generous white space, mind you. Each book took me only an hour or two to read.

If you think your high school job sucked, try being a dream catcher like Janie sometime. The caloric drains, the rapid decline of your eyesight, the forced isolation from others to avoid their dreams and get some sleep once in a while. Your life is on a crash course with “Morton’s Fork” (this will make sense to you after reading, I swear). Fortunately, Janie has her boyfriend, Cabe, to keep her warm and fed. Otherwise, she is a lonely sort, functioning as the parental unit at home while her rather hateful mother, Dorothea, drinks herself into a perpetual stupor.

When she isn’t stumbling into people’s dreams or making out with Cabe, Janie is using her gift to help others and investigate unsolved crimes for her boss, Captain. Her journey as a young dream catcher lands her in the crosshairs of various hazards: illegal drugs and teachers-by-day-sex-offenders-by-night, to name a few. It also, inadvertently, brings her closer to herself as she confronts a huge unknown from her past in the third book.

Because the prose is so bare, the reader must often fill in the blanks. Insinuation, not exposition, presides here — particularly in terms of characterization. We know why Dorothea drinks on a basic level, but there is never any deep exploration of those emotions. We are told that Janie loves Cabe–and, given his actions, we can certainly understand why–but those feelings might have been explored in more depth. Because the story unfolds so quickly, with very few words to move it along, there is limited time for introspection.

The premise behind this series is fascinating. In a YA marketplace supersaturated with vampires, werewolves, witches, pixies, elves, fallen angels, dragons, leprechauns, and assorted other mythical creatures, a very human dream catcher is a paranormal breath of fresh air. No immortality, no invulnerability. In fact, Janie’s gift-slash-curse makes her mortality all too vivid.

Overall, a very enjoyable, quick series. While the execution was far from flawless, it was actually the realistic ending that set it apart from a lot of other paranormal YA narratives. If you’re hoping for a deus ex machina plot contrivance to solve all of Janie’s problems, or explicit resolution, you won’t find it here. That doesn’t mean that the series ends badly. It means that it ends realistically.

The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors is difficult to sum up in a review. It is (in the best possible way) a narrative as skittish as the lightning that propels it, flitting from character to character in unpredictable fashion. We never know where the narrative will land next. This lightning-esque storytelling might not work in some stories, but it is a more than fitting approach here. The story follows multiple characters, with an emphasis on lightning strike survivor Becca and lightning strike researcher Buckley.

The novel explores the ramifications of lightning for its survivors (Becca and Buckley) and those who surround them. Between strikes, we witness the development and erosion of various relationships, including the crumbling marriage of Mary and Rowan (Becca’s parents) and the touching courtship between Abigail (Buckley’s mother) and Paddy John. There are those characters who court death with self-destructive behavior and those who continually dodge it. Particularly strong in this story is the character development — Young-Stone takes her time progressing each character’s narrative so that we are not shocked when they behave badly or otherwise fall short of our expectations. No deus ex machina developments, no cheap sleights of pen. Just good storytelling.

One minor issue: I tend not to be a fan of epilogues that provide a quick blurb about each character’s fate. This story is so densely populated that it would be difficult to provide closure for each storyline, but the four-page epilogue made the resolution feel somewhat rushed. That said, the story wraps up a lot of loose ends by the end of the last chapter.

The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors is a powerful debut. I read Young-Stone’s bio on Goodreads and was amazed to learn that she, too, is a lightning strike survivor. We are all encouraged to write what we know, and she has done a remarkable job of exploring a subject of personal significance while keeping a respectful distance from the narrative (in other words, not allowing her characters to become Mary Sues). This in itself is a remarkable achievement.

(Disclaimer: I received the galleys of this title from The Crown Publishing Group for review.)

Moses, haunted by sound from a young age, has an abnormally acute sense of hearing. He grows up listening his mother ring the church bells every day and finds that his ear can dissect sound, reducing it to its barest elements — a gift that brings him endless misfortune. His father attempts to stifle that gift, reaching into his ears to deafen him, and Ulrich attempts to immortalize it by castrating him. It is the latter of these two acts of violence that defines Moses’ life.

The Bells is as much a celebration of sound as it is a tragedy. As other reviewers have mentioned, this book does for sound what Süskind’s Perfume did for smell. As Moses makes his way from the church tower to the monastery to Vienna, he unveils a universe not of architectural landmarks and scenery, but of sound. We experience the world as he does: on an auditory level. The writing is descriptive and evocative, but never excessive.

Perhaps the one weakness in this book is the progression of the love story between Moses and Amalia. What begins as a touching, unique connection steeped in sound and vaguely reminiscent of The Phantom of the Opera (although, in this case, it is Amalia who wears a blindfold because Moses does not want her to see him) ends somewhat predictably. Still, the overall story is unspeakably poignant and a must-read for classically trained musicians. Harvell has made his mark with this extraordinary debut.

(Disclaimer: I received the galleys of this title from Crown for review.)

** spoiler alert **

What keeps me reading Emily Giffin is her depth, something I hadn’t anticipated when I picked up the pastel pink, fluffy-looking Something Borrowed. She writes intelligent chick lit. However, I find that her characters are becoming increasingly unlikable.

Tessa is married to Dr. Nick Russo, a plastic surgeon in a pediatric burn unit. Insecure and a bit adrift after leaving her career to stay home with their two children, she tries to make inroads with the “in-crowd” of stay-at-home moms. Elsewhere, single mother Valerie Anderson must contend with her son’s severe burns after an accident at the home of one of Tessa’s friends. Nick becomes her son’s doctor and, inevitably, the two fall in lust.

None of these characters is particularly likable. Tessa is obsessed with what the other mothers (none of whom she particularly likes) think of her, Nick is a pompous philanderer with a serious ethics deficiency, and Valerie is something of a limp dishrag. This single mother, a successful lawyer, falls to pieces over Nick and finds herself “dependent” on him. Though the lovers suggest that they’re in love with one another in dialogue, they ultimately chicken out, claiming that it was never love when confronted.

Also, am I the only one who wished that Tessa had turned Nick in to the medical ethics board for bedding a patient’s mother and paying the patient home visits as an excuse to see her?

Another thing that irked me about this book was its tendency toward black-and-white characterization. The women with careers are celebrated while the stay-at-home mothers are often condemned. Hardly the kind of storytelling that would inspire any cease-fires in the perpetual Mommy Wars. It would have been nice if the story had dug deeper and not taken sides. Perhaps having been raised by a stay-at-home mother (who was in the working world for 15 years before having children and had a master’s degree) makes me sensitive about this topic. And deciding to stay at home, contrary to the depictions in this book, does not necessarily mean becoming a pod person like April, Romy, Tessa, et al. It was all a little too hyperbolic, a little too Desperate Housewives for my taste.

That said, I was disappointed to learn that Rachel had abandoned her career. I hated to see Rachel and Dex so…domesticated. Like Tessa, Rachel left her career to stay at home with her children. She and Dex lead a comfortable, if not pedestrian, Affluenzan existence. To quote Step Brothers, “It just kills me to see [them] so crushed and normal.” However, the book reassures us that they are intimate three or four times per week (albeit, in the name of making a third baby). Hollow consolation, but consolation nonetheless.

A random note: I wonder what St. Martin’s Press will do when they inevitably run out of vibrant, feminine colors for Emily Giffin’s book covers. They’ve already exhausted pink, baby blue, yellow, green, and purple.

This book transcends its constituent parts. It is more than a mystery, more than a forensic thriller or police procedural, more than a love story. It is a haunting character study, an exploration of origin and identity.

Lena Dawson is the rare first-person heroine with depth, who is written with such conviction and awareness that her development isn’t encumbered by the first-person perspective. She is the lens through which we view a strange, seemingly disjointed flurry of events. Her world view is not like ours–she has constructed a past with which she can cope, drawing upon sensory experience and disjointed shards of memory.

Diana Abu-Jaber knows how to haunt a reader. She knows how to forge bonds between characters that are simultaneously poignant and realistic. It is quite a feat to write literature that is so innately personal without ever allowing it to become maudlin.