Obsession - is it ever healthy for you, and if so, at what point does it become dangerous?
For Sophie in Tess Sharpe's Far From You, her obsession with finding out who caused her best friend's death is dangerous from the beginning, because Mina was murdered. Everyone believes it's because OxyContin-addicted Sophie was looking for a hit, and Mina was murdered by a drug dealer, but Sophie's clean, and she knows the truth.
As Sophie struggles to find out who killed Mina, she must also piece her life back together - get her parents to trust her again, get Mina's brother Trev to see her in a new light, and, most importantly of all, Sophie must learn to let go of Mina.
Far From You is a murder mystery brilliantly nestled in the centre of a book examining loyalty, love, friendship, guilt, and obsession. Sharpe takes us deeply into the world of a teenager who has suffered extensively - Sophie was in an almost-fatal car crash when she was 14, Mina's brother was driving - and then piles some more misery on her protagonist. The result is a story about human resilience.
Sharpe structures Far From You with chapters told chronologically in the present, as Sophie leaves rehab and tracks down Mina's killer, alternating with chapters told out of order from the past, covering the period after Sophie's car crash to the period just after Mina's death. Originally, I thought I wouldn't have much use for the chapters from the past, but they actually give a huge insight into not just Sophie, but also Sophie and Mina's friendship.
And goodness, is that friendship intense. It's built not just on two girls getting on, but also on shared experiences (Mina was also in the car crash that hurt Sophie), possibly a bit of guilt, and a bit of possessiveness and obsession. As we flit back and forth through the lives of the girls, we see the things that bind them together, and the things that could possibly pull them apart, and come to learn why Sophie feels it is on her to find Mina's killer.
Sophie is an interesting character. She's likeable in parts, and in other parts just barrels into the reader with her forcefulness, so you can't help but be swept along with her, and trust in her completely. She is, in some ways, acting towards the reader like Mina acted towards her. The times I didn't like Sophie as much were when I felt she was hurting Trev, because I absolutely loved Trev. He's a wonderfully sweet, vulnerable, secondary character, the complete opposite of Sophie. He's suffered as much as she has, just in different ways, and his love for Sophie is built on a bed of guilt.
In addition to being a character study, Far From You is a deft murder mystery which had me guessing until just before the big reveal, when the pieces clicked in my mind as they did in Sophie's. Sharpe weaves together two crimes and brings them to a satisfying conclusion, even as Sophie knows that finding Mina's murderer does not give her the immediate closure that's good for her.
Far From You is a very, very well-written YA book, which has depth of character and depth of emotion. It'll leave you feeling a bit like you've been through the wringer and will stay with you, but, like Sophie, you'll be able to take a deep breath at the end and start letting go.
How I got this book: From the publisher, Indigo. This did not affect my review.
It takes a talented writer to get into the mind of the modern teenage girl, but Sarra Manning never seems to have a problem succeeding.
Her latest, The Worst Girlfriend in the World, is a tale of friendship, fighting and figuring out who you are. And boys.
Franny Barker, known as Franny B, is off to college to pursue her dream of being a fashion designer. Yes, her mum is depressed, no one at college likes her, and she has to retake her maths and English GCSEs, but as long as she's got best friend Alice, she'll be okay. Only Alice, feeling like she's being left behind, sets her sight on Louis, the boy Franny B has had a crush on for two years.
Manning knows the recipe for a good book, and taking the elements of growing up and putting them in a mixer, she's able to tell a readable, thoroughly enjoyable story. I loved both female protagonists, even though most of the time Alice was breaking friendship rules left, right and centre, and being a right cow. Still, she's a teenage girl and when you're in the midst of feeling insecure and hurt, you think anything goes.
Franny B's home life was interesting as well, with Manning tackling depression in a forthright way. I thought Franny's mum was sensitively handled, while at the same time Franny B's interactions with her were realistic - it was great to see that Franny B was conflicted by her mum's illness, unsure of how to help her, unable to understand how her mum was feeling and why, as that added depth.
The cast of supporting characters in Worst Girlfriend really made the book. I thought Franny B's fashion student peers and tutor were a varied bunch - Manning took the stereoptypes of goth girl, ornery old teacher and so on and gave them a fresh twist. And I loved Louis and his band Thee Desperadoes, they provided a lot of laughs. And of course, Francis, Louis' friend and feel Thee Deperado, was a sweetheart.
It's easy to assume that Worst Girlfriend is going to be a story about boys, and while the central conflict between Franny B and Alice manifests itself in a fight over a boy and there is some romance, this is really a book about friendship and family - the kind you're born with and the kind you make. If you approach the book realising that, you won't be disappointed. I adore Manning's work anyway, and Worst Girlfriend made me laugh, and get annoyed at times, and all the angst made tears well up in my eyes (not good for a train journey), and overall made me wish I was still a teenager and simultaneously thankful that I'm not.
How I got this book: From the room of spare books at work.
Wouldn't life be easy if you had a step by step guide on how to get through it? While Maya Van Wagenen doesn't have a guide to life, she does have a guide to being popular, and for a teenager that's the same thing.
Popular: Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek is Van Wagenen's real life account of a year spent living by the rules of Betty Cornell's Teenage Popularity Guide, first published way back in 1951. Van Wagenen's social experiment sees her wearing a girdle, changing her posture, introducing herself to new people and donning make up in an attempt to be popular at the "armpit" that is school.
This is a frank and funny book, which draws you in immediately. I loved Van Wagenen's voice, which was fresh and sounded reassuringly like that of a 13-year-old (that's how old Van Wagenen was at the time of the experiment). And like a teenager there was plenty of minor drama which at that age seems like it's the be-all and end-all - a crush on a cute boy, dealing with the popular kids.
Popular is at its best when Van Wagenen is talking about the experiences which nearly every teenager goes through in their life, from school to friends to family (although obviously the book is very American). Added into that, Van Wagenen's experiment adds a layer of tension and hilarity, as she goes through her school days wearing pearls and trying to act like nothing has changed so as not to tip people off to what she doing.
As well as school, Van Wagenen's family life is also full of love and humour, from her younger sister Natalia, who has autism, to her annoying but loveable brother, to her occasionally eccentric dad and her beautiful mother. It's her family unit which ensure that Van Wagenen can go through with her experiment for a full year.
Where the memoir slightly falls down is on the more serious topics. Van Wagenen's relationship with her teacher Mr Lawrence, who has terminal cancer, is touching and definitely worth hearing more about. And Van Wagenen mentions gang and drug problems in her school and hometown plenty of times throughout the book, but the issue is never explored properly. I can understand that both situations were a part of Van Wagenen's life, and so needed to be included, but at times it felt like a mention of them was just thrown in and then forgotten about. They don't quite fit into a diary about becoming popular, but at the same time they can't be discarded. It's a conundrum that's handled ok, but not brilliantly (and that's more to do with the editing than the writing).
Aside from that, though, Popular is a great read. Of course, there are lessons to be learned from what Van Wagenen goes through, and there's a certain amount of light preaching about popularity, but it all works pretty well. Not only is Popular an enjoyable book, it's also the tale of a brave young woman who decided to do her own thing, and succeeded. And that's more inspiring for all the legions of teenage girls out there than becoming popular.
How I got this book: From the publisher, Penguin. This did not affect my review.
I admit, I mostly picked up The 100 by Kass Morgan because the blurb on the back said it was developed in conjunction with Alloy Entertainment, who are behind Gossip Girl (and The Vampire Diaries, but I don't watch that).
The 100 (said The Hundred) is pretty well set up to be made into a television programme. One hundred teenagers, jailed for their crimes aboard the spaceship they live on, are sent back to Earth, which has been devoid of human life since a nuclear war centuries ago. When they land on Earth, these 100 teenagers must set about exploring their new world, and learning how to survive.
I think it's a great concept, and I really enjoyed all the aspects of The 100 that covered how Earth was destroyed, how new colonies were set up in spaceships and how the 100 go about creating a society from scratch. The politics onboard the spaceships - the poor live on Walden and Arcadia, the rich on Phoenix; the strict population rules; the new kind of democracy - were fascinating. I particularly enjoyed the power struggle that played out very subtly between the Chancellor and the Vice Chancellor in both the present time and through a series of flashbacks.
The book is told through alternating focus on four teenagers (with flashbacks to how they got to where they are in the present day). Clarke was arrested for treason and both her parents are dead. Wells is the Chancellor's son and only wants to make things up to Clarke, the girl he loves. Glass escapes just before the ship transports her to earth, and discovers life on Phoenix is pretty dangerous too. And Bellamy fights his way on to the ship to earth to protect his younger sister. Each of them has a different role to play within the book, especially Glass who is our only pair of eyes into the present time aboard the space ships, so it's good to have a variety of characters to see this world through.
Like on the spaceships, the politics on Earth are interesting as the teenagers go about creating a whole new world from scratch. How do you create a democracy? Do you even want to create a democracy, or is a dictatorship better in a situation like this? Who gets to be in charge - the brains or the brawn? All interesting questions that play out over the course of The 100.
While I enjoyed the aforementioned aspects, I did feel The 100 was let down by its focus on romance. Most of the time, The 100 felt like a romantic novel set in a dystopian world, rather a dystopian story with elements of romance. I definitely wanted to spend less time reading about the romantic entanglements of the characters and more about the way they dealt with the problems of the world they were in. The romances, or not in some cases, didn't add any welcome tension. There is enough tension in the situations the teenagers find themselves in (in the past and present) to create a compelling story.
Having just watched the trailer for the television version of The 100, it seems like they've dispensed with much of the romance to focus on the core issue of reinhabiting Earth. That's exactly what the book should have done, and what I hope its sequel will do. In the meantime, The 100 may be good enough for a television series, but it's not a must read unless you like your plot taking second place to your romance.
How I got this book: From the room of unwanted books at work.
When 15-year-old David Case saves his baby brother Charlie from falling out of the window, it's not relief that fills the teenager, it's a sense of doom.
To escape Fate, David changes his name to Justin and attempts to disguise himself, physically and metaphorically, from being found. But as Justin navigates family, love and life, he comes to realise that maybe fate isn't something that happens to you.
That's not the best description of Just In Case, but it's the best I can give without spoiling too much. I also confess that much of this book went over my head. It's a novel about fate and how little or how much control we can exert over our paths in life, but I also felt like it was a novel about something more - perhaps a novel addressing some aspects of mental illness? Justin is consumed by terror over his fate, and his angsting, to me at least, seemed much more extreme than that of your average teenager, and that's even without his imaginary dog Boy.
I found the strongest feeling Rosoff got out of me during my reading of Just In Case was dislike. I disliked Justin's parents, who are largely absent for the novel - that was my problem, their son spirals into a depression of sorts and they just let him wander off and stay with strangers and friends. I disliked Agnes, the older, flirty, cool girl Justin falls for. She was selfish and flippant, and I wanted to shake Justin and tell him that she was never going to love him like he loved her.
There were characters I enjoyed, in particular Justin's friend Peter, and Peter's younger but extremely wise sister Dorothea. I feel they were the rational people in the novel, in the absence of any decent adults.
But mostly the novel just confused me. I didn't dislike it - I felt compelled to read to the end and I read the whole thing pretty fast - but I didn't like Just In Case either. It wasn't quite realistic enough for me to relate to it, and it wasn't quite dystopian enough for me to suspend disbelief. Instead, I was left in a limbo of not quite knowing, and it was a disappointing, rather than intriguing, not knowing. Justin may have been consumed by the thought of his fate, but his dilemma didn't consume me.
How I got this book: Purchased
