FIVE challenge: Five Great Miracles...

...That Occurred To Get Me Reading More Contemporary Fiction.
So. Day nine of the Persnickety Snark FIVE Challenge, and with that,  I present you the five novels I read this year that got me reading more contemporary novels.
I've probably mentioned once or twice how now and again that contemporary fiction holds few thrills for me.  However, as the year's gone on I've noticed that I've been reading and reviewing more and more of it; a  And these books are why.

LOCK AND KEY or basically ANYTHING ELSE BY SARAH DESSEN
I discovered Lock and Key in February, and since then I've been rapidly devouring Sarah Dessens, occasionally all in one sitting.  True, when you've read a few they all start to become slightly formulaic, but who cares when it's that well-written? When the romance is that sweet, but when the story still touches on serious issues?

FAR FROM YOU by Lisa Schroeder
Also a book that confirmed that I was completely obsessed with novels in verse. I could ramble on for a very very long time about how poetic and well-written the book is, but I need to touch on the contemporary part of it because that's what I'm here for. 
Anyway.  The main character, Alice, is one of the main reasons that I love this book so. Because she starts off irritating, and then by the end has changed into the sort of person that you'd want to be best friends with.  Her general outlook on the world was very...ordinary, and so as much as I wanted her to get a grip at the opening of the book, I guess it's no different from me if I had been in such a situation.

HOLD STILL by Nina LaCour
There are numerous books nowadays about suicide, death, and any other variation on the theme.  So it's hard to say what it is that makes Hold Still stand out. Well, to me, many things; the writing style seems to have a big impact.  And the main character, Caitlin, changes.  She doesn't just grieve and mope.  She makes friends.  She changes. She grows into someone who has lived through such a terrible event as the suicide of a best friend and come out the other end.

FORBIDDEN by Tabitha Suzuma
Because, seriously;  How many YA books are there about consensual sibling incest? And how many, of all those, are so well dealt with that something I imagine would make people all, "move awaaaay from the controversial topic" has been hugely well-recieved.  Hear hear, I should say.

LOOKING FOR ALASKA by John Green
The first John Green book I read, and for that I will always love it.  True, it's slightly bizarre; a boarding school in which students go to classes in their pyjamas and wander round quoting François Rabelais and García Márquez.  However, for all that everything about it seemed very real.  Miles' voice (yay for male narrators in YA!), the romance, and the devastating event that marks Before and After.

 

Five Challenge: Great author moments (also late)

Dear Blog,
late again, I know.  But I've been insanely busy recently with Christmas and everything.
Alas, I couldn't name many YA authors I've met in person.  So like the others who couldn't fulfill a list, I'll have to list the writers that I want to meet.


JOHN GREEN (Looking for Alaska, Paper Towns, etc.)
Enough said, I think. Because, well, who wouldn't want to meet John Green?  Someone who's never read any of his work, I suppose.  I pity them.
Anyway, I seriously doubt that anyone such as John Green would ever come within a hundred miles of my small corner of south-west England, being far too awesome an author, with far too many fans in more populous places to bother with towns like mine. 

MARGARET WILD (Jinx, One Night)
So I can beg her for the secret of writing such powerful verse novels.

LISA SCHROEDER (Far from You, I Heart You, You Haunt Me, etc.)
ditto.

AIDAN CHAMBERS (This is All, Now I Know, etc.)
 Because from what of his works I've read, he seems like a very philosophical sort of person.  The chances are slim but I'd love to talk to him for a very, very long time about the Dance sequence, which I'm in the midst of devouring.

ANNE-LAURE BONDOUX (The Princess and the Captain, Life as it Comes, etc.)
My all-time favourite foreign YA author.  I don't know if she can speak English, and I can't speak French either, but if ever I meet the author of the amazing novel that is The Princess and the Captain then I'd have to try French anyway. 

Well, that's all. Now I'll post this and have to catch up with FIVE (challenge, that is) posts from the last couple of days that I've missed.

Review: I Heart You, You Haunt Me

Dear Blog,

I'm sorry I've been neglecting my blog so much of late.  But I'm trying to finish writing a novel,  and of late I've been spending insane amounts of time doing music practice and playing in consorts and such.  Anyway, it's half term this week, so (fingers crossed), you can expect a few more reviews from me.

Summary (from Goodreads): Girl meets boy.   Girl loses boy.

Girl gets boy back...
...sort of.
Ava can't see him or touch him, unless she's dreaming. She can't hear his voice, except for the faint whispers in her mind. Most would think she's crazy, but she knows he's here.
Jackson. The boy Ava thought she'd spend the rest of her life with. He's back from the dead, as proof that love truly knows no bounds.

Review: Having read Far From You I'm now quite a fan of Lisa Schroeder, and had high expectation for this, her debut novel. And it was no disappointment.  It's the most romantic, poetic book I've read in ages.  The sort of book that critics would describe as one that breaks your heart and then fixes it again.

The story centres around fifteen-year-old Ava, and opens at the funeral of her recently deceased boyfriend Jackson.  For much of the book his death remains a mystery, until Ava finally faces up to the terrible night of his death about 3/4 of the way through the book.  Ava herself is a nice enough protagonist, though she does remain much of a mystery.  One one hand, all the poems offer a fragile glimpse inside her head, but on the other, who is she? Such is the problem with the first person, dear blog.  The first person doesn't need to explain to his or herself what he/she does or doesn't like.
Ava reminded me, actually, a little of the protagonist in Sonya Sones' What My Mother Doesn't Know, because even though the poetry offers a huge insight into the darkest depths of the narrator's mind, their outer self still seems very vague. 
And I would say that aside from that, Ava was a likeable, three-dimensional character who was easy to relate to, but if you find out little about her personality and such, does that really make her three-dimensional?

The mind boggles.

The relationship between Ava and Jackson is, in a word, strange.  Mostly because, apart from flashbacks,  Jackson is a ghost for the whole book. At first it seems slightly charming, but then  as the book went on I found myself disliking Jackson more and more, but then as his intentions were revealed right at the end I forgave him slightly.  Their relationship seems so human, just because of their reactions to the comings and goings of one another- for instance, when Ava goes out for a while and when she gets back all the kitchen drawers are open and the CD player is on (a.k.a Jackson's way of expressing his anger that she had left him to go elsewhere).  The ending was very satisfying, when both of them finally learn how to let go and move on.  In that sense it makes having your ghost of a boyfriend not seem romantic, but actually irritating when he stops you from having a life, especially when you can't see or talk to him.

But I think the thing I like most about Lisa Schroeder's novels is the prose.  Some verse novels read like prose novels that have been through a shredder, but every single sentence in I Heart You was just fragile, poetic perfection, from the choice of words, occasional alliteration, and form and shape of the poems, which changes now and again.  For instance, in parts in relevant scenes the words
go
    down
             like
                   this
and such. As well as being a fan of Lisa Schroeder as a reader, I admire her as a writer.  I'm currently writing two novels-in-verse myself (one of which is the one I mentioned that I'm trying to finish), and she along with
Sonya Sones, Ellen Hopkins and Virginia Euwer Wolff is one of those authors I'd answer with if I had to answer the question "if you could invite five authors to a dinner party, who would you invite?"  That way I could beg her to give me the secret to her awesome novels (*snorts to self* as if).

And, tragically, it was a very short book, and I read it in one sitting.  Perhaps if it was longer then there would have been more depth to the characters- all the characters, not just Ava. For instance, one of the things I like most about Ellen Hopkins' novels is that with most of them around five or six hundred pages (Glass is at present the thickest at 680 pages) The reader really gets to know the character in a way that you wouldn't with a 230-paged novel like I Heart You.  It would give the reader a better understanding of all the characters, especially the minor ones, if it was longer.
So, I don't quite think it was as good as Far From You, if only because of Ava's personality, or lack of description thereof.  Still, it was an excellent read and I'll definitely seek out her third novel, Chasing Brooklyn, which is also a companion novel of sorts to I Heart You, You Haunt Me.

In Three Words: romantic, poetic, hopeful.
Reccomended for: everyone.
Rating: 4.5

In My Mailbox 7

Dear Blog,
It's the weekend.  It's the book blogosphere.  What does that mean?  Yes, that's right: In My Mailbox!

Hosted infinitely by The Story Siren.

I got some cool books this week, all bought. A library about half an hour away from my house was having a sale and all the books were about 10p.  Which means yay!  I go to that library whenever we're in the area, for the teenage section's big and has loads of cool books. My mother's friend who lives in the area said the sale had been going on for weeks; now I wish I'd turned up at the start.  I'd have probably returned with four times as many books.

Anyway.

BOUGHT

Sharp North by Patrick Cave

Many Stones by Carolyn Coman

Massive by Julia Bell

Finding Cassie Crazy by Jaclyn Moriarty  (reading this at the moment)

Feeling Sorry for Celia by  Jaclyn Moriarty

The Simple Gift by Stephen Herrick

Far From You by Lisa Schroeder (you can read my review here)

I read the two Jaclyn Moriarty books a few weeks ago, but I wanted to re-read them and for 10 p they're definitely worth being on your bookshelf.
All in all, an awesome week.  Except that even though I ordered it about two weeks ago, On Pointe still hasn't turned up yet.  I hope it's not lost in the post.

 And how was your week? What books did you get? Hopefully the books you ordered two weeks ago have turned up?

Review: Far From You

Dear Blog,

I have to go out soon so this will be a quick(ish) review.

Summary (from Goodreads): Years have passed since Alice lost her mother to cancer, but time hasn't quite healed the wound. Alice copes the best she can, by writing her music, losing herself in the love of her boyfriend, and distancing herself from her father and his new wife.

But when a deadly snowstorm traps Alice with her stepmother and newborn half-sister, she'll face issues she's been avoiding for too long. As Alice looks to the heavens for guidance, she discovers something wonderful.

Perhaps she's not so alone after all...

Review: I am completely obsessed with novels-in-verse.  Far from You is one of the many aforementioned novels-in-verse I've found while trawling through Goodreads for hours on end for cool books I'd not have discovered otherwise.  So I worship Goodreads for opening me eyes to a wonderful world of books.  Even though I must spend much money on them. 

Anyway.

I wasn't very keen on it at the beginning. Alice was a typical angst-ridden teenager, and I thought she was selfish and whiny.  I know her mother died and everything, but that has nothing to do with her selfish-and-whinyness.  Except that the whole reason she's selfish and whiny is that her dad remarried after her mother died.  I wanted to yell, "get over it!  You've got a little sister.  Smile!  And better a stepmother than no mother!"  Which is true.  She wasn't an evil fairy-tale type stepmother.  Apart from when she burst into tears because she couldn't stop the baby crying, she seemed nice enough.

However, Alice and her stepmother both showed their true colours when they were stranded by the snowstorm, and I liked them both as they grew to like each other.  Ultimately I admire them both for their bravery.

I can't help but compare this with If I Stay.  Music.  Boyfriend.  Snow.  Sound familiar?  That's because, well, it is.  And, alas, I think If I Stay wins in most cases.  The music seems more alive, the protagonist more likeable.  But you've got to love Far From You because the characters change.  They develop.  They learn!  That's an essential part in any good story. And it's such a poetic book.  The poetry is wonderfully effective and really got you inside Ali's head.  I really felt her hopelessless when she started burning all the precious things they had with them, and when she was trying to get hold of the sweet that fell between the seats.

Far From You is the sort of book to read on a dark and stormy night, curled up on the sofa or in bed with a mug of hot chocolate.  The more safe you feel, the more effective the spare poetry feels.  You really feel the cold and the fear of being trapped in a car with a tiny baby, with nothing to eat or drink.

Summary: I'm so very glad I read this as part of my current poetry craze.  I shall definitely be reading Lisa Schroeder's other novels,  I Heart You, You Haunt Me and Chasing Brooklyn.  Rating: 4.5