The Sweetheart of Prosper County, by Jill S. Alexander

Austin is tired of being picked on by Dean Ottmer. In the midst of watching the annual No-Jesus Christmas Parade, she comes to a realization of how to get him to stop: she will win a place riding on the hood of a car in the parade in a sexy dress, waving at the crowd, and rising above her tormentor. But to do that, she first needs to raise a champion rooster and win the County Fair, join the FFA, and get elected as their Sweetheart so she can be in the Parade. Determined to realize her dream, she sets out to do exactly that. Along the way, she struggles against her own insecurities and her mother's possessiveness to find herself in this heartwarming story about personal growth. Some good friendships, a potential romance, and a softly-pitched story about racism and adult hypocrisy also figure in.

This gentle book presents plenty of potential tension and drama, but never falls in too deeply. Austin has her share of danger, but comes through everything just fine (as does her bird). The relationships are largely platonic, the friendships rock-solid, and the bullying surprisingly tame and amateurish. One reviewer called this "a teen book for tweens," and I agree. The heroine may be 14 years old, but much younger readers will enjoy her story.

The plotting of the story can lurch at odd speeds, sometimes lingering for too long on unimportant details and sometimes jumping quickly ahead when Alexander decides that some part of the narrative doesn't deserve telling. But in the midst of this novel, there are some breathtakingly beautiful pieces. The description of Maribel's quinceanera is one of the best-written passages of YA that I have ever read. The grappling scene with the catfish is bizarre yet an extremely ambitious literary accomplishment. The author, in sum, can certainly write. So, if this book suffers a bit from unevenness, it certainly seems possible that we could expect great things to come in a future novel.

As a result, I'd recommend this book both as something fun to read and also for its occasional brilliance. It's not the best recent book out there, but it's in a small crowd of contenders.

My Sister's Wedding, by Hannah R. Goodman

Madeline Hickman reads a lot of self-help book. In some other story, Maddie's obsession might be the cause for some amusement, but when your older sister and your boyfriend are both alcoholics, learning about the dangers of enabling might be considered self-defense. Add in a brother-in-law, mother, and father who are in denial and you have a massive dysfunctional family on your hands. Surprisingly, the wedding, from which the book's title comes, is actually only a minor part of this story about family and the ways that people lie to each other to get through life -- a description that probably makes this slim novel sound a lot more depressing than it it. Comedy it may not be, but Goodman keeps everything light enough to get us through.

There are plenty of books about alcoholic parents and alcoholic teens, but I don't remember reading one about alcoholic older siblings. And combining both an older addict with a younger one, and putting the heroine between them, is a powerful literary tool. As a result, this book stood out as something different.

I did have some problems with the tone of Maddie herself as she fluctuates maddeningly between mature and insightful and downright clueless. Similarly, younger characters in the story suffer from underdevelopment. Goodman is better with the adults, particular Maddie's mother and grandmother (and their relationship with each other), than she is with Maddie's boyfriend and friends Peter and Susan. I never really could tell what the purpose of the Peter-Susan subplot was (and don't even get me started on the non-story of the super nice could-become-a-boyfriend Sean!). In this book, the kids and their problems are fairly unimportant to the plot.

I DO look forward to Maddie's further adventures and hold out hope for her development, but this first book is really a story of Maddie's family and for that it succeeds remarkably, painting a much more complex family dynamic than we usually see in YA. It is nice seeing adults acting like adults (being neither checked-out nor stellar role-models). And we have a nice realistic foundation for future stories.

I Need You More Than I Love You and I Love You To Bits, by Gunnar Ardelius

According to the blurb on the jacket, this is the story of a young couple who struggle with their feelings for each other and with the boy's fear that he is becoming like his mentally unstable father. However, I'm not sure I got even that much out of this book, so I make no claim to that interpretation of the book's contents.

Honestly, I really wanted to like this book, which was deemed significant enough to be translated from Swedish into English. Told in nicely written short prose vignettes, the unusual style and design of the story seemed interesting and unique, and when you've reviewed 700 books or so, you're desperate for unique! But no matter how much praise people want to heap on this book, the reality is that it is a vague and inconsequential piece. And I'm not one of those folks who dotes on difficult-to-read tomes and declares them good. The characters are undeveloped, the vignettes are sometimes so vague that you can't tell who is involved, and the story is largely undeveloped and untold. As a mood piece it might work, but there's no real mood to express.

The book can boast pretty words on the page and the occasional moment of melancholy, but the emperor has no clothes and this is no literary achievement!

Burn, by Suzanne Phillips

At the beginning of his Freshman year, Cameron makes the mistake of showing up late for a gym meeting, and showing up with long hair and his Mom in tow. The incident earns him the name "Cameron Diaz" along with a slew of epithets from bully Rich Patterson and his football buddies. The name-calling escalates to physical abuse and then assault. In response, Cameron withdraws and starts to fail academically. Unable to get any effective intervention from the teachers or administrators, life at school becomes a living hell. Eventually, it all ends badly and tragically.

I found myself sucked in by the story as it progressed, but more out of horror than out of interest in the story. The book itself is well-written, with decent dialogue and realistic characters, but there were several things which bothered me about this novel:

1) The lack of sympathetic characters. As I've noted before, for me a novel has to have a character I like, one the redeems him/herself, or one that draws me in. Cameron isn't any of those things. He's abused and been through a lot, but he turns out to be just as evil as the bullies (and doesn't ever seem to face that fact). I was never able to warm to him.

2) The incoherent plotting. Somewhere in the book, we learn that Cameron suffered abuse from his father, but the idea is never really developed. Yet, despite never being introduced or developed as an idea, this abuse suddenly becomes important in the end. Another example of the plotting problems is that the story spends the first 166 pages being about bullying, but then suddenly becomes a half-hearted story about homicide and temporary insanity. While I get the link between the two that Phillips is trying to draw, it is never really connected (the best attempt is Cameron's Mom's pleas for mercy because of the prior assault and the damage it had on Cameron, but everyone - including the author - ignores her).

3) The aimless and unresolved subplots. Probably related to my previous point are all the ideas that are left out floating in this story, including (but not limited to) the special ed kid in history, Cameron's self-harming behavior, the arson in the woods, the relationship between Cameron and his brother, any of Cameron's friends, Randy's relationship to Cameron's family, and so on. In retrospect, it almost has me wondering if any subplot was resolved.

In sum, this is an easy book to get lost in and if that is what you want from a book, it will do the trick. I'll reiterate that the characters are vibrant and the dialogue is spot on. But it's not a pretty story, and push comes to shove, it isn't really that well-developed of a story either.

The Spectacular Now, by Tim Tharp

In a bit of a departure for me, this is the story of Sutter, senior and party animal extraordinaire. Once he "fortifies" himself with whiskey and SevenUp, he's everyone's favorite dude (at least in his own mind). Told in a train-of-semi-consciousness narrative, Sutter lurches from one party to the next, never bothering to spend too much time sober. But he's the sweetest alcoholic you've ever met -- generous to a fault and insightful about others (yet blind to himself and his own faults). Given that we never see the world from outside of his blurry eyes, we can get a bit suspicious about his intentions and veracity, but it is obvious he has a heart full of good intentions. Meeting a shy withdrawn A-student named Aimee provides an opportunity for him to re-examine his ways, but it's not terribly reasonable to expect someone who is this far down the path to self-destruction to change their behavior. Think of this as Catcher in the Rye meets Leaving Las Vegas as Holden Caulfield and Ben Sanderson are merged together.

This is a beautifully-written story about a truly complex character. You feel torn between respect and revulsion at Sutter and his behavior. It would be easy to hate him for the way he destroys the people around him or for his own personal cluelessness, but then he does something terribly sweet or kind. And while one could say that he harms Aimee, it is also possible to say that he did her a world of good. Nothing simple and straightforward here. Tharp is a master at portraying this complexity and never quite letting us off the hook.

The story itself is so fluid that you never really want to put this book down. Part of the reason for this is that, while the story is terribly tragic, Sutter is so adamant about keeping us in a happy "now" moment (and Tharp honors his character by doing so) that we never really get a chance to wallow in the misery until we silence the narrator by putting the book down. Recommended.

Dani Noir, by Nova Ren Suma

OK, I'll start off by noting a minor conflict of interest. I didn't realize until I read the jacket bio, but Nova Ren Suma attended a Summer writing workshop at Simon's Rock and credits it with starting her writing career. How cool is that?! So, how can I possibly say anything bad about her now?

Dani Noir is the story of 13 year-old Dani whose love of old movies (and Rita Hayworth in particular) combines with her dramatic sense of the world to make her one of the funnier narrators in Middle School reads. She's spending the Summer being bored and coping with her parents' divorce (and her father's plans to get remarried) the only way she knows how: by sneaking in to the local art theater and watching one classic film after the other. But when she discovers that her friend the projectionist is cheating on his girlfriend (her very own beloved ex-babysitter!), she decides to take matters into her own hands and expose the no-good cheating scum!

Dani is a pretty self-absorbed child, but younger readers will appreciate her good intentions and older readers can get a chuckle from her misadventures (and her obsession with the noir films). I have no idea whether younger readers will even understand what she is going on about, but this is one of those books that will probably hook a few 10-12 year-olds on classic films. No harm in that! If nothing else, it will give the kids something to discuss with their great-grandparents. That said, the story is a bit predictable so no major page-turning excitement here, but it flows nicely and Nova Ren Suma has a nice style which hopefully she can re-create in her next novel.

(Re) Cycler, by Lauren McLaughlin

Cycler introduced us to Jill, the girl with an odd pathology of turning into a boy (Jack) once a month instead of getting her period. It was an unusual premise with a lot of promise that McLaughlin exploited to turn into a story about sex roles, gender identity, and teen angst all rolled up into a fun romp. (Re) Cycler picks up where the first story left off as Jill/Jack and Jack's girlfriend Ramie have moved to Brooklyn to establish some anonymity, get Jill a job, and give Jack and Ramie some quality time together. Jill's boyfriend Tommy drops them off before heading out West to find himself, leaving Jill as the odd person out. She struggles with how she feels about being abandoned by Tommy, how she feels about Jack and Ramie, and how she feels about Ramie herself. She also struggles a bit with the dating scene in NYC. Given the rather regular metamorphosis that Jill and Jack go through, things are bound to get confusing and complicated, especially when they start changing back and fro in front of their partners.

I actually got a bit worried as I started reading this that it was going to be a lame sequel. After all, it was a clever little idea that guaranteed that the first book would be fun, but where could you go with the story? The first 100 or so pages did not seem very promising and I almost gave up hope. However, by the second half of the book things really take off (the sex scene from pp 184-191 is a masterpiece). Characters (like Ian and Natalie) who seem totally boring in the beginning become much more interesting as the story progresses and they become multifaceted. Somehow, it all picks up.

The only thing that really bothered me was the ending (not to reveal the details, but when sworn enemies become friends I tend to twitch and there were no small number of major items that stay unresolved). Perhaps, the simple fact that Jack (never all that articulate) somehow becomes introspective enough to make the concluding remarks rubbed me the wrong way.