Take The Fall by Emily Hainsworth

Take The Fall seeks to solve the murder of Gretchen Meyer. Sonia Feldman finds herself running for her life after being attacked in the woods near her house while walking home from her best friend Gretchen Meyer's house. Frantic, out of breath and terrified, she stumbles into her Uncle's diner where her mother and her Aunt Dina are finishing up for the day. Soon Sheriff Woods and Deputy Amir Rashid are there questioning Sonia. Not long after Deputy Robson gets the call - Gretchen has been found dead.

Over the course of the next few weeks Sonia struggles to come to terms with her best friend's death while at the same time trying to figure out who killed her. Sonia lives in the town of Hidden Falls where she attends Hurlburt High School. Her best friends are Gretchen Meyer, Haley Jacobs and Aisha Wallace who have known each other since kindergarten. However, sometime in middle school Gretchen became much closer to Sonia; they often had sleepovers and took Sonia on family vacations. Gretchen is the daughter of Carlton Meyer, the wealthy owner of a tech company.

Gretchen's latest ex-boyfriend, Marcus Perez is brought in for questioning. Gretchen's car is missing and the police have found signs of a struggle at the falls. Marcus is released as he has an alibi. Sonia tells Sheriff Wood that she drove Gretchen home from Brianne Prashad's party at around 11 pm. During the party, Gretchen fought with her younger sister Kirsten but Sonia doesn't know what caused the fight. They left Kirsten drunk at the party. Sonia tells Wood that they did not talk during the short drive home, something Wood finds surprising considering the two girls are best friends. When Wood tells Sonia that Gretchen called her home at 11:04pm, Sonia tells him no call was made from the car. After parking the car, Sonia ran into Haley Jacobs walking her dog. She saw Gretchen go into her house and then she started through the park to her home.

On the following Monday, Sonia returns to school against the wishes of her mother. She wants to go back to school so she can begin forming a suspect list. She learns that Gretchen's parents surprised an intruder in her room before she was listed as missing and that Carlton Meyer is offering a fifty thousand dollar reward for any information leading to the arrest of the person who murdered Gretchen. Marcus shows up at Sonia's Uncle Noah's diner after school but is thrown out. He tells her that he wants to help her find whoever killed Gretchen because he believes the police are still trying to pin her murder on him. Sonia is conflicted over helping Marcus because she has Gretchen's SD card which shows Marcus furious and wishing she was dead. At school the next day, Marcus confronts Sonia begging her to hear him out, but he ends up getting into a fight with Kip, another Gretchen ex-boyfriend. The day does not end well for Sonia either as someone places a picture of her and Gretchen into her locker with Sonia's scratched out.  She decides to confront Marcus over the picture but when she does he denies having anything to do with this. Instead Marcus works at trying to convince Sonia to help him search for Gretchen's killer so that he can clear his name. He admits that his alibi isn't any good because his grandmother was asleep when he arrived home but she lied to the sheriff. Sonia decides to work with Marcus, to compare their lists of potential suspects. But as Sonia talks to classmates she reveals just how manipulative Gretchen was and that any one of them could have been responsible.  But she also reveals to Marcus the true identity of Gretchen's killer forcing Sonia to make the most important decision of her life.


Discussion

Take The Fall is a murder mystery that opens with a punch. It seems that Sonia Feldman has been attacked by the same person who also murdered her best friend Gretchen Meyer. This is the assumption made at the beginning of the book by all the characters. A second assumption, that the ex-boyfriend, Marcus Perez whose parents are addicts is the killer is also made.  However, close reading reveals that all is not as it seems. The biggest clue offered is the flawed timeline given by Sonia to Sheriff Wood who never seems to catch on. Sheriff Wood never seems to question Sonia much other than interviewing her the night of the murder and the next day. But the facts should make him at the very least curious and they don't. Sonia drops Gretchen off at her house, giving her friend the car keys and proceeds to walk through the park towards her home. In her account, Sonia is accosted at the bridge by someone but manages to escape out of the park. By her own admission she arrives at the diner only minutes after dropping Gretchen off, bruised and scratched. Gretchen's body is found shortly afterwards in the water beneath Hidden Falls. But according to Sonia's timeline there are twenty-five minutes unaccounted for. Their houses are on opposite sides of the park, not close enough to be seen without the leaves on the trees but likely not axtwenty-five minute walk.

With no clear suspect, Wood never turns his attention back to Sonia. When all the potential suspects can produce alibis, Wood never comes back to question Sonia who was the only person in the park at that time, who has evidence of being in some kind of struggle and who has no alibi. Added to this are several serious weaknesses in the story:  Gretchen's body is never tested for DNA evidence (at least it's never brought up in the story) and there is no mention of an autopsy. Sonia who has been in some kind of altercation with an unknown person also never undergoes any forensic exam such testing for DNA on her arms and under her fingernails. In fact Sheriff Wood seems perpetually reluctant to undertake ANY forensic testing. It is Sonia who requests that he check the fingerprint on the mysterious postcard she's received in her locker. This lack of forensic evidence seriously hampers Wood's investigation but is successful in creating suspense and mystery in the story.

Sonia's "investigation" into her friend's death reveals that Gretchen Meyer was a controlling sociopath bent on wrecking the lives of all those around her. She's the stereotypical rich bad girl. As Sonia builds a list of possible suspects, the reality of Gretchen's relationships with those around her are exposed. While Sonia knew of Gretchen's cruelty to her younger sister Kirsten, she discovers that Gretchen's reach also extended to Marcus whom she was giving money to and that Gretchen destroyed all his artwork leading to him wishing Gretchen were dead. Eventually the true nature of Sonia and Gretchen's relationship is revealed. Sonia tells Marcus, "Whenever she was up to something, she made sure I played a part...I was afraid of her, afraid what she might do to me. I didn't want any part of it, but I went along with everything she did. I"m no one to admire." Marcus realizes that Sonia's situation was worse than anyone else. "How long did it take her to get you right where she wanted you?...What would she have done if you said no to her? When was the last time you tried?"  The extent of Gretchen's control over Sonia is only revealed when Sonia learns that the fake website they created for an assignment was made live on the internet, possibly jeopardizing Sonia's scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania. Gretchen's parents had offered to pay for Sonia's tuition if she attended Stanford with her. But attending Penn offered Sonia a chance to escape from Gretchen's control, one Gretchen was determined not to allow to happen. This sets the stage for the motive of the confrontation between the two girls.

Hainsworth certainly keeps her readers guessing; Gretchen's many enemies means there are numerous potential suspects who would have liked revenge and the use of Sonia as an unreliable narrator keeps the reader guessing as to what's really happened. For example Sonia frequently mentions how Kirsten is remarkably like Gretchen, casting suspicion towards Kirsten. Sonia's description of Kirsten notes this similarity.  "Kirsten Myer, Gretchen's younger sister, walks down the steps towards me. She's a natural blonde, but I'd forgotten she experimented with dyeing her hair a couple of weeks ago. At the time, Gretchen was annoyed, remarking that she'd never match her own vibrant red, but it's startling - no, disturbing how much Kirsten looks like her now."  Later on she notes, "I almost drop my phone. Kirsten stands next to me, holding a brown paper lunch bag. Her voice sounds so much like Gretchen's it's a minute before I'm breathing normally again." 

Take The Fall has a romantic subplot between Marcus and Sonia. The reader has the understanding that the two would have had a relationship if it were not for Gretchen and her manipulation of Marcus. While Sonia believed that Marcus hated her she learns after Gretchen's murder that in fact he was attracted to her but had to pretend to dislike her so as to protect her from Gretchen.

Take The Fall is typical teen fare, full of teen drama and a few stereotypical high school teens including a manipulative, rich bad girl who could have been killed by an one of her classmates. What the novel could have used was a map outlining the location of Sonia and Gretchen's homes in relation to the park and Hidden Falls and an epilogue that gave readers a satisfying conclusion to the story. Overall though an interesting read for teens who like high school murder mysteries.

Book Details:

Take The Fall by Emily Hainsworth
New York:  Balzer & Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers    2016
356 pp.

Gemini by Sonya Mukherjee

Gemini is a very unique novel that tackles a very different reality, that of conjoined twins. Hailey and Clara are two seventeen year olds who share the lower end of their spinal column as well as their intestinal tract. They are "two complete, full-size people, with two normal, fully functioning brains" who share sensation in the lower half of their bodies. While they may share the lower part of their bodies, Hailey and Clara are very different persons. Hailey is outgoing, with pink hair, a butterfly tattoo on her shoulder, edgy black eye makeup and is determined to become an artist. Clara is shy, dressing blandly to avoid being noticed and fascinated by astronomy. Hailey is opinionated but Clara who by her own accounts has "sharp" opinions keeps them to herself.

Hailey and Clara live with their parents in Bear Pass, a small (fictitious) town in California. Their family moved to the town to avoid the stares and curiosity of strangers.  Their parents teach at Sutter College, a private four-year college where their father is a tenured professor in literary theory and British poetry, and their mother is a lecturer. The small town means that most people know them and leave them alone.

When they hear that a new guy is coming to Bear Pass the twins are anxious but in different ways; Clara worries how they will be perceived and Hailey just wants someone interesting. The new guy, Max first appears in their AP English class. He's tall with blond hair, and has moved to Bear Pass from Los Angeles. While Hailey is not interested, Clara most definitely is. The twins learn from Bridget that Max appears to have an interest in astronomy so they along with best friend Juanita scheme to arrange a trip to the Sutter College observatory with Max. Their school is having a Sadie Hawkins dance and Juanita believes an outing to the observatory will give Clara a chance to ask Max to the dance. Meanwhile in art class, which Clara hates, Hailey talks to fellow art student Alek Drivakis whom she finds attractive. Like Hailey, Alek has a bit of an edge; he likes to wear black and his artwork frequently features corpses or fires.

At the Sandwich Shack, Juanita reveals that one of the teachers is pressuring her to apply to Stanford and other high level colleges. However because of costs and her mother's fears and reservations, Juanita plans to attend college locally despite being an excellent student. For Hailey this seems wrong because while she and Clara are stuck attending Sutter College which has about 500 students, she knows that Juanita will be able to obtain a full scholarship at Stanford. Even Hailey is not happy attending Sutter because it means her ambition to attend a good art school will not be realized. While the three are discussing their future plans along with another friend Bridget, Max arrives. Max tells the group that he has moved to Bear Pass from Santa Monica in his senior year because of circumstances involving his father. When Hailey asks Max to join them at the Sutter observatory so Clara can show him the stars, Max clams up and ends up leaving the café in anger.

At home the twins find their mother upset over American conjoined twins undergoing separation surgery in San Francisco. Clara and Hailey's mother believes the parents and the doctors are taking unnecessary risks in order for the twins to live independently. As with her own twins she believes the surgery is wrong. While Clara and Hailey's mother is opposed to them undergoing separation surgery, leaving Bear Pass or even doing day trips, their father is more open and encouraging, offering to take them to San Francisco.  Clara becomes angry at her mother over this, indicating that separating twins is not always wrong. Her confrontation with their mother surprises Hailey who decides that she is asking Alek to the Sadie Hawkins dance and she tells Carla that she should ask Max.

At lunch hour the next day they meet Alek who tells Hailey that he is applying for a summer program at  Golden Gate Arts in San Francisco. It's a three week intensive working with real artists. Alek encourages Hailey to apply and to plan to stay in the dorms. With Alek seeming very comfortable around her, Hailey asks Alek to the dance and he accepts. When Clara meets Max a few minutes later, she decides to make it difficult for him and tells him that Friday is his last chance to come with her to the observatory. Max reluctantly agrees to meet Clara but it turns out that he had planned to watch the Orionid meteor shower at his home. So Max turns the invitation around and invites Clara to his house as well as their friends.

Hailey manages to convince Clara to let her apply for the summer art intensive that Alek mentioned and at least go for the interview. Their meteor-watching get-together which includes Max's friends Josh and Gavin as well as Clara and Hailey's friend, Juanita initially goes well until Lindsey, Vanessa and Jasmine arrive. As Lindsey makes a move on Max and attempts to get rid of Hailey and Clara, Max becomes angry and his mom sends everyone home.

The next event Hailey and Clara attend is Amber's Halloween party which sees Hailey dress up as Galinda while Clara is the Wicked Witch. Max is at the party as the Tin Man and he and Clara make arrangements to go to the observatory at Sutter. Max explains to Clara what happened at his house telling her he was once a special-ed kid and that he has a major stuttering problem. Alek crashes Amber's party to question Hailey about applying to the summer art program. He offers to take her for an interview or to take her portfolio. Like the other social situations, Amber's Halloween party ends badly for the twins. Alek shows Hailey something on his phone that deeply upsets her and Clara overhears a conversation between Max and his friends about the twins that disgusts her.

These events begin to affect how Hailey and Clara view themselves and result in them reconsidering the future they have planned. They embark on a journey of self-discovery that leads them to several momentous decisions.

Discussion

Gemini is a novel about two teens with an unusual disability who struggle to take control of their future and to define themselves outside of their disability. Clara and Hailey are pygopagus twins joined at the base of the spine and sharing their gastrointestinal organs. Their parents, specifically their mother refused to allow them to be separated when they were young, although it appears their father did not completely agree with her decision and still has some doubts. Otherwise Clara and Hailey are physically healthy and thriving. Their family moved to a small town so that they could be protected from people who might want to take advantage of their unusual situation. But this isolation is beginning to bother the more extroverted twin, Hailey who is a gifted artist and who wants to study art at a good university, to travel and experience life more fully. Her quieter sister, Clara, finds Bear Paw just fine and is reluctant to travel anywhere where they might have to deal with many new people or situations. However Clara also finds her situation restrictive as she argues with their mother about how she has made assumptions about what life after separation might be like.

As the twins approach adulthood they must face the reality that friends and school mates will move on from the small town of Bear Pass. They come up against the reality of their situation, something they feel their parents have pretended doesn't exist. Both Clara and Hailey chafe at their parents efforts to portray them as "normal" because they know this is not really true. Carla tells Hailey, "I'm sure it's perfectly normal to have to share the job of putting out silverware because we can't be in two separate parts of the same room...I'm sure it's perfectly normal to always balance off the side of the toilet while your sister is peeing...I'm sure its perfectly normal...to have to spend your entire life in the world's smallest rural community so that no one will stare and point and laugh at you when you go out in public and see actual strangers." 

Hailey also dislikes how they pretend that they are normal but she recognizes why their parents do this because it is the simplest way to cope. "Normal, normal, normal. It's this idiotic mantra around our house. We claim we're normal. We build our lives around that lie. It's why we can't go anywhere, or do much of anything. If we did, we'd come up against the truth." But Hailey, even as a child knew they were not normal. "We were not like anyone else. Who besides us had two minds that understood each other perfectly? That worked in such perfect synchrony that they could operate their four legs and four arms in unison without discussion, giving them twice the strength of a regular child? Not to mention twice the imagination and bargaining power...We weren't normal. We were magical."

Beginning to face the reality that they are two people with different interests and goals in life but joined together leads them to experience some serious conflicts which is new as they usually "just work things out, often with very little discussion." Hailey accuses Clara of not caring about how she might feel about staying in Bear Pass and attending Sutter College which doesn't have the program she needs to further her art studies. "...your head is so crammed with your own problems, if you tried to make room for mine, your brain would burst open at the seams." This leads Clara to reconsider their choices and their future plans. She asks their parents to allow them to travel to San Francisco so that Hailey can interview for the art intensive. Clara does this because she believes that although she's satisfied with their lives and the plan for them, maybe Hailey is not. "All this time I'd been holding onto the idea that the life we'd planned -- or rather, the life our parents had planned for us, and that we'd accepted -- was the best that either of us could hope for. But maybe that wasn't true for Hailey. Maybe it was true only for me."

Hailey believes that it is wrong for their mother to limit their choices in life but she also knows she must work together with Clara to figure out their future. Hailey believes that art school and leaving Bear Pass likely won't happen but she knows there must be a change in their lives. So she decides to do what Clara has suggested and apply to film school at Sutter while hoping that she and Clara can live in a house or in a dorm at the college rather than at home. 

In addition to struggling with making their own decisions about their lives, both girls must now confront how their conjoinedness will affect their ability to date and to marry. Both girls meet boys they are attracted to but struggle with how those boys view them. Clara struggles with her attraction to Max and the fact that he doesn't feel the same.  She wonders how Max really views her and whether it matters. Clara also feels disgusted at herself. "It was me. I was disgusting. A mutant. Had I really forgotten that?" She remembers how her mother has explained they were to think about themselves. "The way we view ourselves has to come from the inside, not from the reflection that we see in other people's eyes." But Clara questions this advice. "But sometimes it seems to me that reflections are all we have. Without them, we could never see ourselves at all. "

At the same time Hailey is also very attracted to Alek. The situation reaches a turning point when the twins begin to assert some control over their lives by insisting that they be allowed to attend the Sadie Hawkins dance. Their mother at first refuses but then relents. Hailey wonders what their mother really believes about them. "Our mom was always carrying on about how normal we were and what normal lives we could lead, but I think we both began to understand that she didn't actually believe this. Or maybe in some ways she did, but not in others."

All of this plus the fact that Hailey wants to attend art school leads Clara to contact a surgeon about their situation and the possibility of separation. Hailey points out to Clara the lengthy recovery time from surgery as well as the possibility that one of them will die. But Clara admits that she is afraid she will be lonely once separated. She tells Hailey that she wants a chance at love and she wants freedom too. But Hailey tells her she isn't giving them a chance to see what they can accomplish.
"You're willing to die for that, Clara? We're only seventeen. We haven't really started our lives yet. We don't know what we can have and what we can make happen. Are we not going to give ourselves a chance?...I mean a chance at life as ourselves, Clara, without tearing ourselves apart."

It is Alek who shows the twins the way forward. From the beginning he tells the twins that he considers them special and he tells Hailey: "Though to be honest, I always thought it must be kind of cool, too. Like, how many people can say there's another person who understands everything about them?" When Hailey asks him if he really wants to be seen with them - two girls joined together and face the possibility that he will be called a freak, as Matt was,  he tells them "...I'd rather be a freak than a coward...What I mean is, I'd rather do what I really want to do, no matter what anyone thinks. And that's exactly what I'm doing."

Hailey's kiss with Alek makes Clara realize that she wants a full(er) life and not just a kiss from a boy. "...I wanted those things, but also a thousand other impossible things, and maybe a few possible ones too...All this wanting inside me was not going to go away. I couldn't turn it off. Something had been flickering to life inside me for years now, and it was growing steadier, and hotter too. If I tried to keep it buried much longer, I was going to go up in flames." What Clara has been wishing for all these years is being separated from Hailey - that she wants to escape Hailey. But Clara comes to realize that her fear of  how others will view them and what will be said is what is holding her back from leaving Bear Pass. Hailey explains to her that their conjoinedness is part of who they are and that they need to accept it and embrace it. That it can be part part of their strength.

Daisy and Violet Hilton

Overall, Mukherjee's novel was a very interesting exploration of an unusual medical condition and the ethical, social and personal issues involved. Her characters felt realistic and the situations the conjoined twins experienced, plausible. The title, Gemini, is a reference to the third astrological sign in the zodiac and refers to the twins Castor and Pollux.

Conjoined twins are a very rare medical condition. While most conjoined twins die in utero or shortly after birth, there have been several famous twins. One set of conjoined twins Mukherjee mentions in her novel, Daisy and Violet Hilton, were pygopagus twins born in 1908. They were abandoned by their single mother. The twins were bought by Mary Hilton who employed their mother, Kate Skinner. Mary Hilton and her husband trained the two girls as dancers and singers and then made them tour as sideshow performers. The twins were well known entertainers for many years starring in vaudeville and burlesque shows but their lives were strictly controlled and their earnings stolen from them.  Recently a documentary Bound by Flesh was made about the Hilton twins.

It's probable that in today's world, Violet and Daisy would have been separated as they were joined at the hip and spine and shared no major organs. Sadly Violet and Daisy died impoverished from the Hong Kong flu in 1969.

Gemini is an interesting novel, well done and will appeal to those who enjoy stories that focus on social and medical issues.

image credit: https://www.messynessychic.com/2015/06/18/the-original-hilton-sisters/

Book Details:

Gemini by Sonya Mukherjee
New York: Simon & Schuster     2016
326 pp.

Blank by Trina St. Jean

Blank is a novel about a young girl's attempt to come to terms with her life after a brain-altering injury leaves her unable to remember who she is.

Fifteen-year-old Jessica Grenier wakes from a coma having no memory of who she is or how she happened to be in the hospital. Jessica describes her parents as the Woman and the Man and her younger brother, ten year old Stephen, as the Boy or  Little Man. Jessica refers to herself as the Girl. The day of Jessica's accident, April 26, is designated as the Very Bad Day, the day she was attacked by a bison bull named Ramses on her family's bison farm. She spent eleven days in a coma and has been awake now for nine days.

In the hospital Jessica looks at the pictures her mother brings in but they stir no emotion in her. She states, "...my old life is a long blank that my brain no longer fills for me." She understands what she is told but she feels nothing. "I may finally be awake, but I am hollow."

Jessica's doctor, Dr. Lavoie whom she nicknames Super Doc because he saved her, tells her although most people with her type of injury regain their memories, but he has no way to be certain this will happen to her. Dr. Lavoie encourages Jessica to continue on with her rehabilitation. A day or so later Jessica does have a few memories of the accident but these upset her so much that she becomes enraged, breaking a cup and stamping on the pieces. As a result of this, Dr. Lavoie arranges for Jessica to see a neuroscientist, Dr. Kirshbaum, who will help her manage her impulses and her anger. She's already receiving physical therapy from Ruby, who is teaching her to walk again. Super Doc encourages Jessica to give herself time to heal.

One day Jessica decides to pay a visit to the TV lounge at the end of the hospital wing. There she meets a girl with dark purple hair and a nose ring whom she dubbs Nose Ring. When she returns to the lounge, she and Nose Ring watch a soap opera about a woman who has amnesia and doesn't remember her fiance. When Nose Ring asks Jessica the reason for her stay in the hospital, she doesn't tell her about the accident. On another visit, as they are watching the soap opera, Nose Ring remarks that it would be nice to have amnesia. "Think about it. How many people get a chance to start fresh like that?" This leads Jessica to ask what she's done in her life that she would want her "whole miserable past erased". At this point Nose Ring tells Jessica her name is Tarin and she is visiting her grandmother who had a stroke.

Jessica gets a visit from her three best friends whom she knows are called the Pink Posse from their get well card. The visit is awkward though because although Jessica can remember their names, Cybil, Kerry and Megan, she cannot really remember her friendship with them. All of this makes Jessica feel deeply lonely. After another CT scan, Dr. Lavoie announces that Jessica is ready to go home. He tells her and her parents that her memory loss is not only due to emotional trauma but also due to some physical damage to her brain and that it might be permanent. Although this makes Jessica feel relief, her mother seems to have difficulty with the fact that Jessica might not return to her old self some day.

When Jessica returns home she struggles to come to terms with the person she is now compared to who she was before her injury. Her room is filled with her collection of porcelain frog figurines which she hates and eventually breaks. None of this feels familiar to Jessica who wonders, "If I lie here long enough, ... will her soul slip back into this empty shell I'm walking around in?" As Jessica struggles to put her life back together she wonders about the person she was and the person she is now. Can she come to terms with the fact that her past is gone but more importantly can she learn to live in the present, accepting who she now is?

Discussion

Blank focuses on the very personal struggle of the main character, Jessica, to restart her life after a serious head injury.  Admittedly,  Jessica's accident seems a somewhat strange and readers picking up the novel might conclude that this is a story about a gunshot injury given the cover and the title. When Jessica returns home, her room feels like that of a stranger. This leads her to try to understand who the Girl was by going through her cell phone texts and facebook posts. But although this leads Jessica to determine that the Girl was someone who liked animals, artsy photographs and motivational sayings, she finds the Girl's life remarkably bland. To Jessica, a picture emerges of the Girl as a "goody-two-shoes" and this annoys her. Jessica is also worried that as she learns more about who she was, she may not like that person. It is because of this fear that she delays looking at a personal journal her mother gives her.

It is obvious though to Jessica that her behaviour is different from before her accident; she's more impulsive and is interested in different things. She's rude towards others and she misses the comfort of having her life figured out. "I want to be her little girl again, have her take care of me and tell me everything is going to be all right. But the sad truth is, I am not her daughter at all. I'm a rude, crazy stranger who is posing as her darling Jessica."

With the help of Dr. Kirschbaum, Jessica is asked to focus on the positive things in her life. Jessica also begins to tackle certain things head on - she goes to visit Ramses, she meets Tarin again and tells her the truth about what happened to her, and she also asks her father to tell her about the accident. Ultimately it is Jessica's desire to understand what happened to her that is the impetus for her coming to accept her life as it is now. Part of that acceptance comes from learning what really happened during the accident and coming to realize that she needs to give herself a chance to make a good life for herself.

St. Jean realistically portrays Jessica's journey towards understanding what happened to her and her struggles to cope. The story feels realistic as to the effects of the injury on Jessica, her family and her relationship with her friends. Jessica also realizes that although there are some things from her past she no longer likes, she is willing to restart her friendship with her best Megan and to reconsider going to a support group.

Blank is part of the extensive canon of young adult literature on teens with amnesia that seems so popular these days. At times the pacing is slow but the mystery of Jessica's accident and her determination to discover why the seemingly good Girl did such a stupid thing are what keep the reader engaged. Overall, Blank is a good debut novel for Trina St. Jean, who hails from the lovely hamlet of Wandering River in northern Alberta. Look for more well written stories from this bright, new Canadian author!

Book Details:

Blank by Trina St. Jean
Victoria, BC: Orca Book Publishers    2015
301 pp.

Kalahari by Jessica Khoury

Sarah Carmichael is the daughter of zoologists living and working in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana. Sarah has lived all her life in the field, working alongside her parents. Now it's just Sarah and her father after her mother died four months earlier from a bee attack. Helping them is Theo, a Bushman who has trained Sarah to track and to live in the Kalahari.

Sarah and Theo wait by the landing strip for a plane bringing in five teens who have signed on to a educational safari. The teens include seventeen-year-old Joey Xiong, a Hmong American from California, Canadian Avani Sharma, Miranda Kirk and Kase Rider of Boston, and seventeen-year-old Sam Quartermain from Pittsburg. In return for hosting the teens on a conservation exchange program, Sarah's father will receive much needed research funding from the Song Foundation. When the group arrives at camp they are met by Sarah's father who tells the group that they will be staying in tents.

The group has no chance to settle in when Sarah's father and Theo race out of camp in the truck to try to locate poachers who are hunting a white lion. When Sarah's father does not return by dark, she tries to contact him via radio but is unsuccessful. Sam asks Sarah if they should be worried and she tells him that the situation with the poachers has been getting progressively worse. As night comes on Sarah becomes increasingly concerned about her dad and Theo and even more so when they receive a garbled radio transmission that gives their location and that they are being pursued.  The transmission ends with the sounds of gunshots, leading Sarah to believe her father is now in grave danger.  Sarah is unable to reach Henrico, the South African warden located south of their camp, and she cannot contact the military nor anyone else to help them because the satellite radio is in the Cruiser with her father and Theo. 

At first Sarah wants to leave immediately to track her father but Sam insists he accompany her and this results in all five teens deciding not to stay in camp. Packing water and muesli bars, the group sets off the next morning, with Sarah tracking her father and Theo. Eventually they discover tracks that indicate the Cruiser was being followed by another vehicle. By evening Sarah makes another discovery that the trucks are being followed by an adult male lion. As the sun is beginning to set, Sarah and the group discover the damaged Cruiser smashed into a tree. Tracks leading away from the Cruiser lead Sarah and Sam to Theo who is fatally wounded. As Avani, whose parents are both doctors, attempts to help Theo, he warns them of a silver spirit, a lion hunting. Sarah is deeply shaken by Theo's death and mystified by her father's disappearance. She doesn't know if he has been captured or is somewhere out in the bush.

Sarah discovers that the lion has been around the Cruiser but instead of going after the lion, Theo appears to have followed her father. The group also discovers that the food supplies which were in the Cruiser have been ravaged by wild animals. After burying Theo, the group eats some leftover fruit and then try to rest. The next morning they manage to get the Cruiser started and head back to their camp. However, they discover that the men pursuing Sarah's father have visited the camp and burned it to the ground, destroying not only the tents and supplies, but also Sarah's parent's notes and research. They learn that a man named Abramo is in charge and is determined to find them.

Sam tells Sarah that this is all very strange as ordinary poachers would never go to these lengths, to murder researchers. Sarah creates a false trail for the men to track while she leads her group west hoping to meet up with the road that will take them to Ghansi and safety.  The next morning while working to free the truck which has become bogged down in sand, the group first hears and then is attacked by a lion. However this lion is not ordinary - it is "silver, from nose to tail, as metallic and gleaming as mercury." Sarah immediately realizes that this is the lion the men have been searching for and that they have stumbled upon something much bigger than poaching.

The lion attacks the group as they huddle in fear in the truck and they are only saved by Sarah firing her shotgun and wounding it in the shoulder. The group flees in terror into the bush. Sarah and Sam return to the area and discover the lion is no longer wounded, but behaving strangely and watch as it kills an ostrich for no reason. The lion once again picks up their scent and begins pursuing them through the desert. They only manage to escape when the entire group falls into a huge underground cavern filled with water.

Sarah and the group find their way out of the pool by crawling to the top of metal scaffolding that leads them to an above ground pumping station and find themselves in what appears to be some kind of research facility. As Sarah, Sam and the others scout out the camp, which appears to be abandoned, they discover a laboratory and then a room filled with animals in cages. The cages are filled with numerous different mammals from the Kalahari desert. Many of the cages contain animals that have been shot dead. Other cages hold live animals, some of whom are partially silver while others are like the lion, completely silver. They also find a lab worker dead in the room.

Sarah now believes that the animals have some kind of infection and that the scientists from the lab are chasing the silver lion because it escaped from this facility. Sarah's father and Theo were complications they hadn't expected and so they killed Theo and are now hunting Sarah and her group, her father and the infected lion. Sarah and Sam realize that whoever is responsible for creating the infection now want to cover up the research and will be returning to the lab to finish destroying what remains.

In a small trailer, Sarah makes a truly shocking discovery; three scientists who are infected and completely silver, locked in a room. The scientists who are in advanced stages of the infection are incoherent and in obvious distress. In the trailer, Sarah and Sam come face to face with Dr. Carl Monaghan, who admits that he created a metal that is "alive", - a type of inorganic life. Dr. Monaghan explains "Metalcium is inorganic, and yet it self-replicates. It has a kind of metabolism. It adapts to changes in its environment....Just little cells of metal at first...It was when we began adding lead that its true potential was realized." Avani fills in the details for the others, that metalcium sneaks "into an organism's system by hiding behind a mask of lead." Monaghan admits that he had hoped to use his discovery to heal but, instead the metalcium began attacking them, converting every cell into metal.

The doctor explains that they came to Kalahari because their research could be conducted in secrecy and it is rich in minerals which they required for their research. Once Monaghan realized the danger he tried to stop the research, but Corpus, the company funding the research, refused. Now Corpus has sent out Tony Abramo to clean up the mess, by killing everyone involved and everyone who knows about the research. Monaghan tells Sarah and Sam that they must leave immediately.

Sarah knows they have to get to safety and tell the world about the deadly infection but with Abramo on their tail, her father still missing, and the possibility that they have all been exposed to infection, the likelihood of her getting to Ghansi is beginning to seem remote.

Discussion

Jessica Khoury's novels are characterized by unique stories involving futuristic science in the style of John Wyndham. The story in Kalahari is centered around a new virus, Metalcium, that has been created in a lab, and which gradually converts living tissue into metal, eventually killing its host. Although this twist makes Kalahari an intriguing read, it doesn't appear until Chapter Eight. Instead the first hook is the disappearance of Sarah's father and the group's foray into the semi-desert to find him. From there the plot thickens leading the group from one adventure to the next. The resolution to the story flows quickly and ties up loose ends rather neatly.

Khoury immediately sets up the beginnings of a romance between Sarah and Sam, who seem to develop a rapport quickly, learning about each other as the story moves along. There are other pairings as well, although they really don't figure much into the story; Miranda and Kase are already a couple, but Joey, the group clown, likes the brainy Canadian, Avani. The minor characters are not as well developed, only enough to give readers a sense of who they are.

The author does have her main character, Sarah Carmichael experience an inner journey that parallels the physical one she undertakes in the novel. Sarah is not keen to spend time with teenagers. Her one experience in school in the United States was disastrous. "The kids in the class called me Mowgli and threw bananas at me during lunch." However, Theo encourages her, telling Sarah she needs to spend time with humans too. When Sarah first meets the five teens she judges them as shallow and uncaring  However, her opinion begins to change. When Miranda offers her diamond ring for Sarah to use on a stick, Sarah feels ashamed that she has made assumptions about Miranda without really knowing her. "When I studied wild animals, I always waited until I had all the facts before drawing conclusions about their habits and lives -- why couldn't I do that with people?" By the end of the novel, Sarah is glad to have met all five teens despite what they went through.

When Sarah becomes infected with the Metalcium which will be fatal, she begins to regret how she has lived over the past four months since her mother's death. She admits to herself that since her mother's death she hasn't cared much about life. "The world had been covered in a gray veneer, tasteless and uninteresting. She had been the sun that lit the savanna, and when she died, I'd been left in darkness, not caring whether I stumbled forever through the night or fell over a cliff and was lost. " However, now that she's caught the incurable infection, Sarah begins to see life differently. The change of heart has also come from her deepening relationship with Sam who has helped her to recognize that she could be happy again and "that the sun could rise on a world without my mom." Sarah also realizes that's she's never taken the time to cherish all the special moments in her life and that she's taken the time she's had for granted.

Kalahari has a few spots in the storyline which are weak. The first is the unrealistic actions of Sarah's father, Ty Carmichael, who leaves his daughter with five inexperienced teenagers in a bush camp, taking ALL their food supplies AND the satellite radio with him. Ty is not just going for a short drive in the bush, he's going to try to track what he believes are poachers, who present some degree of risk for him and Theo. It's unlikely that Carmichael, as a seasoned field researcher would have done this.

Secondly, although Sarah's father does manage to escape from Abramo and he has considerable skill as a tracker, he never seems to quite be able to catch up to Sarah and her group. That is, until conveniently at the climax of the novel, when Sarah faces down Abramo - making his sudden appearance seem somewhat contrived.

Kalahari is filled with interesting facts about  this semi-desert region of Africa including the wildlife, the climate and geography and about the Bushmen who still live in the area. Khoury spent time in Africa at the Mabalingwe Nature Reserve and in Botswana where she had the experience of tracking elephants, lions and leopards.

Kalahari is book three in the Corpus series. Overall, Khoury's interesting storyline works well, providing readers with plenty of suspense, some intriguing science fiction and a little romance in an exotic setting.

Book Details:
Kalahari by Jessica Khoury
New York: RazorBill, an imprint of Penguin Group    2015
354 pp.

All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

"What if life could be this way? Only the happy parts, none of the terrible, not even the mildly unpleasant. What if we could just cut out the bad and keep the good?"

All The Bright Places is a story of two teens struggling to make sense of life through the lens of depression and suicide. It is a tragic tale with lessons for us all.

Two seventeen year olds, Theodore Finch and Violet Markey unexpectedly meet at the top of the bell tower at their school. They are not there for the view, but to commit suicide. Finch, a loner with few friends, is struggling with depression and the break up of his parents. It's the first week of the second semester of senior year and he's planning on ending his life.

When a student on the ground points, not at him, but at the girl standing on the ledge on the other side of the tower, Finch realizes he's not alone. On the other side of the tower is "Violet Something" who is "cheerleader popular" and not someone you would think would consider suicide.

Violet is trying to come to terms with the death of her older sister, Eleanor, in a car accident last year. She recognizes Theodore Finch and because she's beginning to panic,  allows him to move closer to her and help her off the ledge. She in turn helps Finch off the ledge. While other students such Gabe Romero (Roamer) taunt him to jump, Finch's best and only friend, Charlie Donahue, comes to the top of the tower to help him. Because Finch yelled his thanks to Violet for saving him, their classmates believe that it was Violet who saved Finch. In the aftermath of the tower incident, both are sent to the student counselors for help.

Mr. Embry, whom Finch refers to as Embryo, warns that if he tries something like this again he will be suspended and wants him to come in to talk twice per week. Finch missed five weeks of school near the end of last semester during what he refers to as the "Asleep". His mother never knew, instead his sister Kate phoned the school and was the person Mr. Embry unknowingly spoke with. Violet meanwhile meets with Mrs. Marion Kresney who is concerned about the nightmares Violet has been having since the car accident. Mrs. Kresney is concerned because Violet has applied to a crazy assortment of colleges, except the one she most wanted to go to, NYU, where she was hoping to study creative writing. Although Violet filled out the application and wrote her essay she never submitted either.

Violet and her sister had a website, EleanorandViolet.com, that they started when they moved from California to Indiana. This website posted their views on different areas of life. With Eleanor's death, that website and Violet's desire to write have ended. Violet reveals to her counsellor that she has not driven again nor has she gotten into her parent's car. And she hasn't returned to cheerleading or student council. It's obvious she's not been coping well with her sister's death.

In their U.S. Geography, Finch impulsively (and to Violet's embarrassment) asks Mr. Black if he can partner with Violet for a class project to see three wonders of the state of Indiana. At first Violet doesn't want to be involved with Finch on this project. Finch however is very persistent. He comes over to her house one night and during a walk Violet tells him that she was considering suicide because of what happened to her sister and that she felt nothing mattered anymore. Finch tells her that living life to the fullest is important. Finch sends her his rules for "wandering" to see the wonders of Indiana. Violet agrees to do the project with him but insists that they walk or ride bikes and that they do not go far from Bartlett. Finch accepts this and their first "wandering" is to Hoosier Hill, eleven miles away.

Violet and Finch's friendship begins to grow slowly as they message one another on Facebook quoting passages from Virginia Woolf and Narnia. This blossoming friendship has the effect of causing Finch to want to stay in the "Awake" (a term he uses for staying alive) and he draws up a list of how to do this. And although her friends are shocked to see her spending time with Theodore Finch, resident "Freak" of Bartlett High School, Violet finds herself falling for him.

Even more importantly Finch helps Violet learn to live again. When he meets her parents one morning, he learns what she was like before the accident. So when Violet tries to bike to their next destination Finch confronts her about her fear of getting into a car again.

"The other Violet sounds fun and kind of badass...Now all I see is someone who's too afraid to get back out there. Everyone around you is going to give you a gentle push now and then, but never hard enough because they don't want to upset Poor Violet. You need shoving, not pushing....Otherwise you're going to stay up on the ledge you've made for yourself."

This pushes Violet into Finch's car (nicknamed the Little Bastard) and they drive to their next destination, the Bookmobile Park outside of Bartlett.

Although Finch tries to stay in the "Awake" his behaviour continues to be erratic. He misses his appointment with Embryo, fantasizes about hanging or poisoning himself and meets Violet to walk her to all her classes getting both of them detentions. One day he discovers his sister Decca cutting out all the "mean parts and bad words" from the books she has found around their home. Finch tries to cheer her up but wonders why she's doing this. Decca tells him that the bad words "trick you". Finch understands this because of the nasty article written about him in the school gossip magazine, Bartlett Dirt. "Better to keep the unhappy, mad, bad, unpleasant words separate, where you can watch them and make sure they don't surprise you when you're not expecting them." This seems to unsettle Finch further. He retreats to his bedroom where he begins taking down all his creative sticky notes and decides to repaint his bedroom from deep red and black to blue.

It is at this point that Finch and Violet start to take different paths. After several wanderings, which Violet has recorded in the notebook Finch gave her, she begins to rediscover the urge to write. Violet writes out possible story ideas and the beginnings of a new website. She takes a picture of the bulletin board in her room which is covered with the ideas and sends it to Finch but gets no response from him.

Finch however, begins to unravel. He misses a week of school unbeknownst to his mother, who never checks the answering machine and thus never learns about his absence. When he finally reappears at school, Finch leads Violet into trouble. Pulling a fire alarm to get her out of class, Finch takes her down to the river where he shows her a hooded crane, impulsively strips and goes swimming in the icy water and ends up in a fight with Roamer.

When Violet's parents learn of her skipping school and the fight at the river, they confront her. This leads Violet to tell them how she's feeling, that she has lost everything, her cheerleading, her student council, her boyfriend and her friends. "I wasn't acting out. That wasn't what it was...I don't have any friends or a boyfriend, because it's not like the rest of the world stops, you know?...Everyone goes on with their lives, and maybe I can't keep up. Maybe I don't want to." Her parents acknowledge her struggles and affirm what she is feeling. Her mother comes to her room, spending time with Violet to help her focus on setting up her new website. The result is that Violet has some concrete ideas, purchases her new website domain, www.germmagazine.com and decides that she will have contributors to her website. She also realizes that this is the first day she hasn't crossed out a day on her calendar. She throws out the calendar and puts Eleanor's glasses back in her sister's room - signalling that she is beginning to move on.

In contrast, Finch's family is clueless about what is going on with him. After the fight with Roamer at the river, Violet races to Finch's home to check on him but finds his sister Kate strangely ambivalent, "You never can tell what that boy's going to do." After Violet leaves, Finch who was in his room, knows he could go downstairs and tell his mother how he's feeling but her typical response will be to suggest Advil and to calm down. "...because in this house there's no such thing as being sick unless you can measure it with a thermometer under the tongue.Things fall into categories of black and white -- bad mood, bad temper, loses control, feels sad, feels blue." He tries to convince himself to live, "I will stay awake. I will not sleep." He even considers calling his school counselor but then doesn't. It turns out to be a fateful decision.

The next day Violet is stunned to see Finch at breakfast with her parents. Her father states that he has now set some rules for their geography project and asks for Finch's parent's contact information. Violet is upset at hearing Finch lie to her father about not having seen his dad for years and notices that even his handwriting is not the same as usual - a lie in her eyes. Finch also tells Violet's father that he's not sure what his plans are for the future because he doesn't know how long his life will be and he prefers to live as though he only has two day left. When Violet confronts Finch about his lies he tells her "Because it's not a lie if its how you feel." but this only angers Violet who wonders if he has been lying to her too.

Finch and Violet continue their wanderings through Indiana and as they do their relationship deepens and changes. At one stop at the Blue Hole, a round pool of water ringed by trees, Finch and Violet go swimming. The Blue Hole is reputed to be bottomless and capable of sucking a person down to their death. Finch stays underwater for so long that he terrifies Violet, who thinks he may have drowned. This intensely emotional incident leads them to become intimate, with Violet staying out all night and not telling her parents. When she returns in the morning with Finch, they are furious and tell her she cannot see Finch. Because Violet's parents were so worried they contacted Finch's mother, who in turn called his dad.

The repercussions from this situation set in motion a series of events that deepen Finch's depression and alienation. His behaviour becomes increasingly bizarre and impulsive. He assaults Roamer, gets expelled from school, overdoses on sleeping pills, begins giving away his possessions and moves into his bedroom closet. All without his family noticing. He also begins withdrawing from his relationship with Violet. When Amanda Monk tells Violet about Finch's attempt to kill himself, Violet begins to understand that Finch, the boy who has helped her recover her own will to live, is in more danger than she could ever have imagined. But is there enough time to save him from himself?

Discussion

All The Bright Places was a very difficult read. Reading about someone spiraling down into depression and suicide without anyone really noticing is intensely disturbing. Niven's story does a good job of portraying mental illness, of showing how getting the right support is so important and how mental illness is still very much stigmatized. All The Bright Places paints an accurate picture of how those suffering from mental illness can be passed over by family and even the closest of friends.

The novel is narrated by both Finch and Violet, so the reader gets to see what is going on in the minds of each. Both teens are dealing with difficult life situations; Finch's parents have split up and Violet has lost her older sister in a car crash. It gradually becomes apparent that Finch and Violet come from very different homes. Violet's parents are married and her mother is a college professor and writer who did her graduate work at NYU. Her father is an intelligent, caring man who engages Finch in an intelligent and meaningful way. They are concerned about Violet but allow her space to deal with her sister's death. In fact, they may even be over zealous in their attempts to help their daughter. When Violet returns home early from a party at Amanda Monk's home, her mother says, "Do you want to talk about anything? I know that must have been hard, and surprising. Why don't you hang out with us for a while?" Violet defines her parents as being perfect. "They are strong and brave and caring, and even though I know they must cry and get angry and maybe even throw things when they're alone, they rarely show it to me. Instead they encourage me to get out..."

In contrast Finch lives in a family shattered by divorce and has two parents who are self absorbed. Finch lives at home with his mother, Linda, his eighteen year old sister, Kate, and his eight year old sister Decca. His father, Ted, who is a retired professional hockey player, has left Finch's mom and now lives in a new home with his younger wife and her son. Finch's father is a man with a powerful physical presence. He has an anger problem and is physically and emotionally abusive towards Finch and his mother. When Finch was eleven, his father broke his mother's chin and put her in hospital. A year later, Finch was assaulted. Finch was often told he was worthless and stupid. His mother holds down two jobs and according to Finch, has been "trying hard to be the cool parent." But she is also deeply suffering, telling Finch that she "never expected to be single at forty." Her way of coping is to drink wine at night and to routinely ask her kids what they learned each day.She tries to understand Finch's sadness and blames it on the divorce and his dad. With his father gone, Finch feels that everyone in the family is "running off in three different directions." His mother expects that Finch to be the "man of the house" not realizing that Finch is in crisis and actually needs a man - his father. He has only one friend at school and is often called "Freak", a name he was given after he asked a classmate to jump with him in front of a car to see if it would make the headaches he was having disappear.

The drastic differences in their family life, the level of involvement of the parents in their child's life make a significant difference in the outcomes for Finch and Violet. Unlike Violet, Finch has a history of mental illness which began when a cardinal died after repeatedly flying into his family's living room window. It was after this event that the dark moods began. All the warning signs and strange behaviours are simply written off by Finch's family as "That's just his thing. It's what he does." Sadly this means that Finch will never get the help he truly needs.

Niven also explores the wide reaching effect suicide has on those left behind. At school, Finch had few friends, was frequently bullied and called Freak. Violet is upset to see how her school responds to his death. Suddenly everyone seems to care about Finch. "...the entire school body seems to be in mourning. There is a lot of black being worn, and you can hear sniffling in every classroom." A shrine to Finch has been placed in the main hallway complete with notes stating how he is missed. This hypocrisy makes Violet angry. "I want to tear them all down and shred them up and put them in the pile with the rest of the bad, false words, because that's exactly where they belong."

Finch's counsellor, Mr. Embry tells Violet he feels responsible - to some extent but that he doesn't know what else he could have done. Embry tells Violet she is a survivor and that how well she does depends upon how she copes emotionally with what has happened. He gives her a resource to read to help her.

Violet, who was closest to Finch suffers intensely from his suicide. She feels anger at Finch leaving: "You can't do this to me. You were the one who lectured me about living. You were the one who said I had to get out and see what was right in front of me and make the most of it and not wish my time away...." Violet even hates Finch for dying. She also experiences guilt at her last words being to him being angry ones: "What would I have said to him if I'd known I would never see him again?" From the book Mr. Embry gives her Violet comes to understand that because of Finch's suicide she is "forever changed", something she must accept if life is to go on. Eventually in her letter to Finch, post-suicide, Violet is able to express how he helped her and what she is feeling. Violet comes to some semblance of acceptance over what has happened when she completes the wanderings Finch undertook before his death and she finds a poignant letter he left for her.

As in life, Finch and Violet's families behave very differently after his death. While Violet's family believe that Finch's death was a suicide and that his family are partly to blame, Finch's mother and father are willingly to believe that his death was an accidental drowning. They are so disconnected from their own son they don't appear to comprehend the reality of what has happened.

Niven tackles some of the stigma surrounding mental illness and in particular suicide through the support group that both Finch and Amanda attend. Finch knows that people who have a mental illness are stigmatized in a way that people with other illnesses are not and he feels overwhelmed by it. "I want to get away from the stigma they all clearly feel just because they have an illness of the mind as opposed to, say, an illness of the lungs or blood." A girl in the group vocalizes how suicide survivors are treated due to this stigma. "My sister died of leukemia, and you should have seen the flowers and the sympathy.' She holds up her wrists,and even across the table I can see the scars. 'But when I nearly died, no flowers were sent, no casseroles were baked. I was selfish and crazy for wasting my life when my sister had hers taken away.' "  Later on when Violet tells Finch she wants to help him, Finch tells her "But I'm not a compilation of symptoms. Not a casualty of shitty parents and an even shittier chemical makeup. Not a problem. Not a diagnosis. Not an illness. Not something to be rescued. I'm a person."

Finch is the tragic character in this novel, suffering from mental illness and a dysfunctional family. Throughout the story he tells Violet numerous times why she should go on living, yet is unable to take his own advice or find his own reasons for living. Instead, he seems to consider himself to be irreparably broken. Although Finch could not save himself, in the end he does save Violet, at the bell tower and later on when she decides to continue to live even after his death. Violet is a complete contrast to Finch. She has a supportive family and no long lasting mental health issues. And while Violet could not save her sister nor Finch, she is able to save herself.

All The Bright Places is a haunting novel, filled with tragedy and loss but also hope.Niven writes at the back of her novel that she lost a boy she loved to suicide. Like Violet in her novel, she was the one who found him. Unable to speak much about her experience, Jennifer Niven decided to write about the experience in the form of this novel.

All The Bright Places is slated to be made into a movie, starring Elle Channing. 

Book Details:
All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven
New York: Alfred A. Knopf     2015
378 pp.

Anthem For Jackson Dawes by Celia Bryce

Anthem For Jackson Dawes is a deeply touching novel about two teens who experience the first stirrings of love while facing down treatment for cancer.

Thirteen year old Megan has a brain tumour. Three rounds of chemotherapy and surgery are in her future. On her first day in the oncology ward, Megan is shocked to see that there are mostly children. Except for Jackson Dawes, a tall sixteen year old who is a force of nature in the ward. He is known to all the younger children and is famous with the staff for going on walks throughout the hospital.

" 'That boy,' Mum said, 'is just beautiful. He's like an ebony statue. And that smile...it just never stops. Isn't he lovely...' "

As Megan goes through her first treatment Jackson is there to comfort and encourage her with his positive attitude. Jackson has a cancer that is so rare, the doctors do not have a name for it. This tidbit of information foreshadows what will happen in the story.

At first Megan doesn't want to have anything to do with Jackson, since he seems to be a person who knows "everything about anything." Jackson tells her that her friends won't bother coming around or calling because they won't understand and they will be afraid of catching her illness. Megan defends them at first but soon realizes that Jackson is right. Gradually their friendship grows as Jackson helps Megan adjust to chemo and life in the hospital. They share a kiss and the beginnings of a blossoming love.

When Jackson and Megan meet up again during Megan's third chemo treatment, Megan notices that something is off about Jackson, he seems withdrawn, tired and thin. However, he does help her when side effects of the chemo begin to appear. It is only after Megan's operation and her struggle to recover that the pieces begin to fit together.

Discussion

Anthem For Jackson Dawes is a very moving novel, that captured the tragedy and suffering of young people who have cancer and also the toll it takes on those who love and support them. Author Celia Bryce manages this in a way that is not overwhelming to her readers, but gradually unfolds as the story does. Megan's perspective is somewhat subdued but the reader will soon realize that Megan is having a difficult time accepting her situation, "It didn't feel like anything to boast about, having cancer." or what is happening to the others on the cancer ward.

Anthem For Jackson Dawes has some wonderful characters who develop believable relationships with one another. While the relationship between Jackson and Megan is the prominent one, it is the relationship that Megan has with her father that illuminates this novel. Although he is mostly absent due to his work overseas, and Megan tells him not to come home when she has her chemo and her surgery, it's obvious that her relationship with her father is very special. It is ultimately her father who helps her cope with Jackson's situation and he helps her to gain some perspective on what has happened. In fact the conversation between Megan and her father is the highlight of this novel, poignant and tender, a father trying to help his daughter learn to live again in the face of incomprehensible tragedy.

Other important relationships in the novel include the one between Megan and a young girl named Kipper who has cancer and also that between Megan and her grandfather who is ninety-five years old. Kipper helps draw Megan out of her own world of uncertainty, while Granddad tries to cheer her up.

Written in third person, Anthem For Jackson Dawes is a good novel for those aged 9 to 12 who are interested in realistic fiction and is good precursor to reading something like John Green's The Fault In Our Stars. Anthem For Jackson Dawes is Celia Bryce's debut novel. This promising writer from the United Kingdom, teaches creative writing and writes for radio and stage.

Book Details:
Anthem For Jackson Dawes by Celia Bryce
New York: Bloomsbury 2013
230 pp.

Secrets of the Henna Girl by Sufiya Ahmed

"I knew everything there was to know about family honour. My dad had always talked about it. When I was a child he would sit me on his knee and tell me that wives, sisters and daughters were like precious glass vases within which a man's honour was contained. These glass vases must never be broken. If the female did not behave accordingly then a man's honour was compromised. His friends would laugh at him, his brothers would jeer at him and -- even more shamefully -- other women would ridicule him."

Sixteen year old Zeba Khan, a Muslim girl from Yorkshire, has just finished high school where she excelled at writing and all her other subjects. Zeba anticipates attending college to complete her A-levels and then enrolling in university. Her whole life is before her, with all the excitement and promise of a brilliant future.

But Zeba's world as she knows it comes to crushing halt, when she learns on her family's holiday to Pakistan, that she is to be married at sixteen to her cousin Aisf who is a soldier in the Pakistan army. Her uncle, Taya-ji is worried about his only son, Asif's future in the army and wishes him to leave Pakistan and emigrate to England. The only way he can do this is to marry an English girl.

Zeba is sent by her parents to live with her maternal grandmother, Fatima or Nannyma as she is called in the hopes that she will gradually accept the marriage. Nannyma is a dignified woman who is well respected because she owns land. She is the voice of moderate, progressive Islam in the novel. Her other daughter, Nusrat, lives in America and is married to Tahir, an engineer. Nannyma encouraged Nusrat to "follow her fate, her kismet."  and Nusrat believes that women should be free to follow their dreams and reach their full potential. Zeba realizes that maybe Nannyma is her sole supporter.

When her father comes to Nannyma's home and tries to explain the reason for the marriage, Zeba confronts him, telling her father she will not marry Asif. He tells her that it is his duty to protect Asif and to put his honour first, rather than protect his daughter. Zeba cannot believe that her mother and father would use her and sacrifice her happiness for Asif's safety - that they would make a promise of marriage without consulting her.

While living with Nannyma, Zeba meets another bakri or sacrificial lamb, Sehar, who is from Birmingham and who was forced into marriage by her family to the youngest son of the powerful village landlord, Sher Shah. Sehar tells Zeba that when her family announced a trip to Pakistan, unlike Zeba, she became suspicious and contacted the Forced Marriage Unit in Birmingham. A woman from one of the charities, named Tara, offered her help if she felt she needed to leave her family. But Sehar thought that if she just stood her ground, her parents would relent. She was wrong. Now she finds herself married, seven months pregnant, being beaten often by her husband, and planning her escape back to England. Sehar's story makes Zeba realize that this might very well be her future.

One of  Zeba's lowest moments comes when her parents leave for England and tell her they will return in one month for her wedding. Nannyma attempts to intervene in Zeba's forced marriage by appealing to the imam. The imam tells them he was tricked into marrying Sehar and did not realize that she did not consent to the marriage. But when he tries to appeal to Taya-ji who has arranged the marriage, Taya-ji becomes enraged and has the imam driven from the village. The fallout from Nannyma's intervention is widespread and Zeba begins to understand that she will not be able to escape. She also learns that Asif has no intention of leaving Pakistan because he is very dedicated to his career in the army. At this point, Zeba gives up all hope of returning to England.

But a terrible tragedy causes Zeba to rethink her situation and her decision to give in to the marriage two weeks before her own wedding. Her own break happens when she is helped by Nusrat and Tahir, who are visiting Pakistan. They take her to Karachi so that she can use the internet to contact the Forced Marriage Unit in the UK, her friend Susan, and a teacher and more importantly Tara. Zeba must now hope that someone will help her before it is too late.

Discussion

Secrets of the Henna Girl explores the issue of forced marriage which has become a serious issue in the United Kingdom. In fact, it is so serious a problem that the government has created a Forced Marriage Unit to aid young women (and some men as well) who are taken abroad to their ancestral countries to be forcibly married. It is common enough that pamphlets are distributed throughout schools so that girls can be made aware that a planned "vacation" may in fact end in a forced marriage. According to the handbook put online by the Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) in Britain, the British Embassy will arrange a safe flight back to the UK.

Secrets of the Henna Girl is well written, with Zeba's story easily captivating the reader's attention. Zeba's naivete, helplessness and the overwhelming nature of her situation are poignantly portrayed but it is the tragedy of her friend Sehar that is so memorable. This is a reminder that for some girls, there are no happy endings, and that their suffering is intense.

Ahmed is not only able to tell a good story but she is also able to provide the reader with interesting background information about Pakistan and its culture, thus educating and informing. Sufiya Ahmed also effectively educates the reader on the tragedy of forced marriage, its cultural basis and what motivates parents and family to do this to their own children. There are some interesting passages on how the feudal society, which still exists in much of Pakistan, perpetuates the practice of forced marriage.

One of the strongest elements of Secrets of the Henna Girl is the tremendous conflict that exists between Zeba and her parents and also between her parents and their culture of honour. Zeba cannot understand how her parents can do this to her. These are the same people who played with her and sent her to school. Zeba cannot understand her parents who are suppose to love and protect her but instead value honour more than anything else. "All those shared memories that should have invoked a protective arm around me seemed to have disappeared. I was no longer my father's rani, I was my father's honour instead."

Zeba also recognizes that her father does not really want to marry her to Asif, but because he gave his word, his honour is bound to this promise. If he goes back on his word, he will be disowned by his family, and family and honour is everything. The internal conflict her father experiences is evident to Zeba, but she feels that he should put her safety and concerns first before family. "Today was his only child's engagement ceremony and he looked like he had the world's worries on his shoulders. There was not a hint of happiness on his face, only misery. I knew in my heart that he didn't want this for me, and I just couldn't understand the obligation he felt to his older brother."

It is uncertain why Nusrat and Tahir did not take Zeba directly to the British Embassy in Karachi where she would have received immediate assistance. Zeba's marriage was imminent, and in the tribal regions of Pakistan, locating one girl with no working phone, no passport and no access to the outside would be daunting. Perhaps Nusrat and Tahir, despite their open minds and more liberal views on women and culture, still wished to preserve their place within the family and they also wished to protect Nannyma who might have suffered serious consequences as a result of their actions. In the end though, the family would have come to the realization that it was Nusrat and Tahir who helped Zeba escape.

The attractive cover, showing a young woman's hands covering in henna designs, wearing colourful bangles, and handcuffs. Author Sufiya Ahmed indicated that this is symbolic of a girl being forced to marry. For Ahmed, her Muslim parents did not support forced marriage, believing that marriage should be freely chosen. Many people do not understand that forced marriage is a cultural practice that occurs across ethnic and religious groups. Ahmed was motivated to write Secrets of the Henna Girl after hearing the stories of survivors. She wanted to raise awareness among girls about the practice and that there is help now available in the United Kingdom. Secrets of the Henna Girl puts a human face to the tragedy of forced marriage. Her characters are realistic and evoke empathy. It's evident that this issue is dear to the author's heart. Ahmed succeeds in educating readers, helping them to understand the cultural forces at play in such situations. Secrets of the Henna Girl is a much needed novel.

Book Details:
Secrets of the Henna Girl by Sufiya Ahmed
London: Puffin Books 2012
271 pp

A Girl Named Mister by Nikki Grimes

Blame it on my mother.
She's the one who named me
Mary Rudine.
The name is some throwback
her old-fashioned thinking
came up with.
Nobody but Mom
has called me Mary Rudine
since forever.
First it was Mary,
then it was M.R.
Mister is all anybody
calls me now.


So begins this novel in verse about a 14 year old girl nicknamed Mister, who falls (literally) for a sweet-talking, good for nothing, boy named Trey. When Mister discovers she's pregnant she has to deal with Trey's shocking heartless indifference, her regret at not being faithful to her values, a crisis of faith (will God still love her after what she's done?), her classmates and a whole range of decisions that will impact her future.

Nikki Grimes contrasts Mister's plight with that of a young Jewish maiden named Mary, 2000 years ago. For Mister this is a new story - that of Mary of Nazareth who is betrothed to Joseph and who becomes pregnant during her betrothal. Mister finds Mary's story in a book her mother has. The Jewish Mary, without sin and righteous in the eyes of God must make a leap of faith and trust God will care for her in what is possibly a situation that could lead to her death by stoning. Mister, unlike Mary, is no less deserving of God's love and she too must learn to trust in God.
I always thought
Mary had it easy,
her knowing all along
God was the one
who wrote her story.
Guess I was wrong.
Turns out she needed God
as bad as me.

When the people at her church offer her support and love in place of condemnation Mister realizes that
"Maybe it's God
reminding me
I'm not as alone
as I thought."

Mister also comes to learn her mother's secret and though initially angry at her for what she perceives as her mother's lie, Mister realizes that how hard her mother has worked and that she truly loves her.

Written in beautiful free verse, A Girl Named Mister is a quick read. The story of pregnancy and birth is told in the alternating voices of Mary of Nazareth and Mary Rudine (Mister).

Book Details:
A Girl Name Mister by Nikki Grimes
Zondervan   2011
240 pp.

Girl, Stolen by April Henry

Lying in the back seat, Cheyenne is sick and waiting for her stepmother to pick up a prescription at the pharmacy. Her stepmom has left the car keys in case she gets cold. Covered up with a blanket, Cheyenne hears someone enter the car and start it up, racing out of the parking lot. From the way the person is driving she knows this is not her stepmom. Who is this person and what is happening? Cheyenne doesn't know because she's blind.
Griffin is a young man a few years older than Cheyenne. He lives with his dad Roy who runs a chop shop. Griffin's mom use to be around until he was seriously burned in an accident when she mysteriously left to go live with her family. When Griffin sees the Cadillac Escalade SUV with the keys in, he knows he just has to take it. He wasn't there to steal cars, only Christmas packages from the cars at the mall. How could he be so stupid not "to see past the keys dangling in the ignition." Now he has a bigger problem on his hands - a blind girl in the backseat. He can't just let her go. The cops will find him too quickly.
So Griffin takes her back to his dad's house and shop. Griffin wants to let Cheyenne go, but when his father learns that she is Cheyenne Wilder, the daughter of the president of Nike, he is determined to ransom millions from him.

But things turn ugly quickly and both Griffin and Cheyenne must make difficult choices. Will Griffin help Cheyenne escape? Can Cheyenne trust Griffin to protect her from Roy and his men?

April Henry's book is another twist on the kidnapped girl theme that is currently very popular in YA fiction. It follows books like Stolen (Lucy Christopher), Living Dead Girl (Elizabeth Scott) and The missing girl (Norma Fox Mazer).

In Henry's tale, there is the added tension of not knowing just where Griffin's loyalties lie. Griffin is portrayed as a basically good kid caught in bad circumstances. He is a thief but Henry shows us that he does have some redeeming qualities. He seems to want to do the right thing but is terrified of his father. He develops a growing attraction to Cheyenne whose helplessness and illness seems to bring out the protector instinct in Griffin. When Griffin gradually comes to the realization of what his father is planning to do, he realizes the situation has escalated far beyond auto theft.

The twist at the end seems highly implausible. But Henry leaves it open to the reader's interpretation. Told from both Cheyenne and Griffins perspective, Girl Stolen is an enjoyable, suspenseful read!

Book Details:
Girl, Stolen. A novel by April Henry
New York: Henry Holt & Company 2010
213 pp

Girl, Stolen

The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams

The Chosen One is one of several titles released in 2009 that deal with plygamist cults. Sister Wife explores the issue of forced marriage of young girls in these cults in Canada while The Chosen One is set in rural United States.
Kyra Carlson, 13 years old, is part of a polygamist family made up of 20 children her father and his three wives. The story opens with her family receiving a visit from The Prophet, Mark Childs and his Apostles who inform Kyra's parents that she will be her Uncle Hyrum's 7th wife! Kyra is horrified and determined to avoid this marriage even if it means leaving the cult. But she is fearful too becuase she knows people have disappeared in situations similar to hers where there was resistance and she knows the girl is always forced into the marriage.
Complicating matters is the fact that Kyra is attracted to 16 year old Joshua Johnson, whom she has been secretly meeting for the past 7 months.

Kyra's father attempts to intervene for her but is unsuccessful. Joshua's request to marry Kyra is disastrous, leading to violence and his being run out of the cult. The entire situation further escalates to the point where Kyra must make a decision that may place her not only herself but her family in great danger.

Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that Kyra has been secretly visiting the Ironton County Mobile Library van that has been stopping on a rural road near her cult's commune. She befriends the driver, Patrick and it is he who offers to help her in her dire need. But the cult is not willing to let Kyra get away so easily.

The Chosen One deals with the many concerns the we as a society have about polygamous cults including issues of control, forced marriage, violence, isolation and the social displacement of young men who are referred to as "Lost Boys".

Overall, this novel was well-written and fast-paced. We walk with Kyra as she explores her options and how she reasons her way through, hoping to find a solution. A few loose ends could have been tidied up by the author but otherwise this was a good presentation of an unusual, but important topic.

Sister Wife and The Chosen One are very similar in many ways but the subject matter is more realistically portrayed and better balanced in the former novel. Both touch on the difficulties former members of polygamous cults must face when attempting to assimilate into modern culture. In these novels we see how young children are conditioned to accept forced marriage and how every aspect of life is controlled. Kyra seemed less troubled by the effects her choices might have on her family than Celeste in Sister Wife.

It's hard to understand how such cults have continued to exist in our society today when it's obvious that they cause great harm to both young women and men.

Book Details:

The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams
St. Martin's Griffin: New York 2009
213pp.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson

The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson is yet another teen novel exploring ideas about death, life and what it means to be human.

Seventeen-year-old Jenna Angeline Fox has been in a coma for a year after an accident. In that time a second woman has been elected president, a twelfth planet has been  discovered in the solar system, and the last polar bear has died. The first few days her mind and body thrashed out of control but her mind settled followed by her body. Each day Jenna improved: at first she couldn't walk and then she could, one day she couldn't speak the next day she could. 

On the eighth day her father had to return to work in Boston but he tells Jenna that gradually things will improve. While jenna believes physically she is fine, she doesn't remember her mother, father or Lily who is her Nana.She doesn't remember Boston, or the accident which happened a year ago.

During the first week she's awake, Jenna's mother reviews her childhood, things like childhood pets, family vacations, and favourite books. But Jenna cannot remember any of them. She knows she should love her mother but she feels nothing because she doesn't know or remember her.

To help her, Jenna's mother gives her a box of discs to watch that are recordings of her life before the accident. Her Nana, Lily suggests she not watch them in chronological order but that she watch the one from last year. However, Jenna decides that she will watch them in order, from when she was a fetus. However, Jenna begins to feel curious. Why can she remember facts about the French Revolution but cannot remember if she has a best friend? 

On Day Sixteen her mother leaves the house to go into town. She works as a restoration consultant and is interviewing workers. In Boston her speciality was restoring brownstones but California doesn't have brownstones. Instead she's focusing on restoring the Cotswold cottage that they now live in. Jenna's mother tells her not to leave the house. As her mother is leaving, Jenna asks her first question and that is why they moved to California if their careers were both in Boston? Jenna's mother states that it was to give her a quiet place to recover, but to Jenna, the response is practiced and seems "smooth". 

Jenna begins to have many questions. She has been sick for a year and yet there are no cards from friends, and her Netbook never buzzes. Did she have any friends? While her Nana cooks in the kitchen, janna manages to sneak out of the house. Outside the house looks dilapidated with the top bricks of the fireplace bumbled down, and several windows in the garage house boarded up. Behind the house the lawn slopes down to the pond and beyond it is their neighbour, Mr. Bender's property. To the north of the pond is a forest of eucalyptus trees. Jenna crosses the stream that feeds into the pond and walks up Mr. Bender's back yard. Jenna wants to speak with somone outside her small family circle. 

He introduces himself as Clayton Bender and tells Jenna her hands are like ice. Jenna learns that Mr. Bender is a well-known environmental artist whose works can be found in major office buildings and doctors' offices. Strangely, although Jenna doesn't know about him, she does know detailed facts about the last earthquake in California. Mr. Bender tells Jenna that he was happy to see her family moving in "a couple of weeks ago".  As she's walking back from Mr. Bender's yard, Jenna slips and falls, cutting her knee. Although Jenna thought she was drowning in the pond she is not wet when Lily helps her.

At home that evening Jenna learns that she did drown when she wasn't even two years old after falling off a dock chasing white gulls. Her mother is thrilled because this means her memory is returning. Gradually Jenna remembers her friends, Kara and Locke but this leads to even more questions. On an outing with Lily, Jenna learns that her father started his own biotech company called BioGel. His company has allowed organs slated for transplantation to be stored indefinitely. When Jenna questions Lily about knowing the neighbours, Lily confirms what Mr. Bender told her - that they have only been here for two weeks. This is suspicious to Jenna who wonders,  "After I spent a year in a coma, how could they have predicted exactly when i would wake up and then move to California precisely at that time? Was it only coincidence? Or did they decide when I would wake up?" 

Lily takes Jenna to the San Rey mission. Inside the church, Jenna remember her own baptism when she was an infant, something that would normally be impossible. While Lily talks with Father Rico, Jenna comes to learn that the two belong to the World Seed  Preservation Organization which is "committed to preserving original species of plants." Bio-engineering and the resulting cross-pollination has meant there are few original plant species left. The feel that these bio-engineered plants are time-bombs similar to the Aureus epidemic that killed Jenna's grandfather and millions of people.

At home Jenna asks to go to school but is adamantly refused by her mother who orders her to her room. Jenna is furious but is compelled to do as her mother tells her. Sitting on the stairs she overhears her mother and Lily arguing, with Lily asking Jenna's mom, Claire, when she will admit to having made a mistake. 

Jenna continues to watch the discs which detail her life, while the work goes on around their home. While watching a video of herself at ten years of age, Jenna notices a thin red scar under her chin. A quick check in the mirror reveals the scar doesn't exist. Then one morning Jenna learns that she will be able to attend a local charter school that is within walking distance. This surprises Jenna as her mother was determined she not return to school. 

Jenna decides to visit Clayton Bender and at his home she reveals what she's learned about him on the Net. Clayton Bender confirms that he is not the real Clayton Bender who would now be well over eighty years old. Instead he reveals that he worked for Clayton for three years and then  took on the identity of Clayton after he suddenly died. Clayton tells Jenna that she was in a very serious car accident and that her situation was considered grave. 

While watching a video of herself at the beach, Jenna suddenly remembers several weeks of memories and that she loves hot chocolate with marshmallows. But when she makes some and tries to drink it, her mother screams at her. The hot chocolate has no taste. Jenna begins attending a nearby charter school where there are only a handful of students.  Dr. Rae is the director and the principal instructor. Jenna meets Ethan who is the boy she saw at the mission, Allys who has two artificial legs and replacement hands which she lost from a bacterial infection, Gabriel who has an anxiety disorder and prefers a smaller class and Dane. The school has a system of teacher-collaborators: Ethan is teacher-collaborator for literature, Gabriel is teacher-collaborator for logic and problem-solving, Dane does art, while Allys leads on science and ethics. Jenna is assigned history.

It is Allys who provides Jenna with some crucial information one day when they pick her up from her volunteer work. Allys volunteers for the Del Oro Ethics Task Force. Allys feels that her situation developed due to "an out-of-control medical system" and she wants to ensure "that no new medical injustices will be unleashed on the world." She tells Jenna and Ethan that the Federal Science Ethics Board (FSEB) runs the ethics task force. They control what research and medical procedures can be done and are able to shut down any research and even whole hospitals. Allys tells Jenna that BioGel is responsible for the FSEB being formed. They created biogel which is a blue gel that is "artificially oxygenated and loaded with neurochips". Allys explains that they are smaller than the human cell and can communicate like neurons but faster, and once uploaded with basic information are able to pass on that information and specialize. She states that just because this can be done doesn't mean it should be. So the FSEB restricts how much of a human can be replaced or enhanced. Allys explains to Ethan that "They're trying to preserve our humanity..."

This encounter sets the stage for what comes next. After watching the last disc featuring her life at age sixteen, a year before her accident, Jenna decides to investigate the small room off of her mother's bedroom. She had found a key to that locked room earlier in the day and desperate to learn what is behind the locked door, Jenna enters and finds three computers. But when she attempts to remove the computer from its steel brackets securing it to the table, Jenna badly cuts her hand. To her shock, Jenna discovers that despite the large gash, there is almost no pain and very little blood. What there is however, is not human. "The skin, lies on a thick layer of blue. Blue gel. Beneath that is the silvery white glimmer of synthetic bone and ligaments. Plastic? Mental composite?" 

Horrified, Jenna learns from her mother that her body is not real and that only ten percent of her brain - the butterfly part, was saved.  Filled with anger and shock, she must now deal with her new self. But what is she exactly?

Discussion

The Adoration of Jenna Fox is a young adult novel that explores what makes us human - our minds, our souls, our bodies, all? or some combination? and the bioethics of extraordinary measures to save a life.

Sixteen-year-old Jenna Fox was in a serious accident that left her badly burned, with infection and massive organ failure setting in. In a desperate attempt to save their very-much-adored daughter, Matthew and Claire Fox uss the banned biogel that BioGel and Fox Bio Systems had developed. Jenna doesn't know all of this and instead awakens a year later when she is seventeen-years-old. She is provided very few details and has few memories of her life a year ago.

But Jenna immediately senses that things are not as they should be. Her mother had a career as a restoration consultant whose focus was on brownstones but now has no career. Her Nana, Lily was chief of internal medicine at Boston University Hospital. "It seems that everyone in this house is reinventing themselves and no one is who they once were."

And it's not just her family's unusual situation. She begins to notice that things seem to be off about herself too. She notices that the birds in Clayton Bender's backyard will not feed out of her hand. -Jenna feels compelled to obey her mother when she doesn't want to. "What world have I woken up to? What nightmare am I in? Why am I compelled to do as Mother says even when I have a desperate need to do something else? "  First with Clayton Bender and then at school Jenna finds herself having detailed knowledge about specific topics like Easter Island and Walden - who she can recite word for word.  Her favourite drink, hot chocolate has no taste. She learns at school that her walk is "funny". When she tries to interlace her hands, Jenna feels "like the hands I am lacing are not my own, like I have borrowed them from a twelve-fingered monster."  As Jenna is working in the garden at the mission with Ethan she is certain she can hear the choir boys singing but he tells her they are too far away.  And Jenna doesn't tire while shoveling dirt in the garden for hours but Ethan is exhausted.

Even the recovery of her memory seems unusual to Jenna.  "It is curious how it comes. Each day, a rush of pieces, loosely connected, unimportant bits, snake through me. They click, click, click, into my brain, like links being snapped together. And then they are done. A small chain of memories that fill in one tiny part of my life. They come out of nowhere...."  As her memories come back in bits, Jenna wonders if it will take her lifetime to reclaim them all.

Pearson foreshadows the coming ethical dilemma through the character of Allys who has lost her limbs to a bacterial infection. She uses prosthetic legs but her replacement arms and hands are bioengineered. Allys is against the technology that Fox Biosystems and their BioGel have created, arguing that this is not "natural" and that there should be limits on how much of a human can be replaced or enhanced.

When Jenna accidentally discovers that she is the biogel that Allys mentioned, she is horrified. Her father explains, "Your body was injured beyond saving. We had to patch together a new one. Your skeletal structure was replicated. You have all the bone structure of a normal teenage girl. Muscle areas are taken up with additional modified Bio Gel. Most movement is accomplished through digital signals within the bone structure.Some is accomplished through the traditional method of cabled ligaments.Your skin was replaced. Your brain, the ten percent we saved, was infused with additional Bio Gel. " He also tells her that additional scans were made of her brain and uploaded what constitutes Jenna's mind. Jenna's father also explains that they have taken the butterfly of her brain and surrounded it with a sphere of Bio Gel and that the neural chips are building new pathways for her brain to access information. 

This shocks Jenna. "I shudder, repulsed at everything I may or may not be, wanting to escape but trapped again. By what? Myself? I don't know who or what I am anymore." She wonders about her heart and her lungs. And why she's remembering events like her baptism that she shouldn't. "He's tampered with the unknown. What door has he opened?"  Her father also reveals that the Bio Gel best functions at a stable temperature and that its "shelf life" is reduced under cold conditions.  Not only is Jenna "illegal" but she learns she has a shelf life between two and two hundred years, depending on the climate she lives in. It means Jenna will never grow old. She learns other specifics, that she has no stomach and a primitive digestive system.  tells her father she doesn't even know if she's human.

"What about a soul, Father? When you were so busy implanting all your neural chips, did you think about that? Did you snip my soul from my old body, too? Where did you put it? Show me! Where? Where in all this groundbreaking technology did you insert my soul?"

While her parents continue to focus on the biological, Jenna is more focused on her nature: is she human. When her nana reveals that before the accident Jenna and her motehr were arguing and that she didn't go to her room but left the house in a car that she couldn't drive, Jenna understands why she was compelled to now obey her mother: they have programmed her brain to respond to their commands. Her parents reveal that they have uploaded subliminal messages, and her entire tenth to twelfth grade curriculum which explains why she knows so much about random topics. But Jenna knows they still are not telling her everything because when she attempts to research her accident on her Netbook she is denied access. So she turns to Clayton Bender. On his Netbook Jenna learns the shocking truth: her friends Locke Jenkins died two weeks after the accident without regaining consciousness, and Kara Manning died three weeks after from severe head trauma. The cause of the accident was believed to be high speed and reckless driving.

Jenna's journey to self-acceptance begins while she's reading Walden. She realizes those thoughts about the work are her own and exist no where else in the universe. She is thankful to be experiencing these thoughts despite the cost.She also makes the discovery that her parents have scanned Kara and Locke's brains but were unable to get skin and DNA samples so they cannot be replicated like Jenna. Eventually Jenna decides to deal with this problem on her own.

The title comes from what Jenna finally realizes as she watches the videos of herself at age sixteen."I have more holes than substance, but I've pieced together a girl with the scatter of memories that have come back to me, and a life recorded beyond reason. I was treasured. Adored. Smothered with hopes. I was everything three babies could have been. I danced as hard as I could. Studied as hard. Played as hard. Practiced as hard. I pushed to be everything they dreamed I could be."  Jenna was so adored that her parents could bear the thought of her dying. And so they did whatever it took to prevent that regardless of the cost. 

But for the new Jenna the problem still exists. "There were so many things Mother and Father always wanted me to be...Now they want me to be just what I was before. I'm not. No matter how much they want it, or how much I want it, I can't make that happen. The feeling of failure is familiar.I always tried so hard to be everything they wanted. Everything three babies could be. Their miracle child.Me. Now ai am a different kind of miracle. The artificial freak kind."

However, Lily challenges Jenna to determine what she wants. "You've always been two people. The Jenna who wants to please and the Jenna who secretly resents it. They won't break, you know. Your parents never thought you were perfect. You did." However, Jenna points out that they did have the expectation of perfection because she was tutored and coached whenever it was required. "I've been under a microscope my entire life! From the moment I was conceived, I had to be everything because I was their miracle! That's what I had to live up to every day of my life!"  Jenna tells her mother, "I don't want to be your miracle anymore. I can't be your miracle anymore. I need to be here on this planet with the same odds as everyone else. I need to be like everyone else... I can't be really alive if I can't die too."  Jenna remembers seeing her mother at her bedside after the accident and wanting her to let her die but knowing that her mother would never do that because she was forever her miracle.

Eventually Jenna does seem to come to self-acceptance and to accept that this new technology may help save lives. When her friend Allys begins to die, she reveals what Jenna is to her parents in the hopes that they and Jenna's parents will save her with the same technology that saved Jenna. It is eventually revealed that Jenna lives much longer than her father believed - at two hundred and sixty years later she is still alive. But she has also made the decision to not outlive her daughter, Kayla, that one day she will travel to Boston with its cold winters, so that her body will begin to shut down. Immortality is not something she wants.

The novel has hints of religious undertones: Jenna's grandmother, Lily is a Catholic who prays, is involved in the nearby mission of San Luis Ray  and attends Sunday Mass. Yet she had Claire via "in vitro" which Catholic moral teaching forbids. However it is clear that Lily was very much against what her daughter and son-in-law were going to do with Jenna.  It is also implied that Claire had three "in vitro" pregnancies, of which Jenna was the only surviving baby - Claire's miracle. Jenna remembers her baptism but when she's in the church with her Nana she has no memory of how genuflect and to cross herself - a common Catholic custom showing respect for the Blessed Sacrament. This lack of "Catholic memory" is evident when Jenna and Ethan are in the mission church. Both are in the sanctuary, an area that is considered sacred and kiss there. This is a sacriligeous (and somewhat offensive) scene and it's puzzling as to why Pearson would have written this into her novel. Jenna goes to the church because she is struggling to determine if she has a soul and if not, what has happened to that part of her. This was a missed opportunity in the novel to explore this question more deeply and in a way that was not so off-putting to young Catholic readers. Jenna never really broaches this question with her parents or her grandmother.  Lily, who has known Father Rico for a long time, could have brought her granddaughter to talk to this priest and he may have offered Jenna some perspective. The question is left largely unanswered: Jenna has a mostly man-made body with some genetic material and the essence of her mind. But does she have a soul? The novel ends with Lily blessing Jenna with holy water, telling her that she believes Jenna has a soul. 

The novel generally ties up all the loose ends in a way that is clean and clear cut. Jenna remembers what happened to her and her friends, she begins to accept herself and what was done to her, she destroys the computers saving her friends from the same fate, and her parents seem prepared to help Allys's parents save their daughter. The Epilogue gives the reader closure, two hundred and sixty years into the future. Based on the scene in the church, this reviewer has reservations about this novel.

Book details:
The adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson
Henry Holt and Company 2008
266pp