Escaping Into The Night by D.Dina Friedman

Escaping Into The Night is a compelling story about the flight of Jewish residents of Nowogrodek, Poland into the nearby forest, in an attempt to flee from the murderous Nazis. The city which was part of Poland, was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939. In June of 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union and occupied Nowogrodek. Almost half of the city's population were Jewish. As in other Polish cities, the Jew population living in Nowogrodek was forced into a ghetto and then subjected to repeated "actions". By the end of the war only five hundred and fifty Jews remained out of a population of ten thousand. Many Jews in the ghetto managed to flee into the nearby forest where they remained hidden until the end of the war. 

Friedman has written a fictional account of what that escape and living in the forest under such difficult circumstances might have been like. She was inspired to write this story after reading about Tuvia Bielski, who according Friedman's website "organized a network of encampments in the forests of western Belorussia that offered protection to over 1200 Jewish men, women and children who were able to escape from the ghettos."

Thirteen year old Halina Rudowski lives in the Nowogrodek ghetto with her Mama. Halina's family lived in Berlin, Germany before the war. Her family was sent to Poland by the Germans (who deported all Poland's Jews). They went to her mother's village but then were made to move to Nowogrodek. Her mother's boyfriend, Georg Goldmann, has told them that the Nazi's are about to have another "selection" and he pleads with them to flee to the forest. But Halina's mama believes that as a member of the Jewish police in the ghetto, Georg can protect them. Halina doubts this because Georg was not able to save her friend Batya Rojak's brother, Yosl, who was taken away.

While her mother and the Rojaks work at the munitions factory, Halina works as a cleaner at the commander's home. The commander's wife is kind to Halina, often feeding her extra food. One night after returning home from work, Georg meets Halina at her apartment and tells her that her mother along with everyone else at the munitions factory has been taken and that the Germans are planning to "liquidate" the ghetto in three days. Georg tells Halina that the escape route is ready but they need to bribe the right people. Later on, Batya comes to Halina's apartment and tells her that all the men including her father and brothers were rounded up and sent on trains while the women were shot next to a deep pit. Batya tells Halina she must be ready to escape the ghetto that night.

With the help of Batya, Halina puts on extra clothes as well as her mother's heavy black coat. Halina and Batya are led by Georg to the synagogue basement where a tunnel connecting to the sewer line has been dug. Georg does not accompany them as he has to try to help as many people escape the ghetto as possible. Halina and Batya are accompanied by three brothers, Abel, Max and Reuven Weissman who is Halina's age.  The tunnel, which is dark and smells of sewage and vomit, leads them out of town to a dirt road. The group walks all night and then hides in a grove of fir trees during the first day. When they arrive the next night at the farm that was supposed to take them in, they find it has been burned to the ground.

The next day Abel, Max and Batya decide to go into town to see what food they can find, leaving Halina and Reuven at the Orvatski farm. However, Batya and the older brothers never return and several days later, Halina's group are found by partisans who are hiding in the nearby woods. Reuven wants to stay and wait for his brothers to return but the partisans tell him if the brothers are in the village they will find them. The group is taken by Grolsky and another man, along with an older couple, the Fiozman's to the partisan camp in the forest.

In the camp, which is run by Mr. Moskin, life is rustic; people sleep in a ziemlanka, a sort of dugout hidden by branches. Batya is eventually recovered by the partisans and tells Reuven his brothers were murdered by the German soldiers in the town.  Reuven begs Moskin to find his brothers but they tell him that the town was taken days earlier by the Nazis. For Halina, the camp offers her a chance to find peace and to rest after the traumatic events of the past months. Despite being haunted by Batya's revelation of her mother's murder, she willingly begins helping out in any way she can. Trapped between the Russian army to the east and the Nazi's who have overrun villages in the west, Halina, Reuven and the partisan's struggle to survive culminates in a battle that leaves them questioning the meaning of family and faith.

Discussion

Escaping Into The Night is a well written novel about a little known aspect of the Second World War in eastern Europe - the escape of thousands of Jews who managed to hide from the Nazis in forests for the duration of the war.  Friedman realistically portrays the horrors of war without being too graphic for the younger readers the book is geared to. Batya's rape and torture is only hinted at and her description of what happened to Halina's mother is brief and simple. Nevertheless, Halina's narrative manages to portray the hardship of the partisans, the sense of loss and the fear of discovery that many of the Jewish survivors had to cope with.

Both Halina and Batya are strong female characters who show remarkable resilience and courage - characteristics common among Holocaust survivors. Thirteen-year-old Halina looks up to the older Batya who sets an example of courage and determination by volunteering to be part of a scouting party to search for food for the partisans. Batya did this even after witnessing Reuven's two older brothers, Max and Abel, murdered by the Germans and barely escaping herself. When Batya's request is dismissed, Batya argues, "I'm fifteen. According to religious law, if I were a man, I'd have full adult privileges...It's better for us young people to go. We're strong and healthy, and most of us are orphans..." Batya argues that she has been lucky, having escaped the Germans twice.

Escaping Into the Night is also a coming of age story. Halina meets the much older Eli Koussivitsky in the partisan camp. Eli plays the Russian Waltz, a song Halina had been singing, on his violin. His direct manner and his beautiful playing capture her heart, leading Halina to quickly become infatuated with him. "No one had ever looked at me so long and so hard."  Halina's first kiss is shared with Eli, whom she lies to about her age. But Halina is stunned when she, Reuven and the severely injured Batya encounter Eli in the forest with his girlfriend. Despite the desperate circumstances, Halina is still upset and feels betrayed. However, Eli later explains to Halina that he didn't mean to mislead her, that her beautiful singing made him behave inappropriately and he begs her forgiveness. Eli wants this forgiveness because he is going on a dangerous mission which may cost him his life. As Halina struggles to come to terms with the fact that Eli's feelings are not those of romantic love, he gives her the gift of his violin, telling her to use her gift of singing and to one day learn to play the violin. Later on when Eli does not return from his mission, Georg explains to Halina his bravery and that it is dangerous time to love, that the German's manipulated anyone they knew had attachments to others. All of this helps Halina mature and understand the sacrifice Eli and others are making in the fight against the Nazis.

A strong theme throughout the novel is that of the role of faith in difficult times. Batya and Reuven represent opposite sides of the theme of faith; Batya, despite the loss of her family continues to practice her faith diligently while Reuven believes they have been abandoned by God.  Reuven asks Halina,
" 'Do you believe in God?' Reuven asked. 'I don't know. I'd like to, but I don't know.' 'I don't,' Reuven said. 'If there were a God, He would never have let this happen to us.' "  Halina notes that "Batya had lost her entire family, yet when we reached the barn, she had whispered her morning prayers under her breath. Was this just a habit, or did she still believe?'

When Reuven, Halina and Batya are rescued and taken to the partisan's camp, the commander of the camp, Moskin tells Reuven that there is only so much they can do.
"The commander gazed at Reuven thoughtfully. 'I pray that God delivers your brothers safely, and your friend Batya, too. We'll have to leave it in His hands." 'How can you even talk of praying after all that has happened?" Reuven choked as he spoke, trying to block the sobs. 'How can you trust God to do anything?' Moskin tells Reuven that he is not a religious man, "But I've learned that there are times to fight, and other times where the only thing we can do is to pray."

When Reuven learns the fate of his brothers he concludes "God is dead." Reuven said. "God is dead and so are my brothers. I spent all day praying to a dead god." But Halina isn't having any of Reuven's self-pity, telling him that everyone has lost someone and that he must focus on the present.

In contrast to Reuven, Batya's life is centered around her Jewish faith. When Reuven asks Batya to tell him what happened to his brothers, she tells him that she recited Kaddish, a Jewish prayer said by mourners and at funerals. It is her way of trying to avoid telling Reuven all the terrible details of their fate. She repeatedly but unintentionally infuriates Reuven by exclaiming Baruch HaShem (Thank God) for their rescue by the partisans. However, after she is assaulted, she tells Halina that she is ruined and that her life doesn't matter anymore. In response to Halina telling her that she cannot expect to live by normal rules, Batya responds, "No. Without rules there would be nothing left. God is giving us a challenge, to see if we can follow the rules even when it's difficult. I failed the challenge." Eventually though, Batya's faith is restored and she prays for Eli and Reuven's safe return from their search for survivors of the attack by the Germans.

The novel also explores the meaning of family. Throughout the novel Halina questions her relationship with Reuven who is a year older. At first he is like a brother but near the end of the novel she begins to wonder if he is more than a brother. When Halina and Reuven are taken to the partisan's camp, they meet a woman Tante Rosa who tells them, "You are our mishpokha now, our family." There are almost a hundred people in the camp, most of them not related to one another. Under the circumstances, the definition of family has changed - it is not necessarily a blood relative anymore. This leads Halina to reconsider what family means and is demonstrated by her actions later on in the novel. After Batya is rescued from the German soldier by Halina and Reuven, as she slips into shock from her injuries, Halina asks Batya to be her sister. When Georg tells Russian medic that Halina is his "takhter" or daughter, Halina bristles at this. She wants to yell that he is not her father but then she questions how this is different from Batya being her sister. "Why shouldn't they be my family?"

Friedman has written a high interest novel, with strong main characters and interesting supporting characters, and the themes of love family and faith. A map of the area the novel is set in would have helped young readers place the events taking place in the novel, which although fictional, are based on real historical events. The dramatic cover will push younger readers to crack the cover.

Book Details:
Escaping Into The Night by D.Dina Friedman
New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers    2006
195 pp.

The Brilliant Light of Amber Sunrise by Matthew Crow

One trend in young adult literature is novels about teens with cancer, the most famous recently being John Green's, The Fault in Our Stars. But other recent offerings, such as Anthem for Jackson Dawes, are better written and more appealing. The Brilliant Light of Amber Sunrise is a novel that will touch readers deeply, giving them new perspectives on those who cope with serious illness.

Fifteen year old Francis Wootton is part of a family with a story. He lives with his mother who is a teacher. There was a time when Francis's mom and dad lived together but his dad began to leave, eventually for longer and longer periods of time until he simply never returned. He has an older brother Chris, who is gay and who worked as a graphic designer. Chris lives in a flat with several roommates including Fiona whom Francis adores. Francis's twin sister Emma, died after being run over by a truck when she was very young.

Francis's health problems first began with headaches. Thinking the problem was his eyes, his mother took him to the optician who discounted this possibility. Then came the nose bleeds - great big ones with lots of blood. Francis began feeling unwell and his mother tried to diagnose him herself thinking first he had the flu, then allergies, then depression and then anemia. But when Francis passes out at school, he ends up in hospital with blood and bone-marrow tests and a diagnosis of cancer. For the first time he faces the possibility of death.

"One of the first things we learn is that people die. Then we start to learn why. Old age is the starting point. It's more or less palatable, something everybody can just about stomach; the Soup of the Day to mortality's grand buffet...
Then we learn more. Guns. War. Disease.
Cancer.
The big words. The bad words. The words that never end well."

Francis's feelings about having leukemia are mixed; he worries that people will remember his death by cancer and not his life, he's overwhelmed by the thought of having cancer, but he's also excited "that things were going to change, to become different and focused. And on me, which was a plus."

Francis moves into a specialist unit that treats teens with cancer where he meets the head nurse, Jackie and his carers, Marc and Amy. At first there are three patients in the unit, Francis and another boy named Paul, as well as a girl, Kelly. Francis has trouble relating to either of them, describing Paul as "pasta" and "Everyone thought they loved him because they had never been forced to experience the true blandness of him on his own. Paul was surface all the way to the bone." Kelly is similar to Paul, little substance on the inside, a girl who wears makeup in the unit to whom outward appearances matter most.  Although Francis's brother Chris encourages him to make friends with Paul and Kelly, Francis cannot relate to either and feels alone.

On Francis's fourth day in the unit, Amber Spratt arrives with her oddball, ecofriendly mother  Colette and her younger sister, Olivia. From the beginning Amber is eccentric, like her mother, and very outspoken. In group therapy with Christian their soft-spoken counselor, Amber is openly hostile towards Kelly who accuses Amber of being afraid of dying just like the rest of them. After this confrontation the unit is divided into two groups, Paul and Kelly in one and Amber and Francis in another.

Francis and Amber begin to form a friendship that eventually turns romantic with the two sharing their first kiss and leading Francis to wonder if Amber is now his girlfriend. As treatment progresses, Francis, like the others, has good and bad days. "The whole world would stop mattering to us. All we had to occupy ourselves with was firstly, trying not to throw up, and then perversely, trying with all our might to throw up,..."

When Francis begins loosing his hair, his brother Chris comes to the unit to shave Francis's head. In a show of solidarity with his brother, Chris wants Francis to shave his head too but Francis is unable to, so Amber does the shaving. Later that night Amber and Francis sneak into the bathroom and Francis shaves her head. Despite her being bald, Francis still feels she's beautiful and what is better is that she doesn't care. This helps him cope with this outward sign that he is seriously ill.

While Francis gradually improves, Amber still has many days were she does not feel well. When her flaky mother brings crystals to the hospital to try to help heal her daughter, Francis's mother, Julie, tells Colette that her daughter needs something like having her nails done to make her feel good about herself. After this confrontation, Julie offers to drive Colette to the hospital visits, beginning a sort of friendship between the two very different women.

Eventually Francis is well enough to return home, but not back to school. He is seen by a nurse once a day for treatment at home. Soon his cancer begins to respond to treatment. His first visit to the unit to see Amber finds her still very sick. Subsequent visits find her sometimes better, other times very sick. Throughout this time, Francis tries to be upbeat and positive while her return home to receive some of her treatments continues to be delayed. When Francis is not allowed to visit her one day because he doesn't feel well, he laments that "even breathing hurts when I'm not with her..."

Finally Amber is allowed to go home and Francis manages to convince his mother to let him visit. At Amber's home they listen to music and have sex, but by the following evening Amber is back in the unit. Amber is in and out of the unit for weeks leading up to Christmas.  Because they live so far away from each other and because their "Good Days" don't line up, it's difficult for Francis and Amber to see one another. Eventually before Christmas, Amber is released and her family spend Christmas with Francis and his family. But the joy of the holiday is ruined when Amber reveals to Francis that she is going back into hospital after Christmas. When Francis promises to visit, Amber tells him not to - that she needs to be on her own this time.

Not really understanding what is happening, Francis struggles to understand Amber's distance. He gradually comes to realize that while he is recovering, Amber may not be. When you are fifteen and in love, where does that leave you?

Discussion

The Brilliant Light of Amber Sunrise is an irreverent look at teenagers coping with cancer. At it's core is the romantic relationship between romantic nerd Francis Wootton and the realistic, practical Amber Spratt.

As in life outside the hospital, in the cancer unit, Francis finds himself a social outcast.  Then along comes Amber Spratt whom Francis likes  - partly because she makes friends with him immediately. He also likes her because she is able to deal with Kelly and Paul, whom Francis considers to be superficial. Francis states that "In school Kelly would have had the upper hand. No matter how much she spat and snarled, Amber would have been torn limb from limb by Kelly and her crew, like a wildebeest calf faced with a pack of lions. But in the real world she had Kelly over a barrel. Every time she said something stupid, which was always, Amber was there to set her straight. " 

While Francis believes their little group in the cancer unit is analogous to the group of students in detention in the 1985 movie, The Breakfast Club  (Paul is Andy Clarke, the popular athlete, Amber is Allison Reynolds the social outcast and "basket case") Amber thinks she and Francis are like Bud and Fran in the Apartment, a 1960's Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine movie. In the movie, Bud, "a nervous geek falls in love with a loud mouth harlot" named Fran. Amber tells Francis "you won't have an trouble identifying".  Francis, however, tells Amber that she is like the star in John Keats love poem, Bright Star - "she's like a star...not because stars are shiny and stuff, but because they're always there, always looking down and that sort of thing."  But Amber prefers realism over Francis's romanticism. She tells him stars are like looking up at a million different memories" - referring to the science of stars. Amber tells Francis, "It's real, and that's what's important."

Crow continues this romance versus realism in other parts of the novel. Francis and Amber's first kiss is not romantic like in the movies. Instead, Francis states "our teeth clacked together and I could hear it magnified in my head. Teeth never seem to clack in films; it's all smooth running there." 

The Brilliant Light of Amber Sunrise is more about living than dying. It is not so much about dying from cancer as being about living life to the fullest despite being dealt a bad hand. Hence the reference to the final line in The Apartment. At the end of the movie, Shirley MacLaine's character, Fran, has a famous one line response, "Shut up and deal.", when Bud (Jack Lemmon) professes his love for her.  After all Bud and Fran have been through, they know the truth about each other and yet they still love one another. Life is full of "bad hands" and we must learn to accept and deal with it. This becomes Amber's final message to her romantic friend, Francis.

The tragedy of their relationship is hinted at early on when Amber's release from the unit is repeatedly delayed. Although Amber puts on a brave front when her treatment is not going well, Francis recognizes what she feels. "Those awful days when she'd joke for me but her eyes looked like they belonged to someone else, looked like they knew something the rest of her body wasn't yet willing to acknowledge." When Francis is released from the unit he wonders how he will cope:  "Already I knew that my days would be wasted without her. She was my strongest limb; without her I would be lost."

When Amber tells Francis she's going back into the unit after Christmas, he refuses to accept the reality that she must do this part alone and that he shouldn't text her.  Ever the romantic, he sends her numerous texts, concerned that not doing so would be a sign he doesn't care. But he begins to suspect that something is seriously wrong. When he confronts his mother she tells him the painful truth about Amber. This leads Francis to sneak into the unit to see her, hoping to convince her to live. Shocked at her condition  he tells her  his deepest fear. "The thing is, Amber, I need you to get better because I'm getting better, and the problem is I can't really remember what I ever did before I knew you. Before we were us. I know you must feel scared about being ill, but I'm starting to feel scared about getting better...about having to do anything without you." Sadly, Amber is too ill to help Francis and he leaves realizing that everything that will now follow is a mere formality.

Francis is scared to lose Amber because she's taught him how to live and he's not sure he can do life without her. Earlier in the novel,  Amber stated that in spite of death, life goes on around them. When Kelly insists that Amber is afraid to die, Amber tells Francis later on that she is not. Her father died of a heart attack when she was ten years old. Although she misses her father, she tells Francis about the reality of  death; "I know that it's just one less person at the dinner table, and they don't take the whole world with them; it carries on like it always has, only a bit sadder for a bit..." 

Amber's final message to Francis reveals that she accepts and acknowledges both his romantic view of life as well as her own more realistic approach. The envelope she leaves for him is filled with tiny gold stars - a nod to the poem he loved, Bright Star. Her message "Shut up and deal." - is a request to live life fully in her memory. She hasn't taken the whole world with her and there's more remaining for Francis. He does just that as he states in the chapter titled After. "Everything was how I'd always imagined it would be, but better. I spent my nights talking to interesting strangers about interesting things. I discovered friends who made me a better person. I read books that changed my life and watched films that left me so breathless that I would still be stuck to the seat long after the credits had finished rolling. I saw parts of the country, parts of the world, that at one point I couldn't even spell. I fell in and out of love on an almost daily basis, and said yes to any opportunity that came my way.  I lived."

The witty narrative of the socially inept, nerdy Francis Wootton makes the heavy topic of cancer, with its frightening possibilities, lighter and the novel wonderfully readable with his laugh out-loud humour.  Crows characters are real, full bodied and interesting. The cast of supporting characters, Francis's mom, Julie, his grandmother, and Amber's mother, Colette, are all equally well formed.

Expecting The Brilliant Light of Amber Sunrise to be another The Fault in Our Stars novel would be to not do this book justice. It is different, better written and more subtle. It's "sick lit" and yet it's not- it's a story about living life to the fullest and appreciating every day, no matter our circumstances.

The Brilliant Light of Amber Sunrise was previously published in the UK under the title In Bloom.


Book Details:
The Brilliant Light of Amber Sunrise by Matthew Crow
New York: Simon Pulse        2015
295 pp.

Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver

On the surface, Vanishing Girls appears to be a mystery about two missing girls, but is essentially a story about the grief and guilt experienced after a traumatic loss. The story is told by two narrators, Nicole (Nick) and Dara Warren, both before and after a terrible automobile accident. The story begins just before the accident on March 27 but also includes flashbacks to provide some backstory.

Seventeen-year-old Nick and her sixteen-year-old sister Dara are at a party on the evening of March 27. Later that night, at 11:55 PM, Nick crashes her car and Dara is seriously injured after she flies into the side window of the vehicle. 

Nick and Dara's parents' marriage broke up months ago, her father living in a condo in ritzy Main Heights while their mother along with Dara live in Somerville. After recovering, Nick lives with her father  until she is caught skinny dipping the night of July 15. Concerned about her well being, Nick's father takes her to live at her mother's home in Somerville. Since the break-up of her marriage and the terrible accident, Nick's mother has been struggling, so Nick is not keen to live with her. She's also anxious about reconnecting with Dara, whom she hasn't spoken to since the accident.

Nick wants to return to work at the Palladium during the summer break, but her mother refuses and tells her she has arranged for her to work at the nearby amusement park, Fantasy Land, run by Greg Wilcox, a former math teacher from her mother's old school. Nick goes upstairs to see Dara but she's fled out her bedroom window. Dara has no intention of talking to Nick whom she describes as "Perfect Nicki. The Good Child".  Dara was badly injured in the car accident, breaking her kneecaps, pelvis, wrist and tibia. Her head went through the passenger window leaving her with red scars on her forehead, cheek and neck.

On July 20, the media reports the "possible" abduction of nine-year-old Madeline Snow from a car outside Big Scoop Ice Cream. Madeline disappeared from the back seat of the car after her sister Sarah and her friend Kennedy left her alone. The same day, Nick starts her new job at Fantasy Land, nicknamed FanLand.  Nick hasn't seen Dara in the two days she's been home. At FanLand Nick is shocked to see that her once best friend, John Parker works there. Parker as she affectionately calls him is a childhood friend that both Nick and Dara hung out with together. Parker was Nick's best friend for years; they did everything together. Then in December of last year things changed after Dara broke up with her latest boyfriend and she began dating Parker. But Nick hasn't thought about him for months. Nick is assigned to a work crew with Parker who acts as her tour guide for FanLand, showing her the ropes. At the end of their shift, Parker invites Nick to a party at the Drink which is a local nickname for the Saskawatchee River.

Nick writes Dara a note telling her about the party at the Drink. Impulsively Dara decides to go to the party, grabbing Nicks hoodie to hide the facial scars she received from the accident. At the party Dara meets her "former" best friend, Ariana and her ex-boyfriend, Parker who tries to apologize about what happened between them. Dara doesn't want to deal with Parker and feeling like an outsider, she decides to leave. But not before the party is raided by cops and Dara leaves behind Nick's hoodie. The next day, July 22, Nick is confronted by a woman cop who insists that she was at the party at the river. Nick doesn't give away Dara but takes the blame and is ordered to do community service by helping to search for missing Madeline Snow. Furious at Dara, Nick leaves her a note telling her she is the one who needs to do the community service.

After seeing Nick's note, Dara helps out in the search for Madeline Snow. During the line search, she meets a woman named Cookie Hendrickson who worked at MLK High when Dara's mom worked there. Her questions to Dara are interrupted by Margie, a reporter who works for the Shoreline Blotter. After volunteering, Dara receives a text from an unknown number which she deletes. She also meets Sarah Snow, Madeline's older sister. Sarah tells Dara, "I was trying so hard to protect her...It's all my fault...The lying is the hardest part, isn't it?"

By July 28, Nick has settled into her job at FanLand. She's now playing the part of a mermaid in the park's pirate singing show. Nick mends her relationship with Parker and they begin eating lunch and taking breaks together at work. The evening before the park's anniversary party, Nick and Parker are assigned garbage duty to clean the park. While passing the closed Gateway ride, Nick thinks she hears someone humming and wonders if the ride is truly haunted. Before leaving for the night, Nick and Parker spend some time together at the wave pool where she asks Parker if he still loves her sister. Parker admits that he never was truly in love with her but that he misses her. Later that night Parker shows up drunk at the Warren home and convinces Dara to spend a few minutes talking with him in his car. He tells Dara that he loves her but when he calls out Nick's name she is furious and leaves..

The next day is July 29th, Dara's seventeenth birthday. Nick arranges a special surprise for her sister, asking her to meet her at the Gateway to Heaven ride at 10pm when FanLand is closing. Dara is not in her room in the morning and later on in the day does not show at the planned family dinner at a restaurant. Nick believes she saw Dara getting on a bus to FanLand and when she arrives at the restaurant she tells her parents and her Aunt Jackie that Dara is not coming because their family no longer exists due to their father leaving. Nick leaves the restaurant and returns home later on to confront Dara but she's still not home. She returns to FanLand in the hopes of meeting Dara at 10pm but when she doesn't show Nick begins to wonder if Dara is in trouble. "All along, I've been assuming she just blew us off tonight. But what if she didn't? What if something bad happened? ....What if, what if, what if. The drumbeat of the past four years of my life."

Searching through Dara's phone, Nick discovers disturbing pictures of her sister in various compromising situations. The pictures were sent March 26, the day before the accident. Nick begins to suspect that these pictures contain the truth of what happened before the accident, events she cannot remember. "This is it: somehow, in these pictures, the mystery of the accident is contained, and the explanation for Dara's subsequent behavior, for the silences and disappearances." Determined to learn what has happened to Dara, Nick begins following the thread connecting Dara to whoever sent the photos. It is a journey that will finally uncover her sister's darkest secret, lead her to find Madeline Snow and help her to recover her own identity and heal.

Discussion

Vanishing Girls is marketed to readers as a mystery - one that involves the disappearance of two girls. However, this novel is one of several recent young adult novels that deals with dissociative identity in teenagers. Dissociation, which sometimes occurs as a result of severe trauma, is a complex illness that is often misunderstood and often poorly treated. It's a difficult condition to write into a story but Lauren Oliver is up to the task in Vanishing Girls. 

The story is told by two sisters, Nick and Dara  who have experienced a traumatic event - a car accident. The story, like the main character, is further fragmented by narratives that are labelled Before and After, in reference to this accident. The Before narratives by both girls provide the backstory to their lives; Nick the good older sister and Dara, the wild younger girl who parties and has plenty of boyfriends. From this backstory it appears that a sort of love triangle developed between Nick, Dara and Parker. They all started out as childhood friends, but Dara changed the parameters of the friendship when she began hooking up with Parker. This caused a huge rift between the two sisters as Nick considered Parker to be her best friend. Dara's on-again, off-again relationship with Parker eventually results in huge problems for everyone. The After narratives deal with the short time period from July 15 until July 29 when Nick returns to her mother's home to live. Further complicating the After narratives is that Nick does not remember what happened before the car accident.

In what amounts to a huge twist in the novel, is that Nicole Warren is suffering from deep trauma as a result of the death of her sister Dara in the car accident and she not only hallucinates, but eventually assumes Dara's identity in addition to retaining her own identity. So everything that Dara narrates AFTER the accident is really Nick's narrative as Dara. Oliver provides her readers with many subtle clues; Dara and Nick actually never have a direct conversation with one another and conversations between Nick and other characters such as Parker, her parents and Aunt Jackie, are open ended so that they can be read several ways. For example, when Nick is talking to Parker about the party at the Drink she believes she never went to the party. But Parker saw her there and spoke with her and is angry because she left so quickly. Because the narrator of this event was Dara, the reader assumes that it is Dara they are talking about. Nick however was there, as Dara, but dressed in her own hoodie!

The hints become more obvious as the story moves along but can still be read two ways. For example, in Dara's narrative when Parker shows up at the Warren house drunk, the reader believes he is with Dara. Parker asks "Dara' if he can speak with her for a few minutes. They go to his car and begin making out, when Parker tells her he loves her and then says Nick's name - because of course Parker is actually with Nick, not Dara (who is really dead). But Nick who has taken on Dara's identity acts exactly as Dara would - she is furious and leaves. The reality is that Parker is actually with Nick whom he does love.

Eventually what emerges from the story is a very disordered relationship between Nick who considers herself a caretaker for her rebellious, wild younger sister. always rescuing her. When she can't save Dara, her world crumbles, her identity as the caretaker lost.

The use of Nick as an unreliable narrator helps build suspense throughout the novel. We don't really know what happened the night of the accident due to Nick's repressed memories. And as Nick explores Dara's life she begins to uncover secrets about her sister that connect her to Sarah Snow and ultimately lead her to solve the mystery of Madeline Snow's disappearance.

Oliver does a great job of tying together all the loose ends of the story using emails between Nick's parents and her doctors and medical reports, so that readers fully understand what happened to Nick, what led to the accident, and how Madeline Snow came to disappear.

The book cover is well done - the out of focus cover image hinting at the confusion Nick is experiencing after the trauma of the car accident. In the style of Ransom Riggs, Oliver has placed photographs in her novel that are supposed to relate to parts of the story. The novel could have done without the pictures, which were infrequent enough as to not have added to the story. Overall, Vanishing Girls is a very good read.

Book Details:
Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver (Laura Schecter)
New York: Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers    2015
357 pp.

Resistance by Craig Simpson

Set in Norway in 1943, Resistance tells the story of young Norwegian boy's coming of age during the

turmoil of the Nazi occupation of his beloved country.

The novel opens in September 1943, with Marek Olsen and his older brother Olaf on a hunting trip in the Hardanger Plateau, a vast "uninhabitable wasteland freckled with lakes and meandering rivers and streams". Olaf and Marek have grown up in the (fictional) village of Ulfhus on the shores of the Sorfjord where their father is the schoolmaster.

 After shooting a reindeer, Marek helps Olaf skin and butcher the deer and they take the meat to their Borsobu - a small hut. On the way they are buzzed by a Luftwaffe plane which fires at them on its second pass. Terrified, Marek pushes Olaf to the ground saving his life as the bullets pass through Olaf's rucksack and into the deer meat.

In their hut, Marek and his brother Olaf eat the reindeer stew, drink potato whisky and smoke an English cigarette. It is Olaf's possession of the forbidden cigarette that makes Marek realize that despite his brother's great intellect, he is a risk-taker. He realizes that Olaf "enjoyed the thrill and revelled in the danger." The two young men talk about their futures; Olaf is planning on studying medicine in Oslo but he worries that the Germans will not allow him to go. Marek likes to fix cars and machinery but his father wants him to study law.

On their way home they meet three men, one of whom is a Norwegian and likely a member of the Norwegian resistance, MILORG. When Marek and Olaf return to Ulfhus, they are shocked to see guards outside the Johanssen's guest house and watch as the Gestapo take their father and Mr. Torstig and the Johanssens away in a truck, their hands bound. Marek and Olaf's mother collapses when she learns of her husband's arrest and Marek is sent to fetch Dr. Haskveld.

Hans Tauber, one of the older Germans stationed in Ulfhus tells Marek not to worry if his father has not done anything "wrong" and that his father has been taken to the police station in Odda. Olaf decides that they must go to Odda to see what can be done about their father. He and his friend Lars decide to steal petrol from Tauber's car while Marek works on repairing the engine of their father's car, nicknamed Josephine.

Lars and Olaf steal the gasoline and the three drive to Odda with Marek's mother. At a checkpoint, they encounter a German soldier named Hartwig Lauder who is enamored with their father's French Citroen. Hartwig insists on driving them to Odda and even offers to buy the car from them which Marek refuses. Although Marek wonders about killing the German, he notes that Hartwig seems to be quite a reasonable man. Their trip in Odda is unsuccessful; Marek has an uncomfortable "meeting" with Wolfgang Stretter, a Gestapo agent while Olaf and his mother learn that father will likely not be released any time soon.

Hans Tauber is sent to the Russian front and a new German is sent to Ulfhus, Lieutenant Klaus Wold, a young soldier intent on making his mark and harassing the women of Ulfhus and surrounding villages. Wold' first encounters Agnete Hilting, Olaf's girfriend, at her seventeenth birthday party and then one night insists she accompany him for a walk. When he sexually assaults Agnete, Olaf tries to intervene but is badly beaten by the German soldiers. Determined to seek revenge and punish Wold, Olaf plans to ambush Wold's car on his weekly trip to Odda. Wold's car is forced off the road but he survives the accident and Olaf shoots him dead. However, an unknown passenger in the car escapes. Dr. Haskveld happens upon the accident and when he is told what happened he advises Olaf and Marek to flee into the wilderness, promising to take care of their mother and get her to safety.

Olaf and Marek ski up to the Hardanger Plateau, intent upon reaching the Johanssen's hut. During their flight into the Hardanger, Olaf reveals to Marek that their father was a messenger for the resistance and that the Johanssens also work with the resistance. They soon become lost in a blizzard and weakened by lack of food and sleep, both Olaf and Marek collapse. They are saved by a man named Jorgen Peterson from Tromso - the same man Marek and Olaf met on the journey home from the Hardanger weeks ago. With Jorgen at the Johanssen's hut, are five other resistance members; Harald Larsson and Leif Brekke who found Marek and Olaf, Ingrid whose husband, a resistance member was shot and two British men, Major Tim Fletcher, an engineer and Sergeant Eddie Turner, a stonemason. Jorgen and the others reluctantly allow the brothers to stay at the hut until they recover and can decide what to do next. With an important, secret mission pending, the resistance wants the brothers to move on because they know the Germans will be looking for them.

Feeling badly about using up the group's food supplies, Marek and Olaf go out on the plateau to hunt reindeer. Their trip is cut short when they are surprised by two German soldiers. Hoping to kill them, Olaf fires his rifle but repeatedly misses and they are only saved when Eddie arrives. Because the Germans managed to contact their base, Jorgen and the others know they must now leave the hut. The group decides to travel to Kinsarvik on their way to Jondal on the coast of the Hardangerfjord. Olaf agrees to guide the group as far as Kinsarvik. Marek and Olaf learn that Jorgen and his group need to get to Jondal to meet up with their men and supplies without taking the Kvanndal ferry across the fjord. They also find out about the "Shetland bus", the nickname for the boat service used by the resistance between Lunna Voe on the Shetland Islands and Bergen, Norway.

When the group reaches Kinsarvik, they split up with Ingrid leaving to visit a friend to find out what the Germans are up to, Leif and Harald reconnoitering the town, and Jorgen, Eddie and Fletcher waiting in the forest. Olaf and Marek now leave the group but have a surprise encounter with Agnete in Kinsarvik. During their talk with Agnete, Marek sights the Gestapo officer, Herr Stretter. They see Ingrid captured by Stretter so Marek runs to tell Jorgen while Olaf attempts to warn Leif and Harald. Jorgen, Fletcher, Eddie and Marek decide to walk through town where they meet up with Olaf who tells them that Leif and Harald have also been arrested. In a strange coincidence, Marek recognizes Hartwig driving a German army truck onto the ferry. Convinced he can get a ride out of Hartwig, Marek approaches him and asks for a lift to Jondal. The ferry takes them across to Utne and Hartwig, not suspecting they are resistance, happily drives Marek, Olaf and their friends to Jondal.

Once in Jondal, the group manages to meet up with the Shetland bus, captained by the crusty Kurt Torvic. Now shorthanded, Jorgen decides to take on Olaf and Marek as members of the resistance and reveals to them their plan to sabotage German submarines in the Atlantic. Unfortunately at the last moment, Marek and Olaf learn the operation has been compromised, setting in motion a chain of events that thrust Marek into a dangerous confrontation with the hated Nazis. Both Marek and what's left of the resistance learn the shocking truth behind their betrayal.

Discussion

Resistance is an exciting, well-written historical adventure filled with thrilling escapes and tragic loss. The novel vividly portrays, in a realistic manner, the true nature of war. In this novel,  the cruelty of the Nazi regime, the fear people in occupied countries experienced and how occupation divided the people in nations that were previously united against an aggressor are shown. It also portrays the high price many civilians paid to resist tyranny. War is characterized by murder, rape and the imprisonment of people in labour camps, where men look "as though there very souls have been stolen."  All of this is portrayed in Resistance, but not in an overly graphic manner.

The main character in the novel is fourteen-year-old Marek Olsen. No longer a child, but not yet a man, Marek struggles to be taken seriously by his brother Olaf. When their father is arrested and Olaf defers attending university to help out at home, Marek argues unsuccessfully for quitting school to work. Physically he can't keep up with Olaf or the other men, but his quick thinking and knowledge of engines saves him and his brother and the resistance several times over and earns him the respect of resistance leader, Jorgen.

Resistance invites young readers to consider the morality of certain actions undertaken in war, specifically when a country is occupied by a brutal aggressor  as Nazi Germany was. Several of the secondary characters in the novel commit murder. The first is the murder of Wold in retaliation for the sexual assault of Agnete and the brutal beating of Olaf when he tried to protect her. Rape by German officers was extremely common in all occupied countries during the Second World War. Seeing the effect the assault had on Agnete, Olaf is determined to kill Wold and formulates a plan to blow up his car. Marek doesn't give the plan much thought, eagerly participates in its development and even helps Olaf carry it out.  After Olaf shoots Wold, Marek recalls the pity he felt for the reindeer Olaf killed on the Hardanger and states, "Towards Wold I felt nothing, despite him being a fellow human being. I suppose he represented to me all the evil of the Nazis. And somehow that rid me of guilt or shame." 

Much later on, when Marek, his brother and other members of the resistance are being driven to Jondal by Hartwig, Marek struggles against his feelings of friendship towards the Nazi. Hartwig states that "Underneath, we're just like everyone else. And we want an end to the war as much as you. I think people forget that we're not here by choice. They forget that we did not ask to wear this uniform or carry guns. Most of all, though, they forget that the very idea of shooting a fellow human being is abhorrent to many of us." It is Marek's ability to identify with a man he should hate that ultimately saves Hartwig's life.When they are leaving Hartwig's car, Marek recognizes that Jorgen is going to kill Hartwig. But he finds he cannot allow Jorgen to do this evil act. "We can't let Hartwig go in case he reports us. He had to die. And that struck me as wrong. I reached out and seized Jorgen's arm. He glared at me. I shook my head. 'It's OK,' I said quietly."

When Olaf kills a second man, a German soldier, during their daring rescue of their desperately ill father, Marek recognizes how war has changed his brother. "I saw only hatred in Olaf's eyes, hatred in its purest form, cold as ice diamonds and without remorse. Who was this standing before me? Could it really be the same brother as the one I thought I knew, the one who'd wanted to study medicine and dedicate his life to helping his fellow man?"

As the resistance's plan begins to collapse and some members are arrested, Marek comes to realize the terrible choices war forces people to make. When they suspect Harald of having betrayed their plans, Marek tells Ingrid he would never cut a deal with the Nazis. Ingrid however tells him not to judge Harald too severely "Faced with a firing squad and the promise that your whole family will be arrested and tortured, most human beings would understandably seize any offer, however treacherous." This scene is a foreshadowing of the larger and more personal betrayal Marek will confront near the end of the novel.

Likewise, when Jan and the other resistance members are captured in Ork, Marek and his group once again faces impossible choice. "Do nothing and Jan and his fellow Jossings would face execution. Liberate them and an equally horrid fate might befall the good people of Ork. The enormity crushed me and I had to sit down, glum-faced. Any sense that we were trying to do something brave or heroic vanished...It boiled down to a simple fact. We were deciding who would live and who would die -- or, at the very least, who would suffer most..." Marek begins to realize in war, people face difficult choices that challenge their deeply held beliefs and that people often act very differently from what they might do outside of war.

Resistance was British author Craig Simpson's first published novel and was written after considerable research into life in Norway during the Nazi occupation of World War II. The precarious existence of all who were part of the resistance movement against the Nazi's is well presented in Resistance. Few people knew all the details of specific operations and many paid the ultimate price in the attempt to fight back against the Nazi occupiers. Simpson includes a map of the setting for Resistance and an excellent Postscript that fills in details about the Nazi occupation of Norway.

While Resistance will definitely appeal to boys, anyone with an interest in World War II will find this novel well worth reading. And that definitely includes adult readers.

Book Details:
Resistance by Craig Simpson
London: Corgi Books    2007
353 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.

My Heart and other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga

"I can't help but laugh. If I have a boyfriend, his name is Death. And I'm pretty sure Roman is in love with him, too. It's like a love triangle gone wrong. Or maybe it's a love triangle gone right: we both get the guy on April 7."

Sixteen year old Aysel Seran lives in Langston, Kentucky with her mom, stepdad Steve, and her half sister, Georgia and brother, Mike. Aysel is obsessed with killing herself. Her life is hell after her father was sent to prison for murder.

While working at Tucker's Marketing Concepts, Aysel joins an online suicide group, Smooth Passages which is dedicated to helping people kill themselves. Aysel sees a message on the Suicide Partners forum which pairs up people who help each other commit suicide, and decides to respond to it. The message is from a seventeen-year-old boy who lives in the adjacent town and who uses the handle FrozenRobot.

Aysel's life has been made intolerable by her father committing a crime which is only fully revealed to readers near the end of the novel. That crime involved the death of Langston's golden boy, Timothy Jackson, three years ago. Timothy was Langston's Olympic hopeful in track and field.

She's lost her friends who "scattered as fast as they could once the news of my dad's crime traveled through the halls of school".  As a result of her father's incarceration, Aysel has come to live with her mother and Steve full time and she feels she's never really fit into her family. "I've never fit, not really before my dad lost it, and certainly not after..." Aysel believes she is a constant reminder to her mother of her dad and her potential to become a criminal like him. For Aysel suicide is the means to prevent "myself from growing into the person I've terrified of becoming."

Aysel and FrozenRobot, whose name is Roman Franklin, meet at the root beer stand on Route 36 which is between their two towns of Langston and Willis. When Aysel sees Roman for the first time, he's not what she's expecting. He's tall, lanky with "buzzed chestnut-colored hair and deep-set hazel eyes." Roman doesn't look like someone who is intent on committing suicide because he looks like he cares about his appearance and he seems to be popular at the root beer stand where the waitresses flirt with him. However, to Roman, Aysel does fits the part of someone who wants to kill herself because she looks so terribly miserable. From their first meeting, Aysel learns that Roman is an exceptional basketball player, who used to work out with Brian Jackson, the younger brother of the boy her father killed. However, he no longer plays the sport he loves so much.

At school, Aysel's physics teacher, Mr. Scott, assigns a project to the class that involves taking pictures to illustrate the principles of the conservation of energy. Mr. Scott chooses the teams by picking names out of a hat resulting in Aysel being paired with Tyler Brown. Aysel doesn't care much about completing the project because it is due after April 7th, the date she and Roman have chosen to kill themselves.

The second time Aysel and Roman meet, Roman reveals why he wants to commit suicide. One day Roman was babysitting his nine year old sister, Madison, who suffered from seizures and couldn't be left alone. However, Roman had his girlfriend over and while he was making out with her, Madison had a seizure and drowned in the bathtub. He gets little sympathy from Aysel though, who believes that unlike her, the world does feel compassion for Roman and what happened to him.

Aysel and Roman drive up to Crestville Pointe which is a park overlooking the Ohio River to scout out a location to commit suicide. Aysel refuses to tell Roman why she wants to kill herself and he tells her that he wants to know because if her reason is stupid he will try to talk her out of it. Aysel begins to see how Madison's death has affected Roman. Although he is classically good looking, the type who is popular in school she realizes "...the more I stare at him, the more I see his grief wrapped around him like shackles he can never take off. I try to imagine him without the grief...but it's hard to see him as anything other than desperately sad." Roman wants to jump off the cliffs at Crestville Pointe and into the Ohio River because he feels that drowning like Madison did is the right way to die.

The next day when school is canceled due to snow, Aysel's half sister, Georgia calls Aysel out on her attitude. She tells Aysel that her dad has given Aysel a home, implying she should be grateful. She tells Aysel that she is not to blame for what her father did. "I'm tired of you spending every day feeling sorry for yourself just because of what your dad did. Newsflash: You aren't your dad. And you should stop blaming everyone else for what he did. Yourself included." Aysel is touched by the concern of her half sister who tells her "I just wish you weren't so sad all the time, Aysel" and the love of her half-brother, Mike who begs his mom to make sure she puts more chocolate chips in the pancake batter because "Aysel loves chocolate chips." Suddenly Aysel realizes that leaving them is going to be difficult.

Tyler and Aysel decide to take pictures at the zoo for their physics project and arrange to go to Louisville the following Saturday. At Roman's on Friday evening, Aysel agrees to allow him to tag along with her and Tyler. Dinner at Roman's home makes Aysel feel good because she's the center of attention which she surprisingly enjoys; Roman's mother cooked a Turkish meal for her, wants to know her opinion on everything, and she is friendly and kind towards Aysel. However, the fact that she mistakenly believes Roman's interest in Aysel is a sign he is recovering from his sister's death makes Aysel feel guilty.

On Saturday, Georgia invites herself to come with Tyler, Roman and Aysel to the zoo. At the zoo, Tyler tells Aysel that Georgia is trying to be friends with her and that she is concerned about her. Talking to Roman about Georgia leads Aysel to realize that she wants to see her father before she dies. Roman doesn't like this because he considers that Aysel is trying to find reasons to live, however, he decides he will go with her to see her dad.

After rummaging through papers in her mother's bedroom, Aysel learns that her father is at McGreavy Correction Facility. She calls the facility and then decides to visit the following Saturday. With eleven days before April 7, Aysel starts to become more involved in life. She finds that actually doing her work makes her shift at TMC go faster, and then she invites Roman to go with her to the Langston carnival, the one place she can remember being truly happy.

At the carnival, Aysel tells Roman more about going to see her dad and that he is in prison. When Roman seems unfazed by this, Aysel is grateful for his unconditional acceptance of her. However, Roman is more concerned with why she wants to see him and he is convinced that she is "flaking out" on him - not intending to go through with jumping off of Crestville Pointe.

Aysel and Roman plan to visit McGreavy Correctional Facility and then go camping for a night. Roman continues to be puzzled as to why Aysel wants to see her father. When things don't work out at the facility, Aysel and Roman spend the night at a muddy campground, eating hotdogs and drinking red wine. During their night together, Roman kisses her and holds her in his arms, making Aysel finally recognize that she no longer wants to die. Roman tells her that this shouldn't change anything, that he needs to remember Madison and she needs to remember her reasons for wanting to kill herself. It is her reasons that stop Aysel. She's afraid that if she tells Roman her reasons for wanting to commit suicide he will agree that she has to die.

Aysel now realizes that her relationship with Roman has changed her perspective. "He's no longer the person I want to die with; he's the person I want to be alive with." But can Aysel give Roman a reason to live, can she do for Roman what he did for her?

Discussion

My Heart and other Black Holes is a deeply moving novel that portrays teen depression and suicide in a way that is intensely realistic. The message is one of hope, that no matter how dark the depression may be, it is possible to overcome the sadness. My Heart and other Black Holes portrays that difficult, sinuous journey out of darkness and into hope.

Warga offers readers two teens who are contemplating suicide as a result of  life-changing events they have experienced. Both Roman and Aysel have withdrawn from life despite both having things in life that they deeply love. In Roman's case, his guilt doesn't allow him to pursue the things he enjoys; he has stopped playing basketball which he excelled at, stopped training with another athlete and abandoned his friends. Roman's guilt tells him he deserves to die.

For Aysel, her father's incarceration leaves her feeling unmoored and deeply depressed; she's now living with her mother whom she does not feel close to.  She's angry and jealous of her younger sister, Georgia who seems to fly though life. Aysel doesn't do her job at the call center and she avoids participating in class, even in physics which she loves. Her father's crime has changed Aysel's perception of herself and those around her. Aysel believes she will turn out like her father. Suicide is the preventative to that happening.  "Without me, my mom won't have to stay up at night, worrying that the criminal gene, the murderer gene, was passed to me and that any day now, I'm going to blow up the school or something awful like that... I want to say that I know for sure that I'm different from my dad...But I'm not sure. Maybe the sadness comes just before the insanity...All I know is that I'm not going to stick around and find out if I become a monster like my dad."

It is this theme of perception or as Aysel describes it, perspective, and how our perspective affects how we live our lives, that dominates the novel. Aysel's perception of herself and others is deeply distorted at the beginning of the novel but undergoes a significant change throughout the novel. Although in the beginning of the novel,  she acknowledges that her mother used to look at her "with a combination of love and longing" before her father's crime, she now believes her mother views her not with love but with suspicion. "She'd never say it, but I am an intruder in their happy home. An infestation. I've gone from being a bruise to an open festering wound." Aysel also believes those around her do not like her, that she inspires "the desire to wash their hands clean".  At school she states "...I can hear their whispered insults, but it all sounds like a mumble of hisses to me..." Aysel admits that although she lost most of her friends after what her father did, her best friend, Anna Stevens stuck by her but Aysel pushed her away because it was for Anna's own good.  She describes Mr. Palmer, her boss at TMC as speaking to her like she's "a stray mutt raiding his garbage can."

Roman begins to pull Aysel out of herself because she notices that despite his handsome, boy-next-door good looks, he is wrapped in grief. In physics class, Mr. Scott asks his students about Einstein's Theory of Relativity. After pressing Aysel she responds, "Doesn't it have to do with how our perception of things can't always be trusted?" - a foreshadowing of what Aysel will come to realize about her own life and Roman's life too. After giving a brief description of Einstein's theory, Aysel states that time isn't constant and that "it's all about the perception of the observer."  This causes Aysel to think about the last few weeks of her life since she met Roman and they made the decision to die together. "Ever since I met Roman and made the Crestville Pointe jump plan, time has flown by. I want to believe that the change has nothing to do with Roman. That maybe time just moves the quickest at the end...I know everything is close to being gone forever, so my desire to rush it is a little less."

This leads to Aysel beginning to try to savour moments that she won't experience again, like eating her granola bars slowly so she can taste the chocolate chips, tasting the citrus in her orange juice, or doing extra practice problems in physics because she loves it so much.  However, this begins to have the opposite effect in that it slowly awakens in Aysel the desire to live.

What ultimately changes Aysel's perspective on life is her trip with Roman to see her father. On the drive to McGreavy, Roman does a sketch of Aysel using charcoal pencil. After visiting the correctional facility, while camping, Roman admits that he cares about the things that Aysel cares about and he knows he's made her happy. But Roman insists that this perception isn't real, because (their) "happiness is fake, it's fleeting." and they need to remember their reasons (for wanting to die).

But Aysel knows that their changing perceptions are important and have made a difference - at least to her. Meeting Roman has changed her.

"But maybe meeting Roman has helped me to understand myself better. Yes, I'm broken. And yes, he's broken. But the more we talk about it, the more we share our sadness, the more I start to believe that there could be a chance to fix us, a chance that we could save each other."

"Everything used to seem so final, inevitable, predestined.But now I'm starting to believe that life may have more surprises in store than I ever realized. Maybe it's all relative, not just light and time like Einstein theorized, but everything. Like life can seem awful and unfixable until the universe shifts a little and the observation point is altered, and then suddenly, everything seems more bearable."

When Aysel looks at the drawing Roman did of her, she is astonished because the drawing shows her as she could be. "The girl I'm staring at is not me, but she is me. Her large eyes are focused away from the viewer, but there's something in them I don't immediately recognize: hope. Her posture looks straighter than mine, like she's stronger, more resilient."

Roman's drawing gives Aysel the hope she needs to grasp on to and so she takes the drawing as a keepsake. "I need it to remind myself that I can be this girl, that this girl is inside of me. This hopeful, strong person."Aysel becomes that strong person, the person that Roman sees and she repays him by saving his life. Later, Roman admits that he drew the picture "To try and show you the person I see when I look at you, not the person you seemed to think you were."

Aysel's change in perspective is also demonstrated by her relationship with her mother and sister.  Her distorted view of how her mother views her undergoes a transformation by the end of the novel. When Aysel tells her mother that she's not going to turn out like her father despite the fact that she is sad all the time, her mother admits that she did not know how to talk to her about what happened. That she was afraid to say and do the wrong thing. Aysel's mother asks her to open up and talk to her about her sadness, demonstrating that she does not share Aysel's earlier perception that she would become like her father.

Aysel's perspective about Georgia, the stepsister who by Aysel's reckoning she hasn't "had a real conversation with in about two years" is also distorted. At the beginning of the novel she describes her sister as "not having the time to worship anyone other than herself" and as someone who "loves the sound of her own voice."  She describes her stepsister as being like the sun while she is "like the bumpy, brooding moon." But on the morning of the snow day, Aysel realizes that perhaps her mother, Georgia and Mike actually do care about her when she overhears their conversation at breakfast. Later on Tyler tries to convince Aysel that her step-sister really does care about her.

One of the strengths of this novel is how Warga describes what it feels like to be depressed. Aysel's depression is personified by a black slug - an image that is both ugly and scary. Aysel describes what she's feeling as though something is wrong inside her. "I bet if you cut open my stomach, the black slug of depression would slide out."  The black slug is something that "devours any happy thoughts I allow myself".  She claims she hasn't cried since she was ten. "I think it's because the black slug sucks up any of my potential tears." But as her perspective on living changes, Aysel wishes that the black slug in her didn't exist.

One unique strength of this novel is how the author has incorporated her knowledge of science and specifically Einstein's Theory of Relativity into the story line. It is an interesting facet to this novel because it helps develop the theme of perception and time.

My Heart and Other Black Holes is an outstanding piece of realistic fiction that is deeply emotional in its portrayal of depression and suicide. Warga's writing will resonate with teens and adult readers alike. We all know someone who has contemplated suicide, maybe someone who has committed suicide, someone who is depressed or deeply sad. We can change the conversation about mental health issues especially when it comes to young people, by reaching out to one another when we see someone struggling. Aysel and Roman's families recognized that they were struggling but were unable to move forward and help them.

Jasmine Warga writes that she wrote My Heart and Other Black Holes because of the death of a friend and the writing allowed her to process what she was feeling. Warga writes in her Author's Note at the back that, "My Heart and Other Black Holes has always been a story about the people who understand you, all of you, even the scariest and weirdest parts of you. It is about those people who come into your life when you least expect it, in the strangest of ways, and change everything -- it is about the importance of letting those people in, of opening up to them. It is about the people in your life who help you to see yourself differently and the true power of human connection."

In the words of Aysel, "I want you to live for you because I know there's so much more waiting for you. There's so much more for you to discover and experience. And you deserve it, you might not think you do, but you do. I'm here to tell you that you deserve it." 

Amen.

Book Details:
My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga
New York: Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers     2015
302 pp. 

Enders by Lissa Price

Enders is the sequel to Lissa Price's debut novel, Starters.

Despite taking down Prime Destinations, the Old Man lives on. He can talk to Callie via the chip in the back of her head.
"It was like a phone the Old Man could call anytime, a phone I had to answer and could never disconnect. It was the Old Man's direct line to me, Callie Woodland."

Callie now lives in the home of  the Ender, Helena, who had rented her and had used her body to try to assassinate Senator Harrison in order to stop the Old Man. Her younger brother, Tyler, now fully recovered, and a friend, Michael live in the guest house. Tyler tells Callie that he and Michael are going to get him new shoes at the mall.

Callie agrees to meet them at the mall after she takes sandwiches to the starving Starters in an old office building that had been home for Michael, Tyler and Florina when Callie was being rented out. When she arrives at the building, the sandwiches are stolen from her by a young Starter.

Her mission to feed the Starters a failure, Callie arrives early at the mall and heads to the food court where she's to meet Michael and Tyler. Suddenly Callie begins hearing the Old Man's voice in her head. The Old Man directs Callie's attention to a Starter that Callie knew, named Reece. Callie's guardian, Lauren, had rented Reece's body to search for her grandson. Callie knows Reece doesn't know her but she attempts to get her attention since she sees that Reece is being followed by an Ender with a silver animal tattoo. Reece, not recognizing Callie, walks away and in an attempt to flee the Ender, runs towards the shoe store where Michael and Tyler are shopping. She never makes it, exploding before reaching the store, as Callie is taken down and protected by a dark-haired Starter with piercing eyes. The Old Man tells Callie that although she destroyed the body bank and Prime Destinations, he has other facilities and can still access any chip. He can turn these into weapons just as he did with Reece.

Callie contacts Senator Bohn who helped her take down Prime Destinations with an idea of how to track down the Old Man. After contacting her guardian, Lauren, Callie goes to meet Blake, the Senator Harrison's grandson, who has been attempting to contact her. Callie decides to reveal to Blake about the chip implants, how he was kidnapped and implanted and that his body was used by the head of Prime, the Old Man. She explains that the Old Man has an electronic mask and an artificial voice to disguise himself. Callie warns Blake to avoid the Old Man and to ask his grandfather about what really happened to him.

Callie, Senator Bohn who is in charge of the Congressional investigation of Prime Destinations, and Lauren are unsuccessful in their attempt to access the computers at Institution 37, where Callie was once imprisoned. The Old Man once again contacts Callie via her chip and warns her that if she does not cooperate he will harm Michael and her brother Tyler.  He also reveals that Tyler has been implanted with a chip.The Old Man instructs Callie to drive to an unknown location but she never makes it. Instead she is kidnapped by the Starter who saved her in the mall explosion. The Starter reveals himself as Hyden, the son of the Old Man. Callie deduces that the Old Man must be a Middle, one of the rare middle-aged who survived due to vaccination. Hyden's specially designed SUV blocks access to her chip, providing a place to be safe.

Callie learns that she is the only Metal (a Starter who has a chip implanted) whose chip has been altered so that she can kill when someone is inside her head. She is also able to retain her self-awareness, unlike other Metals who have no idea what happens to them when they are being used. Hyden tells Callie that both he and his father, whose name is Brockman, developed the mind-body transfer technology but while he wanted to use it for good, his father was only intent upon selling the technology to the highest foreign bidder.

Hyden informs Callie that access to the Metal's chips can be prevented at either high altitudes or if they go far enough underground.  To that end, Hyden arranges for Michael and Callie's brother, Tyler to be taken to his private mountain chalet where they cannot be tracked by his father. At the same time, he takes Callie to his secret lab which is located underground. There she finds Redmond, an Ender who had altered her chip in the first novel and who had gone missing.

Callie wants the chip removed from her head but Hyden tells her it is not possible and that all attempts to remove the chip have met with failure. After experiencing another of Helena's memories in her head, Callie tells Hyden that they should find as many of the other Metals as possible and bring them back to his lab so that Brockman will not be able to capture and sell them.

Using a scanner, Callie, Hyden and his bodyguard, Ernie (a Middle), begin locating and picking up Metals. Soon they have many Metals with various skills living in a dorm in the lab complex, helping out making meals, cleaning and doing repairs. During this time Callie learns that Hyden has suffered nerve damage as a result of an accident and cannot bear to be touched. The mind-body transfer technology was something he hoped would help him. It is because of this pain that after taking in one of the Metals, Hyden transfers into the other boy's body, revealing to Callie that he too has a chip.

Soon after this, Michael contacts Callie and she and Hyden travel to pick him up. However, while looking for Michael, Callie hears her father's voice in her head. Although Hyden insists that the voice she heard was not her father but was in fact his father, Callie holds hope that he might still be alive. In order to find out, Callie and Hyden go to the Hall of Records and learn that he is dead. At the Hall, Brockman contacts Callie where he demonstrates to her that he is learning how to control her body by making her pinky move. Hyden fights off a hijacked Metal and they manage to cut off Brockman and recover the Metal, taking her to Hyden's lab.

Hyden's lab is attacked and the Metals are all captured except for Hyden, Callie and Michael. Ernie and Redmond are also spared. They learn from a dying Ender that Brockman was responsible for the attack and that he is planning to sell the Metals to the richest Enders in the world, in ten days time. Can Callie rescue the Metals from a terrible fate and stop Brockman in his quest to own the technology and sell it to the highest bidder?

Discussion:

Enders is an fitting conclusion to Lissa Price's first novel, Starters, neatly tying up all the loose ends from the first novel. Callie, who brought down Prime Directions in the first novel, is determined to find a way to rid herself of the chip and get away from the Old Man. But as she discovers more about herself and the two men who designed the mind-body transfer technology, it becomes apparent that she has to stop him from selling the technology to other governments who will have no qualms about using it against America.

Although not as interesting as Starters, Enders strong point is the revelations at the end of the novel. Price does a great job holding her reader's interest, gradually revealing more of the backstory behind Hyden and Brockman, developing the mystery surrounding her father and utilizing many plot twists in the final chapters. However, readers will be somewhat disappointed at how quickly the resolution to the novel occurs. Callie gaining control of her chip simply happens, just like that, diffusing the climax to the story and creating a feeling of the novel rushing to quickly to its resolution.

Enders is weak on characterization as the story is driven by the action in the novel. There's no real depth to the characters, except for Callie who is presented as a girl just wishing for a normal life with her brother Tyler but who comes to realize that she needs to keep fighting for those who have been implanted with this technology against their will. Michael who was a significant character in Starters, is a minor character in this novel. Callie's romantic relationship with Hyden seems bizarre given his lies and manipulation of just about everyone around him. Callie seemed to completely forget the bond she had with Michael.

Price only touches on the implications of biotechnology for individuals and society in a superficial way near the end of novel when Callie is taken over by a creepy Ender. Although what he makes her do is vividly described, the reader doesn't get a sense of what Callie's feeling as she loses her ability to control her actions in front of a gallery of old men,  because she doesn't tell us. This was a great opportunity for Price to demonstrate how such technology impacts bodily autonomy and the integrity of human beings if they are controlled by others.

It is puzzling as to why Price titled this novel Enders, since most of the story does not directly involve Enders, except at the conclusion of the novel when it is the Enders who are the ones interested in the Metals. It isn't even an Ender who is the villain in the novel, but a Middle. And it is Metals who are the prime focus of the novel. As a result, it would have been more accurate to have titled  the novel Metals. It's unfortunate that Price didn't use a different circuitry design similar to the cover of the first novel. The cover of Starters was more in line with the theme of the duology.

Overall though, Enders is a good conclusion to a duology with a very unique and interesting premise. These novels will appeal to those who enjoyed The Adoration of Jenna Fox and Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series which also explore the impact of biotechnology on human identity.

Book Details:
Enders by Lissa Price
New York: Ember, an imprint of Random House    2014
272 pp.

Better Than Perfect by Melissa Kantor

Better Than Perfect is a story about a girl whose perfect life is not so perfect for her. It's about a girl beginning to discover just who she really is and what she might want out of life. And it's not the perfect life she has lined up for herself.

Synopsis

Juliet Newman's life has turned upside down with the separation of her parents. Her perfect family is no more. Her life plan was to ace the SAT and attend Harvard early action with her handsome boyfriend, Jason Robinson. But things in Juliet's life changed very quickly in June when her father announced he was leaving. 

Since that time, neither Juliet nor her mother have been doing well. Juliet scored poorly on her June SATs, taken the week after her father's big announcement. And her biggest support, Jason, is leaving for a holiday in France with his family. Jason's mother, Grace, asked Juliet if she wanted to travel with them, but Juliet cannot give up her coveted internship at Children United. Meanwhile her only sibling, her older brother, Oliver, who is staying at Yale for the summer, has gone camping for the week. And Juliet has no idea if her father intends on keeping the reservation for the house they usually rent in Maine for the summer.

At home Juliet's mother often sleeps late and drinks in the evenings. Her mother has always had lots of prescription drugs, for insomnia, for her back and even to calm her when she did presentations at charity functions. Now Juliet is concerned about all the prescription bottles on her mother's night table. On Bad Days Juliet's mother doesn't make it out of bed and Juliet finds herself taking on the role of mom. Good Days find Juliet's mom making plans to return to the workforce or planning to redecorate the house.

Sophia Taylor, Juliet's best friend, helps her study for the SATs and this leads Juliet to stay over at her friends home one night. When Juliet returns the next day, she finds her mother bloody and unconscious on the bathroom floor surrounded by pills. Juliet does not know whether her mother attempted suicide or if she accidentally overdosed.

At the hospital Juliet learns from her father that her mother has been abusing prescription drugs and mixing them with alcohol for some time. This revelation and seeing her mother in restraints make Juliet angry at her father and sad for her mother. Refusing her father's offer to return to his new home, Juliet drives to the Milltown Country Club where Sofia is working. However, in her frazzled state of mind, Juliet cuts off a van containing a family of musicians who are arriving for a gig at the country club. As a result of this accident, Juliet meets black haired, blue-eyed Declan Brennan, guitarist for the band, The Clovers, which also includes Declan's younger brother, Danny, his sister Sinead and his cousin Sean. After the concert in a moment of passion, Juliet and Declan impulsively hook-up, something Juliet regrets and feels intensely guilty about since she has been dating Jason for four years.

In the morning she meets her Aunt Kathy who has arrived from Portland Oregon. Kathy attempts to explain to Juliet her mother's situation, reiterating that she was abusing alcohol and prescription drugs not because Juliet's dad left her but because she has been unhappy for a long time. Kathy explains that her mother will have to go into a long-term facility for treatment and that she should consider moving back to Oregon with her. During her aunt's stay, life goes on for Juliet. She continues working at Children United, working on her SAT homework and seeing her SAT tutor. Juliet decides to turn down both Kathy's request to return to Oregon with her and her father's offer to live with him in New York and instead chooses to move in with her Jason's family.

Life is further complicated for Juliet when Declan shows up at Milltown High the first day of class. Attracted to him, but feeling guilty for cheating on Jason, Juliet tries to ignore Declan but Sophia, also attracted to him, draws Declan into their circle of friends. When she does finally talk to Declan she tells him what happened was a mistake.

Juliet goes to see her mother in the hospital, but the visit is upsetting because her mother is still very medicated and the woman she sees is nothing like the mother she remembers.  After the visit Juliet begins to think more deeply about her life and wonders why everything has to be "perfect".  After The Clovers have a successful gig at the Coffeehouse, they are offered the Friday night spot. Needing a new lead singer because Sinead has to travel to Boston every weekend in starting in January, Juliet is asked to join the band.

After rewriting the SAT Juliet seriously considers joining the Clovers, something Jason does not approve of. But when Juliet also suggests they not attend Harvard next year, Jason becomes concerned. Jason doesn't understand Juliet's desire not to attend Harvard because Harvard is their "future". After this Juliet decides to rehearse with the Clovers even though it will mean being around Declan. Juliet loves being in the band but her first gig with them doesn't happen after Sean and Danny are in a car accident, leaving Danny seriously injured.

As Juliet struggles to make sense of her life, Jason struggles to understand the changes in Juliet. Although Juliet continues along the path she has planned, studying to improve her Latin scores, she becomes increasingly disillusioned with her life. Her mother's return home and the changes in her mother and their relationship, as well as revelations about her parents by Oliver, lead Juliet to begin to make different choices from what she and Jason planned. Juliet's ambivalence towards Harvard continues even after she and Jason are accepted to Harvard early action. Being perfect seems to mean just doing what everyone expects of you. But is that what Juliet really wants for her life?


Discussion

Better Than Perfect focuses on the effect family expectations can have on people, particularly if those expectations do not jive with what that person wants for their life. Juliet comes from a family where everything has to be perfect. Her boyfriend, Jason's family is much the same. They have both been raised that to be the best at everything is the way to be happy. Yet Juliet has seen that in her family this has not brought happiness to her parents. "Out my back window I could see the pool. The pool guy, the gardener, the housekeeper...my house was its own little economy. All these people working so hard to make everything clean and pretty and well manicured. And with all that, my parents still hadn't been able to be happy together."

Being perfect hasn't brought Juliet the happiness she thought it would either. She has a perfect SAT and an early admission to Harvard. But she has not taken the time along the way to enjoy life. "Had I ever just gone home from school and hung out? I tried to remember, but I couldn't really remember anyone in my family just hanging out. We were all always doing something. Squash. Piano. Homework. Planning a vacation. Packing for a vacation. Unpacking from a vacation. Running errands. Making reservations. Organizing play dates. Soccer. Little League..."

Eventually Oliver reveals to Juliet that while their family was trying to be perfect, none of them were really happy. "Dad was trying to make all this money. Mom was trying to have the perfect family. I was trying to be the perfect student. You were trying to be the perfect student. But was anyone happy? Apparently not." 

Juliet comes to realize that if she continues to do what everyone expects of her she will never be happy. "There'd be graduate school and a job and a career and promotions. In a horrifying waking nightmare, I saw Jason and my parents and all my future classmates and colleagues and mentors and bosses telling me to keep doing something I hated doing because someday I would be glad I had done it." 

This leads her to tell her mother "And I know I'm disappointing you and Dad and everyone, but I feel like if I keep doing what I'm doing, I'm just going to be unhappy forever."  Juliet's mother understands because this is exactly what did happen to her. Her mother's quiet acceptance of what Juliet feels empowers her to break up with Jason. Juliet's relationship with Jason mirrors her parent's relationship. Like her parents, Juliet and Jason gradually grow apart but unlike her parents this is the result of being young and maturing. Juliet recognizes that she has different goals in life and that fitting into family expectations is not as important to her as it is to Jason. Juliet recognizes this and breaks off the relationship so that she doesn't end up like her parents.


One of the strengths of this novel is its portrayal of the effects of marriage breakdown on older children. We often assume teenagers will be able to cope with separation and divorce easier than younger children, but as Kantor's portrayal of Juliet's family breakdown demonstrates, teens can feel confusion, alienation, anxiety and deep anger. They may think they understand what has happened but often they do not. What happens to Juliet's family raises some hard questions especially around blame. Juliet at first blames her father for leaving but when she comes to know more about her parent's relationship she starts to realize that it was more complicated than she was aware of. Juliet's father tells her that he and Juliet's mother simply grew apart, not a fully honest answer considering what eventually was revealed. But is growing apart a reason for divorce? Should one person get to be happy at the expense of everyone else in the family?

Among the weaknesses in Better Than Perfect are the portrayal of casual sex without any consequences and also the long term sexual relationship Juliet and Jason have, also without seemingly any emotional or physical consequences. 

Although the situations of the characters in this novel, wealthy and leading a very priviledged life are not familiar to most teens, their struggle to make their own choices and forge their own path will resonate. Most young people would love the opportunity to attend Harvard and to live in a family wealthy enough to afford cars, gardeners and pool cleaners. This makes Juliet's dissatisfaction with her life seem shallow. However, as is often the case, being wealthy does not guarantee happiness.

Overall, Better Than Perfect is well written and will appeal to those readers interested in novels about high school and relationships and coming of age.

Book Details:
Better Than Perfect by Melissa Kantor
New York: HarperTeen     2015
324 pp.