Welcome to very first (of many) co-reviews featuring me, YA Fabulous! proprietor and one of my book-loving, endlessly-peer-pressured-into-doing-book-discussions-and-co-reviews friends. Today I’m sharing my book discussion of Peeps (also known as Parasite Positive) by Scott Westerfeld with Susan. I trust her taste implicitly—and I’m blackmailing her with promises of steamy fanfiction to be here. But who needs pesky facts? Onward!

Scott Westerfeld is a household name in the kidlitosphere. I see his books reviewed consistently throughout various blogs and his accomplishments in the field of YA science fiction are no small feat. I know him best for his trilogy that begins with Uglies but it’s safe to say his other work is just as well-loved. When John Scalzi, Hugo award winning and genre criticism/commentary writer says you’re the bomb, it’s pretty much a done deal.

I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again: The most significant SF writer right now is Scott Westerfeld, whom it seems most adult science fiction fans still have not read and indeed barely know exists. In a sane world, Westerfeld would be a hero to adult science fiction readers, because he’s pretty much single-handedly flown the flag for science fiction to teenagers, thus saving the genre’s bacon for another 20 years.

Because I have never been steered wrong by John Scalzi, it pains me to admit that before Susan suggested this book to me, I hadn’t read a single word Scott Westerfeld had written which probably kicks my YA credentials right in the balls. Shameful.

If you haven’t read Peeps/Parasite Positive and plan to in the future as part of your completion fantasy of reading every YA vampire novel available, turn back now! This co-review is full of spoilers. Otherwise, follow the jump for our discussion. Read the rest of this entry »

I cannot explain why I seek out books with spiritual themes or books that deal with tough religious issues. My best guess is that I’m trying to work out my frustration at the type of hurtful religion I grew up with through literature. I haven’t found a book that deals with it in the way I need (Looking for Alaska is the winner so far). This book is getting there but doesn’t hit the mark. I gave in and bought this because the religious commune seemed familiar to me in the sense that I grew up in an area where a lot of these behaviors were simply seen as the norm. Not that my hometown was a whack job religious commune; I made it out without hatching an escape tempt.

At Mount Blessing, Agnes strives for sainthood while her best friend Honey wants to be free from all the restrictions the leader of the commune, Emmanuel, has set for his people. Agnes sees them as the chance to make her a better person, a more spiritual being, while Honey finds them ridiculous and restricting. When Agnes’s grandmother shows up for a surprise visit that causes serious problems within the family and a terrible accident throws everything into chaos, both Honey and Agnes find their friendship strained and their faith isn’t doing too hot, either. They leave the commune for the world beyond and not a moment too soon for me because I was 100% freaked out by that point.

Here’s the thing: I was predisposed to dislike Agnes. She is about as brainwashed as you can get and still have enough independent thought to move around on your own steam, even if that steam is being used in varied and exciting ways to kill herself in the slowest, most painful and also ignorant way possible. It is disturbing from the beginning and it didn’t get any easier as she clung to all the unhealthy habits she had adopted in order to reach the level of a saint. Wonderful job for a girl. Screw being as skinny Miley Cyrus! I have a better impossible goal in mind. It left my reading awkward. How do you get angry at a girl who does things because she’s been raised to think they’re acceptable and useful? All the fault is external—Emmanuel (yawn) and Agnes’s parents (characterization so weak you could see through them). The anger at her obliviousness is right there for you to reach out and grab so perhaps you can smack her with it, but I was just left feeling guilty for wanting to. Her adamant and constant proselytizing to Honey and her younger brother was so tiring.

I gambled on this story because it deals a favorite subject: sniping fanaticism. The message about religious extremism was heavy; I was afraid it would be too over the top and lose me because there’s having logical issues with faith and then there’s beating up on faith because you don’t like it—I did a lot of that in my younger days before I developed better cognitive abilities to realize I was being an asshole. Luckily, the story steps clear away from “religion is evil!” which is good.

I liked it despite the sign posts planted in the narrative telling the reader exactly what was going to happen. Suspense? Tension? This books has not heard of them! They are not B.F.F. The foreshadowing might as well have walked up and punched me in the face. I can overlook those things; they’re really hard to do well. My real issue with the book was the cop-out climax to the road trip.

Here’s the thing about shady moral issues: it’s cheating to drag out a moral issue and then skimp on the resolution to that moral issue with sleight of hand. I had this same problem with the end of Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper, which was a really good book up until the last two chapters where it became a hackneyed attempt at actually following through on the promise it spent an a few hundred pages building up to, magically transformed into a Lifetime Movie Event. Not that I have anything against Lifetime Movies per se, but so many of them smack of laziness. It’s all wish-fulfillment and it has a shiny bow that likes to get stuck to your brain. Tidy endings are fine as long as an author makes it feel natural and not just the quickest route out of writing something difficult. It feels fake and forced I can’t begin to imagine myself out of that. Perhaps that’s a talent I will develop later.

The other problem I had with this book was the same problem I had with Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature — the villains. Most of the time I think it’s a mistake to make a villain out of someone using faith as a weapon because it never ends well; it’s too hard to make them three-dimensional. Preacher villains were old oh, thirty years ago. Their time has passed. They’re done! Curtains. The end. Be seeing you, friend, and please do not dip into the collection plate on your way out the door. The villains here were boring, devices for a heavy-handed message about control and greed with no redemptive human traits. Some might say, “Renay, they were meant to be the bad guys! They’re distorting religion and controlling people for their own pleasure! Why are you so picky?” I’m picky because it’s not dynamic. So the leaders do awful things to kids and take money and partake in hypocritical behavior—all bad things. Where are the good things, the things that make people like Agnes’s parents believe in them? All those people are there for a reason. I drew a huge blank on that. They weren’t real beyond being the obligatory evil dudes and the impact was lost for me. Villains can be interesting and make the reader conflicted (hello, Final Fantasy XII), but not if the human element is missing. They can’t be cardboard. They have to be people with fears and dreams and reasons that we see and, “hey, free bling from ignorant, sheep-like people.” isn’t cutting it for me anymore. It’s become cliché.

Also, the butterfly thing was a little pasted on. Just a little.

I did like Honey and Agnes as friends. The friendship aspect was spot-on. It was just unpredictable enough, Honey just rude enough and Agnes just obtuse enough to make me wonder how their relationship was going to be resolved (although by the half-way mark I had it figured). This story benefited from the plot making the friendship deeper without it feeling too sentimental. No tissues here, but warm fuzzies are a possibility.

I liked it; I’m glad I read it. It’s not the book I needed personally and I spent way too much time writing revisionist fanfiction of it while reading (oops). Still! Still. Worth it.

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Rachel Cohn and David Levithan team up again after their first successful collaboration, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. While the aforementioned title has many of the same elements, Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List is a different kind of emotional journey between two teens. The dual narrators Infinite Playlist boasted make a return here in the form of multiple narrators with Cohn and Levithan switching off between perspectives, providing an in-depth look at Naomi and Ely from side characters.

Naomi and Ely grew up across the hall from each other in a New York City apartment complex. Best friends from childhood even after surviving tough problems within their families, Naomi loves Ely loves Naomi, with one catch—Naomi is also in love with Ely likes kissing boys way more than girls.

To protect their friendship, they create a No Kiss List, adding boys that meet both their taste to it so that any dramatic problems will be avoided. The story is titled for this list, even though what causes the rift in Naomi and Ely’s friendship, leading them both on a path to self-discovery is someone not on the list at all. It never occurred to Naomi to add Bruce the Second to the list so Ely wouldn’t kiss him.

After all, Bruce the Second is Naomi’s boyfriend.

The No Kiss List in the title and at the heart of this story at plays both a large and small role at once. The list works two ways; for Ely, its purpose is the put their friendship first by staying away from guys they might both like to prevent problems. For Naomi, its purpose is to keep boys Naomi thinks might take Ely away from her at a distance, to perpetuate the hope Naomi holds that one day Ely will love her back the same way she loves him. She doesn’t need the list to keep away guys for herself as Ely does, because for her, Ely is it, even as she strings along guy after guy waiting for Ely to finally realize that he loves her back—regardless of his sexuality.

This story, narrated by several characters, centers on friendship and romantic love and is played out between Naomi and Ely and their friends. There’s Bruce the First, with his impossible crush on Naomi, Ely’s love for Bruce the Second and the love he gets back, even though Bruce the Second didn’t think he was gay. Gabriel, the doorman of the apartment Naomi and Ely live in was on the No Kiss List, but once Ely has betrayed Naomi by kissing her boyfriend, does the No Kiss List even matter? Ultimately it becomes about how friendships and relationships are defined by different people, what lengths some people will go to place a friendship at the heart of their lives to the detriment of everything else and how they change as we grow. The idea of a friendship so close that romantic love is impossible—can a friendship like that survive as teens turn to adults?

Cohn and Levithan address how the concept of best friend that is forever and ever to the inclusion of other people and loves is inherently flawed. They take two teenagers and show how differently this question can be answered depending on perspectives, and tackle the sticky side of how trust in all relationship works and how badly those relationships can be broken if that trust is shaken. Although the book is about breaking up and making up, it’s also about being honest and open with everyone.

I’m just sort of feeling a happy glow. This is a book I would have wanted when I was a teenager—how to deal with loving friends who are gay and will never love you back the right way. It would have been so validating, why did the YA suck so much when I was a teen. Damn you, R.L. Stine! I’m starting to wonder if the gay boy/straight girl thing is going to become a trend—I’ve seen other books that follow the pattern. I spent most of the novel driven crazy by how much I loved the characters but how much I hated Naomi’s symbol habit as a code for her and Ely signing to one another. It works but damn if it doesn’t drive me up the wall. I found the title funny because it really has nothing to do with the novel after the few few chapters except as a reference to a friendship strained by Ely kissing Naomi’s boyfriend.

However, Orbit is not Juicy Fruit, cover guys! WHAT IS UP? Perhaps Orbit hasn’t reached critical cultural mass yet.

Back in April, there were rumors of a movie with Hayden Panettiere at the helm and Ely and Bruce the Second still uncast, leaving me unable to squee properly. I was nervous about it then and am also nervous now, and wonder if it’s still even a possibility. I don’t know how well Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist did in theaters and don’t rightly know if the success of that movie would stop this one from getting a green light, and I can’t tell if Panettiere is attached to the project anymore. Considering that her star might be dimming because Heroes has started to suck big balls, maybe I should stomp on my hopes and dreams. This is the one I would go to see because fuck, boys making out? ON A GIANT SCREEN? I would camp out for a triple feature, pay for three tickets and watch it over and over and over. I am that hard up for touching romance and hot boy-on-boy action and I am not afraid to say so.

Also, there is so much talk about cock in this book. HOW DID IT GET PUBLISHED. I am so jealous of teens these days, where were these things when I was a teen. *sobs into hands*

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I have family issues, which is what drew me to add this book to my reading list. Ruby’s troubles, punctuated by being abandoned by her mother, only begin when she has to shift her entire life from her tiny house with its built-in independence to the house her estranged sister lives in with her husband. New school, new home, new people she doesn’t need, no way, no how, and there’s the fine print that she has to start considering other people’s feelings that she doesn’t notice until it’s too late. The latter was the only bit of subtlety that stayed relatively subtle (you know, how that subtle thing is supposed to go) and worked for me. This story should have been right up my alley. Abandonment is something I love to read about—the trials, learning to trust, recovery—but Lock and Key failed for me.

I’ve said it before and I’ll likely say it again that even bad Dessen is good Dessen, because I think she has an excellent ability to write teen girls as they are instead of writing teen girls that only exist on the surface. Ruby was interesting enough, but when I think back to her I remember nothing that makes her stand out. Ruby never made the jump for me. She was too empty. One thing I love about the narrators in Dessen’s books is that they have this identity that shapes how they handle their problems, but Ruby doesn’t have that for me. She’s a good person to travel through the story with, but what shocked me is that it felt like she was the boat for the reader to pass through the book on rather than someone fully formed the reader could travel with. Shockingly, for the first time I found the male leads more fleshed out and interesting than the main character—in other books I’ve had problems with vague love interests and perfection. That was an interesting change and while it gave me half of what I wanted, I missed connecting.

I’m at the point where I’m not sure it’s the books—I think it’s me. Just Listen is in the place for me and I keep going into Dessen’s work hoping to be blown away by everything in the book that’s not being said, because Just Listen did that so well. I think the points are too spelled out in Lock and Key. There’s no joy in the discovery of something just dropped into the text for the reader to find and discover. The path is laid out from the beginning of the story—I even predicted how it would end and this is petty of me, but it bothers me when I do that. I don’t like paint by numbers fiction; seriously, I’m not that clever. If I’m predicting endings, something is amiss!

It’s readable and intriguing enough to finish but the more Dessen I read that doesn’t employ all the great writing techniques that Just Listen had the more I think I won’t become one of the hardcore fangirls that I wanted to be because it sounded so awesome. Seriously, after Just Listen I was prepared to buy the concrete for the extra-super-size pedestal for her to stand on but I just haven’t been that overwhelmed by her other work. Lock and Key suffered from spelling shit out that didn’t need to be spelled out. This is probably just my persnickety requirement of all fiction needing to juggle chainsaws for me to be duly impressed.

Even then, the teen girls in Dessen’s work continue to shine brighter than a lot of the female characters I read elsewhere, so that’s a plus. Now if I could only get my fondest wish and have Dessen cross the streams into SF/F.

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