"Proxy" by Alex London

Every once in a while, you find a really good phrase in this book, like "It reminded him of all the other beatings he'd ever taken, his memory filled with the echo of wounds."  Unfortunately, those are few and far between.  I tried to find the parts of this book that make it so popular.  Teens love it.  But I have to say, I felt like I was slogging through it, more focused on what was wrong than what was right.  Let's start with the writing.  It's very inconsistent.  There are phrases like the one above, and really lame, unrealistic dialog.  There is first person, third person and who knows what kind of narration.  It starts with the voices separated by chapters -- first, the voice of Knox, then, the voice of Syd.  As their lives cross, however, their voices do, too.  Next thing you know, the perspective changes every paragraph, with that of other characters (such as Egan and Marie) thrown in for good measure.  Then, there are the themes.  I get why teens like them.  There is a good deal of "put upon" teen angst, along with a lot of "us against the overlords" kind of thing, but, in contrast with other popular post-apocalyptic/dystopian fiction, this just doesn't hold up.  For one thing, it feels dated.  One of the main themes is reminiscent of the Occupy Wall Street/We are the 99% movement.  "Corporations bad" and technology, feeding on every capitalistic action we take, is worse.  The point is hammered (and hammered, and battered) in, over and over again, until you just don't care.  And, I'm sorry, Occupy Wall Street is so 2011.  Then, there is the blatant racism, bigotry, etc.  Syd is constantly treated a certain way, and hassled (along the lines of the F word -- the other F word), because he is gay.  He is hassled for being brown-skinned.  His friend is hassled for being Jewish.  Yes, racism still exists today.  Yes, there is a backlash to the openess we are seeing in society these days, openly discussing those things that used to be taboo.  But this novel supposedly takes place in the way, way future.  Given where we are now, and the predictions of race mixing in the coming years, and the perceptions of the Millennials about race and gender, it feels like this book takes place in 1982, not 21-whatever.  If you want a good book about being gay in America, check out David Levithan's veritable masterpiece "Two Boys Kissing."  While reading this one, I couldn't help but think it was more about the author's youth than a future that was in any way possible.  Lastly, I didn't like the characters much.  The most appealing character is Syd, but he, like Thelma and Louise, trods a path of liberation not by choice, but because he is forced down one road after another.  It's more like fate than character development.  The same goes for Knox.  He is a character without one single redeeming value, until the very end, with a twist that I saw coming from the very beginning of the tale.  There is Egan, whose role ends up being kind of pointless, and Marie, whose passion is denigrated by others as a "cause girl."  The previews, at the end of the book, didn't do much to make me want to keep reading.  The "prequel" is basically the story I just read, with a lot more exposition, and the one chapter of the next story isn't enough to get a real taste (although, in Liam, there might be a character I like).  In any case, if you eat up every dystopian novel, go for it.  For me, it was just a moralistic, preachy mess.

"She is Not Invisible" by Marcus Sedgwick

Sedgwick does it again.  Not that this book is anything like "Midwinterblood," but his ability to pack real characters and dense issues into a brief, concise, complex narrative never fails to fully engage me.  This tale covers science, psychology, numerology, family relationships, literature, cultural differences, racism, blindness, and yes, coincidence.  Like other books I have read of late, he also manages to take a minor swipe at technology.  Laureth is a very engaging protagonist, one who does for vision impairment what "Switched at Birth" has done for deafness -- essentially saying that the disability is simply a single factor of a full life, and not something that defines every aspect of her existence.  The short chapters are page turners, particularly as the story ramped up, and I was very afraid of where it might lead.  In the end, the answers to the many questions were more layered, and somewhat unexpected, compared to my expectations.  One interesting note was a comment that Sedgwick makes about authors who try to push coincidence into their themes too hard -- with a resulting unbelievability to their work.  Is it irony or coincidence that this was one of the core problems I had with the last book I read?  Only you can say.  Enjoy the ride (and the secret message).

"Revolution" by Jennifer Donnelly

The French Revolution was a long, drawn out, complicated event with a ton of players and unexpected turns.  Much like the actual Revolution, this book is a bit of a hot mess.  There are so many threads in this lengthy tome that some get left by the wayside.  There are so many twists that, in the end, I went from trying to maintain some needed "willing suspension of disbelief" to incredulity.  It's possible Ms. Donnelly could have pulled it all together, but in a lot of ways, she tried too hard.  I've never been a fan of an author who pushes an agenda instead of letting the story unfold, and that is certainly the case here. 

I usually try to compare books to other works in my reviews to give folks some context.  In this case, there are so many allusions -- and most of them are better.  I was reminded of two books in particular, Peter Dickinson's "A Bone from a Dry Sea" and Libba Bray's trippy "Going Bovine."

SPOILER ALERT

The story is this:  Andi, an anorexic/depressed/suicidal drug-using teen in Brooklyn, can't get over her baby brother's murder.  Andi hangs with a crowd ripped right out of almost any CW teen show.  Her rich, super-smart, invulnerable "friends" seem as two-dimensional as she feels.  The only thing holding her together is her music ... barely.  Her mother, a French painter, is similarly struggling, spending every free minute painting imperfect portraits of the lost boy.  Andi's father, a Nobel winning DNA specialist, has left town to hang with his pregnant, younger girlfriend.  As Andi and her mother spiral down, dad appears, hospitalizes mom, and takes an unwilling Andi to Paris, where she is told she "must" complete her Senior Thesis on the fictional musician Amade Malherbeau.  While her father travels around Europe to deal with business, she stays with old family friends, who, surprise, surprise, are Nobel winning historians studying the French Revolution (did I mention Andi apparently speaks perfect French?)  Andi finds a hidden diary of a young entertainer living during the Revolution, a girl named Alexandrine, nick-named Alex.  Alex's life also takes unexpected turns and she ends up being the sole companion to the young Dauphin, Louis-Charles, son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.  When the royal family's fortunes change, Alex takes it upon herself to become a lawless renegade to bring the jailed boy some brief moments of happiness.  In the meantime, in modern-day Paris, Andi meets a cute musician and explores the catacombs.  After taking too many "Qwells" (a made-up anti-depressant), she falls down, passes out and has an Over the Rainbow experience.  In case you miss the Wizard of Oz connection, the author makes sure to hit you over the head with it (pun intended).  It all wraps up very neatly -- the story of Amade Malherbeau, Andi's thesis and new love interest, yadda yadda yadda. 

The biggest issue for me is that it just isn't believable.  I'm willing to go for a flight of fancy, but this is all a little too contrived, right down to the death of Andi's brother.  It isn't just that he is killed in random street violence, the scene plays out like some poor man's version of a Law & Order episode.  The writing isn't bad, but it isn't good.  It's just kind of bland.  Not the lyric/literary style I like, so it didn't draw me in.  The best written sections are the diary entries of Alex -- and therein lies the heart of the matter (pun intended, but you would have to read it to get the joke).  Alex's story is just far more compelling.  The stakes are bigger and Alex is a fighter.  Andi, on the other hand, may be a young woman you feel sorry for, but eventually she got on my nerves.  She was whiney, passive, and all too willing to give up.  Had Ms. Donnelly just focused on the historical story, I would have found this to be engaging.  As it is, I spent way too much time looking at the page count on the eBook version I read.

"Half Bad" by Sally Green

Harry Potter meets Divergent in this new trilogy that has all the kids abuzz.  Essentially, a half-breed witch is hunted by the "good guys" as he tries to track down his bad guy father.  I found it a bit hard to get into, despite the high page-turning quotient.  The writing here isn't as much a flow as it is staccato.   Mostly written as a first person narrative, it switches into second person twice -- once at the beginning and once as it progresses from the past to the present.  Because it is only those two times, it took a while to figure out what was going on.  It turns out, in this case, that the second person voice isn't about a super-narrator, rather, our protagonist is giving himself some "self-talk" to try to separate himself from the physical abuse he suffers.  Other than the jumpy beginning, I enjoyed the story, which does get graphically violent as it goes along.  This trend is likely to be magnified in the second book, indicated by a teaser at the end.  An interesting note is Sally Green's subtle (or not so subtle) subtext.  She has points to make about modern British society, and makes them well.  There are undertones about the inequities between whites and blacks, religious intolerance, even a swipe at technology, and how it numbs us to the world around us.  A worthy addition to the semi-dystopic literature that is all the rage these days.  The second book, "Half Wild," is out, with a third coming.

"The Night Gardener" by Jonathan Auxier

Remember those scary stories told around the campfire when you were a kid?  Take the spooky factor of those, and add a good bit of literary merit, and you have a terrifically creepy book that manages to provide a real chill without a significant amount of blood and gore.  The tone of this "ghostly tale" starts off rich and never lets up.  It's a page turner of quality.  Auxier freely admits sources that inspired him in an author's note at the end.  Ray Bradbury, Washington Irving, J. M. Barrie and Frances Hodgson Burnett all influenced a story that feels like a cross between something conjured by the Bronte sisters and a yarn spun by an old man in an Irish bar.  The story is simple -- two Irish kids end up at an English estate as "the help" after escaping the famine at home.  Except things aren't that simple.  The Windsor family that Molly and Kip wait on aren't well, and they have secrets.  Added to that, there is a nighttime mystery, one that becomes increasingly frightening as the chapters unfold.  It's also a morality play, one that gives warning to those who would have their dreams fulfilled.  Not hooked yet?  Check out this opening:  "The calendar said early March, but the smell in the air said late October.  A crisp sun shone over Cellar Hollow, melting the final bits of ice from the bare trees.  Steam rose from the soil like a phantom, carrying with it a whisper of autumn smoke that had been lying dormant in the frosty underground."  Yes, I read it in two sittings, as I simply couldn't put it down.  Absolutely a stellar read.  But don't read it before you go to sleep at night ...

"What Spins the Wheel: Leadership Lessons From Our Race for Hope" by Len Forkas

Business entrepreneur Len Forkas had his world shaken when his son was diagnosed with cancer, shortly after returning home from a family holiday.  In an effort to help his son deal with the isolation of his disease, Forkas found a way to get a camera into the boy's classroom, allowing him to maintain both his educational progress and his friendships.  It was such a success that Mr. Forkas decided to create a similar opportunity for other children with cancer, and named the charity Hopecam.  After raising funds for Hopecam through a number of races and marathons, sportsman Forkas heard about RAAM, Race Across America, a 12 day bike race from California to Maryland.  He competed in the event in 2012 and raised more than $300,000 for his charity.  Then, he wrote a book about his experience in the race.  The book is designed to use the lessons he learned about team-building in the race as a metaphor for leadership -- showing how the most important part of leading is getting the right people around you, and motivating them appropriately.  The messages of this book are good.  The delivery is so-so.  First, Forkas tells his powerful personal story in a relatively removed way.  I sped through the first 30 pages or so just to make sure his son was okay.  He reveals, almost as an aside, that his son is in full remission.  Then, there is an "executive summary" which encapsulates so much of the book that the bulk of the story seems incredibly repetitive.  It's also not very deep.  The messages Forkas tries to emphasize make sense, but without elaboration, they come off a bit like those ephemeral posters you see in generic offices ... all philosophy with little substance.  When Forkas gets to the actual tale of his race, it becomes a rendition like someone else's unending vacation monologue -- too many details rather than an engaging story.  What is odd is that Forkas, for all of his charitable intent, doesn't actually come off like a good guy here.  The focus on racing, rather than his son, seems somewhat self-involved, and many of the chapters boil down to "the biking was hard, I got mad at my crew but I overcame that using one of these little pearls of wisdom, and I remained ahead of most of the pack."  Len Forkas is competitive, and it shows.  In private business, that determination to be better than others might be a driving force, but in education, it is questionable as to whether this kind of make it/break it attitude is something we should emulate.  Len Forkas raised a lot of money for a great cause by taking part in a race.  I guess my question after reading it is why he couldn't have raised the funds simply by making the journey.