The Accident Season. Rating: Divine.

"There are no ghosts; only the dust in the light, our breath and the wind in the quiet, and the feeling that something, or a lot of somethings, are watching us."

I realized, reader, that I haven't been reviewing enough Young Adult fiction. This may give you an inaccurate impression of my reading habits. I love YA - I'm proud of how the market is growing, and I'm impressed by the huge strides YA authors are making in terms of inclusivity and character diversity. I'm proud to say that I've sought refuge in the homes of more than one YA author (they tend to have the best music and food, for what it's worth).

Most of my favorite YA books don't really feel like YA to me. In general, I love books that are very, very good, and those tend not to rely too much on the drama of what an adult remembers high school to have been like. I enjoy human stories, and good YA treats teens as humans, and tells their stories - stories that include mental illness and questions of identity and love and sex and murder.

I'm not elucidating this particularly well. This is why I rely on Ashley S. for the meatier YA reviews - because I'm not great at unpacking what separates good YA from bad YA from good any-other-books. So, reader, if I'm reviewing YA on here, it's probably because I think it's very, very good, on its own and within its genre.

Either that, or I'm reviewing it because I think it's very, very, very bad.

Accident Season by the fearless Moïra Fowley-Doyle...

...is very, very good.

 Here is your premise: Once a year, for a month, Cara's family is subject to accidents. All kinds of accidents, ranging from the negligible to the awful. They don't know why - it's just what happens. And nobody ever talks about it.

This book is not about that. Not really. That's a framing element, but really, the book is about the family and their past and their present and all of the entanglements of growing up in a family where something like that could be accepted as normal. A family where lots of things can be accepted as normal.

A couple of things before I get into the meat of this book: First, the speculative/paranormal element was absolutely integral to the story in so many ways. The important aspects of the plot are grounded in reality, but the entire tone of the book is like looking through old leaded glass: just a little wavy and warped by the fantastic. It's a very Irish sort of speculative fiction, in which fantasy is just part of reality, and that's how it is, and that's okay.

Second: this book has the best drunkenness I've ever read. There is a scene in which our narrator is drunk - not just tipsy, not your poorly-written 'oops I tried beer for the first time' drunk, but really and truly I've-been-drunk-before-and-I'm-drunk-now drunk. The writing gets choppy and wobbly and everything is moving just a little too fast and it's written absolutely perfectly.

Now to the meat of it, which isn't about the speculative element and isn't about getting drunk, no matter how beautifully written those parts are. The real story is about looking away from things. About ignoring the fact that something isn't right. Because isn't it wrong to have a month out of the year during which people get hurt and die, and nobody knows why? And yet Cara's family lives with those injuries, and doesn't discuss them.

This is going exactly where you think it's going, reader, and it's incredibly well done.

Now, for spoilers.

This is a book about child abuse.

This is a book about abuse, period.

This is a book about self-harm.

This is a book about sex and relationships and all the different ways that people find themselves in love.

Oh, also: there's a ghost, who admits that some of the accidents were accidents. She is pretty important to the story, reader, but she's not the focus of the review so I'll just say: she's written perfectly, brilliantly, a round of applause to Moïra Fowley-Doyle for handling her story so well.

At the end of Accident Season, Cara looks at all the things she's avoided looking at - all the things everyone in her family has refused to look at. These things aren't approached as a Big Reveal - instead, we walk with the characters as they finally put the pieces together. Things they should have seen all along - but instead, they looked away. They finally look directly at the fact that Cara's ex-stepfather sexually abused her sister - a sister who now hurts herself and who seeks out men that hurt her. Cara's best friend finally looks at her love for that same sister, and the sister looks back. Cara and her ex-stepbrother (it's complicated) finally admit that they're in love with each other, and have some great physical scenes (reader, this book, it's so good).

Cara's mother - and her whole family - finally admit that not all the accidents were accidents. They will need to struggle with that, because for so long, it's been easier for them to pretend that every time someone showed up with a broken bone or a black eye or a cut on their wrist - oh, it's just the accident season.

And they will struggle. And they will still, at the end of that struggle, be a family who finally looked at each other.

Rating: Divine. 

Possible ratings: Magnificent, Divine, Satisfactory, Tiresome, Lamentable, Execrable. This is a blog about words, what rating system did you expect?

I'll Meet You There. Rating: Divine (Guest Post by Ashley S.)

Reader,
The brilliant Ashley S. returns with another guest review! One comment from me to augment it: I haven't read the book, but I find the cover upsetting. Using words that are not related to the title on a book cover always bothers me - this one reads as if titled "I'll Meet You There No Vacancy Motel Pool" - but what the hell, that's just me.

In other news, reader - I suppose I should say 'readers' - according to my metrics, you now number in the thousands. That's... crazy. And exciting. And only a tenth of my pageviews come from law enforcement agencies! Thanks for reading, and please, by all means, visit me on twitter @ReadSpoilers.
-A


Creek View is a town, sandwiched and lost between Los Angeles and San Francisco, that will swallow its children and spit them out with broken dreams. Creek View is a town that is hot and sticky and is a little like quicksand: the more you try to move, the more it will pull you back in.

This is true for seventeen-year-old Skylar Evans, who has been dreaming of getting out of Creek View for years, and is almost there. It’s also true for nineteen-year-old Josh Mitchell who got the farthest you can get from Creek View -- Afghanistan, thanks to the US Marine Corps -- but comes back, anything but whole.

So maybe they both understand what it’s like to dig their way out of quicksand, and while neither of them knows the answer, they will spend three months at their crappy minimum wage jobs in their even crappier home town, trying to figure it out. Together.

I’ll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios...

 is a story about growing up, getting out, and moving on. It’s also about love and being broken and accepting what all those things mean. It’s honest, true to life, heartbreaking, and inspiring.

We first meet Skylar in the midst of life in Creek View. There’s a party and teenagers are getting drunk, being real, and making mistakes.

Skylar’s friends and the atmosphere of Creek View intrigued me early. Her best friend is a guy who I never once thought should be with Skyler, and she never once thought of him in any way romantically and it was so refreshing. I’m not saying relationships like this do not exist in YA, I could point you in the direction of some (Veronica Rossi’s Under the Never Sky trilogy and Tahereh Mafi’s Shatter Me series), however, it’s nice to see. And if you’re looking for the importance of female friendship, look no further. I’ll Meet You There has that, too, in the form of Dylan, a teenage mother who has no problem with her life in Creek View. She’s fierce and loyal and a beautiful contrast to Skylar and Chris’s desperate itch to get out of there.

And the youth of Creek View? They’re honest, the truest, and most realistic depiction of teenagers I’ve seen in awhile. They’re in a more conservative and low income area of California, struggling because of location and lifestyle, but they’re still real. I still saw them in my white, suburban teenage years.

Another hook was plunged into me in the form of Josh Mitchell. Josh was in Afghanistan but now he’s back all broken and incomplete, both mentally and physically. He’s missing a leg and suffering from PTSD and it all adds up to a parade of pills he has to take and a new life to navigate.

And life isn’t easy for Skylar either, roadblocks put up in the form of her mother’s depression and poverty. Now there’s Josh, who calls to her with a mixture of intrigue, love, and the urge to care for him. It’s sweet and haunting, much like Skylar and a lot like Josh.

Josh and Skylar’s story is told through both of their POVs. The switch back and forth between them is striking and lovely; Josh’s thoughts in big blocks of scattered runoff sentences and Skylar’s metaphors and pretty words contrasting beautifully. There are big feelings and even bigger missteps between two people who are just trying to figure out life and each other in very different ways. It’s easy to fall in love with both of them and with their depth and honesty,  you can’t help but root for them.

I’ll Meet You There is an honest look at two broken people and how they figure it all out together. It’s eye opening and true to veterans and others combating with mental illness, for people who feel lost and stuck, and for those whose bodies don’t work like everyone else’s. It shows us that what works for one, won’t work for another, that surrogate family members come in all different forms and for different reasons. It shows us that mistakes are okay and being broken is even more so.

It shows us that everything will be fine, even if it’s different.

Now, for Spoilers.

Because of the nature of the book, there’s no big twist ending or anything for me to reveal to you that will make you gasp and rip your hair out. But, what a lovely ending and I will tell you all about it because it still did surprise me.

Skylar’s back and forth whether she can leave her mother in the arms of a man she hates and still mentally unstable, ate at me the entire book. I didn’t want her to give up her chance at SF State because I was sucke dinto this world of hatred for this life like she was. But Josh is here! Josh is in Creek View, and as Skylar falls in love with him, he becomes another thing to keep her there.

But, she goes. She totally goes, you guys! Josh stays behind in Creek View to get himself better (with a gift from Skylar) and helps her drive up to San Francisco and start her new life. They’re still together, they totally kiss and have sex and it’s just as real, honest, and romantic as the rest of the book, but she goes off to start her life, and I just take that to mean that when Josh is ready, he joins her. And they’re happy and she’s a great artist and Josh does whatever makes Josh happy and they kiss a lot and try to sleep through the PTSD nightmares and just try.

That last bit is just my own wishful speculation, but it’s also right because I say it is.

Rating: Divine. 

Possible ratings: Magnificent, Divine, Satisfactory, Tiresome, Lamentable, Execrable. This is a blog about words, what rating system did you expect?

Damage Done. Rating: Execrable.

"I haven't been entirely honest."

Ooooooookay, reader. It's that time. We've been avoiding it, but it's here.

It's time for us to talk about Gone Girl.

I loved Gone Girl. You should not be surprised by this. I loved the unreliable narration, and the twisty plot, and how brilliant Amy was. I loved that all the characters were trying their best, and she still outsmarted them all. I loved that we as readers saw her as she wanted to be seen - our only view of her was from her diary, until the massive narrative turn; and then we discovered that we, too, had been duped. I loved the satirical undertones. I loved it. No holds barred, full-stop, loved it.

So many people and publishers have said to me, "if you loved Gone Girl, you'll love..." - and every time they do it, I just want to shove them off the roof of a burning building. Because, come on. We know better. None of these books are the next Gone Girl, and it's insulting to dark female writers to compare all of them to Gillian Flynn. Not because it's an insulting comparison in and of itself - Flynn is brilliant, hello - but because there's allowed to be more than one dark authoress out there.

I picked up Damage Done on the recommendation of a reader who DM'ed me on twitter saying "Did you like Gone Girl? Because this writer is the next Gillian Flynn..." My expectations were spectacularly low.

And yet.

Damage Done by the not-Gillian-Flynn-so-stop-saying-it-please Amanda Panitch...

...still managed to let me down. I almost couldn't stick it out. But I did! For you, and you alone, readers. Because I do a lot of "Magnificent" and "Divine" ratings, and I owe it to you to warn you away from the bad stuff.

Let's dive right on in.

Julia Vann (aka Lucy Black, but to avoid confusion, we'll just stick with Julia) is trying to start over after her twin brother shot and killed eleven people. She has some dark secrets about her brother, and about the shooting, and she's doing her damndest to keep them all tamped down. Her first-person narration is interspersed with diary entries written by her brother's former therapist (supposedly 'case logs,' but I know a diary entry when I see one). As she begins to develop a romance with The Cutest Guy at School, her past starts threatening her new life.

The thing that bothered me most about this book is a Huge Spoiler, so I'm going to give you the little problems up here and the big ones down there. Feel free to skip ahead if you want to know the worst of it. Until then:

Characterization in this one is weak at best. Mom's guiding characteristic, for example, is that she cleans a lot. Because she's upset, because her son shot and killed a bunch of people. That's all we really get about her. Secondary characters are not in any way fleshed out; frankly, neither are primary ones.

The romance (of course there's a romance, silly, it's YA) is almost comically unrealistic. Cutest Guy at School shoves his way into Julia's life with no discernible motivation, and just like that, he's pushing his way into her house and cooking her dinner. The relationship is heavily laden with your standard YA-romance aggressive chivalry: she says 'don't do that,' and he does it anyway, but because he's doing nice things for her it's supposed to be romantic.

Now, here is one place where I'll give Panitch a lot of credit - she wrote this boy's actions beautifully. Julia describes him as desperate for a damsel-in-distress, and deftly manipulates him using that one little trait. We've all known men like this - men who are dying to rescue someone - and Cutest Guy at School is one of them. He helps her even when she doesn't need - or want - help. She insists that she's fine with eating a sandwich; he insists that he must make her eggs.

I've been on dates with men like this. They refuse to let me carry my own purse, and push me to the inside of the sidewalk, and put their arm around me as if I can't stand up without their support. I don't need to wear a jacket, but they drape theirs over my shoulders anyway. They're always telling me to eat more. Their intentions are sweet, and they can be relied upon as getaway drivers in a pinch, but they can also be incredibly irritating and controlling. Panitch's portrayal of that nuance (you're useful, but also, could you just stop it and let me walk on my own strength) is well-done.

The sloppy execution on the romance - CGaS's chivalry aside - is mirrored by the rest of the book. Every character that isn't Julia is written as cartoonishly stupid. The police are incompetent; Julia's friends (such as they are) are putty in her hands. The therapist who treated her brother is a marionette with no sense of self-preservation. No character has clear motives for their actions; they are narrative devices, moving through Julia's life only to give her a story to tell.

Now, for Spoilers.

Here's the thing with an unreliable past-tense first-person narrator: You can't have them just come back at the end of the book and say "whoops, I lied!" It doesn't make any sense. The entire conceit with a past-tense first-person narrator is that they are telling you their story after the fact. They've given you their entire story, all at once, and handed it to you, and walked away. Maybe it didn't happen as they say it happened; but they're unreliable because they don't know that's the case, or they don't realize it until the very end (à la The Sixth Sense).

Well, here's the big twist ending: Julia is a sociopath who orchestrated the shooting so that nobody would know she was schtupping her brother. At the end of the book, Julia says "I haven't been entirely honest." She has, for some reason, lied to the reader for the previous 267-odd pages. All the times she's told the reader "I don't remember what happened that day" in her narrative - all lies, she says. "I remember everything."

This ending is not surprising, reader. The entire book sets up a pretty obvious "Julia was the killer all along" arc. I was not shocked to read that she manipulated her brother into shooting her classmates. Hell, I wasn't even surprised by the incest. I was so dismayed, though, that the author erased her entire story with that one sentence: "I haven't been entirely honest."

As soon as I saw that sentence, I had to put the book down and go for a run through the woods where I was hiding, just to burn through some of my pissed-off. She may as well have written "...and then I woke up." What followed the admission of dishonesty was a few chapters of revision: here's what really happened all that time!

Why, then, did I read the entire rest of the book? Why did I stick through the frustratingly weak characters and the underdeveloped plot?

Reader, you know how I feel about books that waste my time, and this was one of them. This structure - [most of the book] [lol nevermind] [here's the real story] - did not leave me feeling pleasantly duped the way that Gone Girl did. I can't quite describe the level of frustration that "I haven't been entirely honest" left me with, but I will tell you this: Somewhere in the woods of West Virginia, there is a tree that got kicked a lot harder than it deserved.

Rating: Execrable. 

Possible ratings: Magnificent, Divine, Satisfactory, Tiresome, Lamentable, Execrable. This is a blog about words, what rating system did you expect?