Isla and the Happily Ever After
by Stephanie Perkins. Dutton Books for Young Readers. 2014. Library copy.
The Plot: Isla is starting her senior year at her boarding school in France. She's had a crush on Josh for ages and ages, but he didn't even seem to know she was alive. (Considering how small her school is, that seems impossible.... and yet.)
But this year... this year may be different. Isla may be getting her happily ever after.
The Good: ajdlkjas;djs;ldjf;sd
That's not a type.
Yes, this came out last year, but I was saving it. Saving it for when I needed it.
And oh, I'm so glad I did. This is a companion to Anna and the French Kiss and Lola and the Boy Next Door; it's a true stand alone. I confess, I remembered Josh from Anna; but I didn't remember Isla at all. I need to reread....
I also need to go to Paris, right away. Like, yesterday. So any advice on super cheap airfare, and super cheap yet still nice places to stay?
Oh, right, topic. So Isla. Isla is a middle daughter, a good girl, a top student. She has one best friend. And she's been in love with Josh for ages. Even though he's a slacker, and doesn't seem to care about the rules, and had a really, really serious girlfriend the previous year.
And what is beautiful and wonderful about Isla and the Happily Ever After is that it's about Josh and Isla seeing each other and falling in love.... In Paris. I'm so jealous I could spit.
He's a bit of the bad boy to her good girl, or at least that's how some see them. But really, he's the boy who isn't sure he even wants to be there, and she's the girl who does as expected. So he gets detentions and she gets As. And the main tension I felt, as this sweet, wonderful, love story unfolded is the fear of just what Perkins was going to do, what was going to be the problem that stopped Isla from getting her "happily ever after."
I feel compelled to say the next thing because it was a fear I had (and I'd avoided spoilers so...): NO ONE DIES. And there is something which separates these two, something out of their control. And what does one do, when there is a barrier to one's happily ever after? Do you go over, under, around...or do you quit?
Bonus: because this is at the same school as Anna, and Josh was friends with Anna and Etienne, there are a ton of references to them. And a couple, also, to Lola. And when Anne and Etienne do show up, just, sigh. Lovely. A wonderful end to the book and to the series.
Also? I really liked Isla's approach to sex, a mix of common sense and love.
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© Elizabeth Burns of A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy
This month, the award-winning classic Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen, is The Children’s Book Review’s best selling young adult book.
With so many strong novels on this list, a lot remains the same on our hand-picked list from the Best Selling Young Adult list.
With so many strong novels on this list, everything remains the same on our hand-picked list from the Best Selling Young Adult list—including The Children's Book Review's number one best selling young adult book is The Children's Homer: The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy, a classic must-read for all Greek mythology fans.
With so many strong novels on this list, everything remains the same on our hand-picked list from the Best Selling Young Adult list—including The Children's Book Review's number one best selling young adult book is The Children's Homer: The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy, a classic must-read for all Greek mythology fans.
With so many strong novels on this list, all but one young adult novel, John Green's Paper Towns, remains the same on our hand-picked list from the Best Selling Young Adult list.
I recently came across a remarkable book by Maya Van Wagenen called Popular. Maya, who is now 16 and in the 11th grade, kindly agreed to answer my questions (and quite eloquently) despite preparing for her SAT exam.
With so many strong novels on this list, all but one young adult novel—Gayle Forman's Where She Went—remains the same on our hand-picked list from the Best Selling Young Adult list.
With so many strong novels on this list, everything remains the same on our hand-picked list from the Best Selling Young Adult list—including The Children's Book Review's number one best selling young adult book is The Children's Homer: The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy—a classic must-read for all Greek mythology fans.
This month, everything remains the same on our hand-picked list from the Best Selling Young Adult list—including The Children's Book Review's number one best selling young adult book is The Children's Homer: The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy.
This month, The Children's Book Review's number one best selling young adult book is The Children's Homer: The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy—a classic must-read for all Greek mythology fans.
Belzhar
by Meg Wolitzer. Dutton Children's Books. 2014.
The Plot: Jam Gallahue was in love with Reese Marfield and it was wonderful and magical and all that made life living.
Was.
A year that has passed since she lost Reese, a year of life not being worth living, a year of Jam barely able to leave her bedroom, shattered by his death.
So Jam's parents have done the only thing they can think of: sending her away from her New Jersey home and all the memories, to go to The Wooden Barn, a boarding school in Vermont for those who are
"emotionally fragile, highly intelligent."
Jam isn't happy to be there, but then she finds herself in a unique seminar: "Special Topics in English," with five students intensely studying one author for a semester. This year, the author is Sylvia Plath.
Each student is given a journal, to write in. And when Jam puts pen to paper ... something magical happens. She finds herself in a place where time stands still, and Reeve is hers again.
As the semester draws to a close, Jam wonders what will happen when she reaches the last page. Will she figure out a way to stay with Reese? Should she?
The Good: Another one of those books that I love, but part of what I love is the twists and turns and the reveals. It's not just the secrets: it's finding out the secrets.
Jam is at a school for the "emotionally fragile," so everyone has some type of story Hers is Reeve. Her fellow Special Topics members (Sierra, Marc, Griffin, Casey) each has had a loss; each, it turns out, can also use their journals to return to that pre-loss time. Inspired by the title of Plath's novel,
The Bell Jar, they call the place they go to Belzhar.
Jam's whirlwind romance with Reeve was meaningful and magical but short: only 41 days. Actually, that is the sum total of the days they knew each other. It was sixteen days before they kissed. So Jam has only a handful of memories stored up and what she finds is in that Belzhar, she is limited to experiencing only what actually happened. Oh, it's not as if she's stepping back in time: Reeve understands that something is happening, something outside time almost, and impatiently worries about the times she isn't with him.
And... I don't want to get into spoilers, about Jam and her friends, or about Jam and Belzhar, and what it is or is not. But wowza; there was a certain deliciousness in reading and figuring out and discovering, much like there was with
We Were Liars (but for different reasons.)
Belzhar is not just about "emotionally fragile" people, but it's what it means to be emotionally fragile and how that shapes how you see the world and how you act in it. And aside from that, it's about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, much like
The Bell Jar itself is Plath telling her story in a certain way.
And, of course, the language! This, for example -- "
to be on the verge of your life, and not to be able to enter it" is just such a good description of someone being held back and knowing they are held back, for whatever reasons.
Or this: "
Because when I let go of the story I've been telling myself and just try to think about what's objectively true, I can barely get a grip." And how often is that true, also -- the truth being so frightening that we tell ourselves other things we believe to be true, to get through the day.
Amazon Affiliate. If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.
© Elizabeth Burns of
A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy
If you're looking for a novel that will linger with you for days, The Children's Book Review's number one best selling young adult book is Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira. Our hand selected titles from the nationwide best selling young adult books, as listed by The New York Times, features titles by super-talents John Green, Ransom Riggs, and Markus Zusak.
The latest book from non-fiction queen Candace Fleming is The Children's Book Review's number one best selling young adult book.
Where She Went
by Gayle Forman. Dutton Books, 2011. Review copy from publisher.
The Plot: Sequel to
If I Stay.
So, um, spoilers for
If I Stay.
Three years ago, Adam's girlfriend, Mia, was in a terrible accident.
And now? It's been years since they've seen each other. Mia left for college, and moved on with her life. Adam eventually did the same. Now, they are both successes, he a rock star with an actress girlfriend while Mia is a rising cellist. They haven't spoken to each other in years.
And then they meet. Almost strangers.
The Good: If I Stay was told from Mia's point of view, in a place between life and death, as she struggled with the question of whether or not to stay with the living, despite the tremendous loss of her family in a car accident.
I loved If I Stay: I cried, cried about how perfect and flawed Mia's family was, cried at the decision she had to make, cried at her choice to go on, alone. I picked up
Where She Went expecting it to pick up Mia's story and to find out about what happened when she woke up.
Where She Went was not what I thought it would be, but instead was what I needed it to be.
It is Adam's story, after three years have passed. To my shock, Adam and Mia have broken up. And as I read and found out more, it clicked, what
Where She Went was about:
Grief. And living with loss. And rebuilding. And those things, those are terrible, horrible, the world has ended moments. Just because Mia chose to go on, didn't mean that she woke up and was the same person. It didn't mean that it was somehow easy to know how to navigate having no mother, no father, no brother. And just because Adam and Mia were everything to each other, it didn't mean that they were, at that moment, the best thing for each other.
So Mia walked away from Adam, because her grief and loss were
hers. And if I had to place a bet onto why this is three years later, and why it's not by Mia, my bet would be that what Mia went through was too raw and awful and confusing.
Where She Went is a punch in the stomach, and had it not been told when and how it was, it would have been even more overwhelming. Instead of being hard to read, it would have been impossible to read.
With
Where She Went being Adam's story, the reader can also see and experience and appreciate Adam's own loss. No, it's not the same as Mia's, but it is a loss. He loved her family, he loved Mia, and then he was left without that and without knowing who he was without her.
Sometimes people are meant to be together, but that does not mean they are meant to be together always. Or forever. And I'm glad that not only does
Where She Went explore that, but it also gives two people a second chance. They needed to be apart. But can they come together, again?
In many ways, I liked this book better than
If I Stay. So, yes, a
Favorite Book Read in 2014.
Amazon Affiliate. If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.
© Elizabeth Burns of
A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart has been added to our best selling young adult books for this month. The rest of the titles have remained the same, proving just how these titles truly are popular books for teens (and many adults, too).
If I stay by Gayle Forman has been added to our best selling young adult books for this month. The rest of the titles have remained the same, proving just how these titles truly are popular books for teens (and many adults, too).
Everything has remained the same with our best selling young adult books for this month—proving just how these titles truly are popular books for teens (and many adults, too). With the March movie release of Divergent, it's no wonder that our best selling young adult book list features the popular book for teens, Divergent, by Veronica Roth.
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