Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira

        For all the teen contemporary realistic fiction fans out there... this is a fascinating book! 

Lauren is given an assignment at the beginning of the school year to write a letter to someone who has passed away. Of course the events that recently occurred in her life, the sudden death of her older sister, make this task all the more poignant. Lauren writes the assignment but doesn’t turn it in. Instead she continues on a yearlong journey of writing as a way of dealing with the traumatic events in her life.  She writes to a number of famous people who died before their time such as Kurt Cobain, Heath Ledger, Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin and Amelia Earhart. 

This is a wonderfully written, yet horribly tragic story about loss… Author, Ava Dellaira has either experienced the loss of a sibling or done excellent research. Young survivors often feel profound loss when an older sibling is suddenly not there to provide a path; feeling abandoned by the grieving parents, they often flounder to find a sense of purpose in life. In addition, “Love Letters to the Dead” includes the divorce of Lauren and May’s parents. This seems to be the catalyst for May’s destructive behavior. The girls are left feeling frustrated, guilty and abandoned; could they have kept the parents together? Were they the reason their parent’s broke up? Lauren idolizes her sister but May, with no one to go to, turns to alcohol and men to escape the desperately need to feel loved. Now Lauren is repeating the actions of May as her life begins to spiral out of control. Lauren holds the secret to what really happened to May the night she died which is slowly revealed at the end of the story.

The book was wonderfully written and will be an excellent addition to a young adult library collection. The journal format will appeal to teens as will the interesting biographical information about the famous musicians and actors within the letters Lauren writes. My only negative is that the plot felt like a checklist of every traumatizing event that can occur in a teen’s life. There was so much added, in fact, that I felt it took away from the realism of the story. That being said, the sequence of events may be like watching a car accident; we don’t want to look but are shocked into doing it. If you’ve loved, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky, you’ll love "Love Letters to the Dead"!

This is Not a Test

This is Not a Test 
by Courtney Summers

Book Description:
It’s the end of the world. Six students have taken cover in Cortege High but shelter is little comfort when the dead outside won’t stop pounding on the doors. One bite is all it takes to kill a person and bring them back as a monstrous version of their former self. To Sloane Price, that doesn’t sound so bad. Six months ago, her world collapsed and since then, she’s failed to find a reason to keep going. Now seems like the perfect time to give up. As Sloane eagerly waits for the barricades to fall, she’s forced to witness the apocalypse through the eyes of five people who actually want to live. But as the days crawl by, the motivations for survival change in startling ways and soon the group’s fate is determined less and less by what’s happening outside and more and more by the unpredictable and violent bids for life—and death—inside. When everything is gone, what do you hold on to?

Review: 

Gritty and real, this zombie apocalypse survival story gripped me from start to finish.  Definitely for high school readers, as opposed to middle schoolers, there's a lot of very real mature things happening as these teens try to survive.  As a reader that prefers realism to a perfect happy ending, I very much enjoyed the fact that Sloane's story does not shy away from the horrors of a zombie "infestation." It would not have felt as authentic to me if Sloane suddenly became a perky rah-rah kind of girl and everyone survived. 

Happy ending hunters may not like what they find here...but, readers looking for a more true-to-(fictional)life experience will appreciate this compelling tale.  

Review: Hothouse

Hothouse

by Chris Lynch

 

Book Description:

If you do it right, it can be a life. The hothouse, the guys, the glory. But just like that, it can all go up in smoke.

In the beginning it was strange, ya know, because of all that we had lost. But there was something about it that felt so good and so right, too: "I'm so proud of you, Russ." "We'll always be here for you, man." "Heroes don't pay for nothin' in this town." It was nonstop. The mayor shook my hand. Ladies sent food. I've never eaten so much baked ham in my life.

And now? Now the phone won't stop ringing from the crazies ready to blame me. My mom has to cry herself to sleep. They take a firefighter, a man, and they pump him up so big. . . . But once they start taking it away from you, they don't stop until they leave nothing on the bones.

First they needed heroes, then they needed blood.



Review:
I liked this book. It's not something I would ever have picked up without a recommendation, but I ended up liking it well enough. It's very raw and real. It's short and easy to read. It deals well with grief and heroism and how it feels when you realize that your parents are not the infallible heroes that you may want them to stay forever.

Review: Paper Covers Rock

Paper Covers Rock
by Jenny Hubbard

Book Description:

At the beginning of his junior year at a boys' boarding school, 16-year-old Alex is devastated when he fails to save a drowning friend. When questioned, Alex and his friend Glenn, who was also at the river, begin weaving their web of lies. Plagued by guilt, Alex takes refuge in the library, telling his tale in a journal he hides behind Moby-Dick. Caught in the web with Alex and Glenn is their English teacher, Miss Dovecott, fresh out of Princeton, who suspects there's more to what happened at the river when she perceives guilt in Alex's writing for class. She also sees poetic talent in Alex, which she encourages. As Alex responds to her attention, he discovers his true voice, one that goes against the boarding school bravado that Glenn embraces. When Glenn becomes convinced that Miss Dovecott is out to get them, Alex must choose between them. 

Review:

I have to be honest and admit that I did not enjoy this book at all. I began it as an audiobook and hated it. Part of the problem for me was how slowly the book was going and that it seemed to lack cohesion...I picked up the physical book hoping that being able to see the breaks in Alex's "journal entries" would help me focus through the rest of the book. That didn't even help that much, though. Things went faster, but I still just could not get into the story. I found it mostly implausible and frustrating. I thought that Alex made a lot of poor decisions, letting himself be swayed by the wrong people, and that most of the bad actions in the book led to no consequences.

I guess this was just not the book for me.