The Ruining

Collomore, Anna. The Ruining. Razorbill, 2013.

Annie lives in Detroit with her mom and step-dad, and she is desperate to get out of the house and on her own. After high school graduation, she accepts a position as a nanny to a family four in the San Francisco Bay Area. She heads out to the west coast and begins to care for an adorable three-year old girl while the girl's dad is at work and the girl's mom watches the baby and works from home. Everything seems to be perfect, at first.

Then things start happening. The mom calls her "Nanny" instead of "Annie." The mom alternates between trying to be super buddy-buddy with Annie and being an angry control freak. They take the door off of her bedroom. Annie feels herself slipping into insanity, and her grip on reality, along with her ability to juggle her college classes and her work responsibilities, slips away.

This book was very intense and also very strange. After a while it was difficult to determine what was really and what was only Annie's perception of reality.  The characters were believable and the ending was satisfying. My only complaint about this book, though, is that when Annie wants some time alone, she mentions wanting to go to Muir Woods to be in the forest and think. Muir Woods is beautiful, but it's a major tourist trap. At any point during the day there are maybe several hundred people there, so that wouldn't be a good place to "be alone." There are lots of other forests or parks the author could have chosen to use instead of going for the obvious San Francisco reference.

Recommended for: teens, especially those who enjoy suspenseful books

Red Flags: minor alcohol use, some profanity

Overall Rating: 4/5 stars

Beauty Queens

Bray, Libba. Beauty Queens. Scholastic Press, 2011.

The contestants of the Miss Teen Dream contest are flying to an exotic location for part of the competition when their plane crash lands on an island.  The survivors must band together and try to create shelter and find food while they wait to be rescued.  But when a secret plot is uncovered, the girls have to decide what's truly important to them.

Wow.  This is a really, really strange book.  As long as you are willing to suspend your disbelief and just enjoy the absurdity of the story, this book is a lot of fun.  It mocks reality TV, beauty pageants, commercialism, political issues, etc. etc.  There is a character named Momo B. Chacha who is the ruler of his own country.  Momo keeps a taxidermied Lemur - General Goodtimes - on his shoulder and asks his advice periodically.  One of the contestants has an airline tray lodged in her head throughout the entire book.  Pirates land on the island, but they're rock star pirates.  It just keeps getting weirder and weirder, but it's hilarious and well worth the trip.

I appreciated the strong feminist message in this book, as well as the acknowledgement of LGBTQIA issues as well as persons with disabilities.  I was glad that the girls decided they did not need to just wait for someone to come rescue them.  I was also glad there was a transgender character in this book, but that the entire book wasn't about that person coming out as trans.  She just was, and more importantly, she was a contestant in a beauty pageant, too.

My only caveat: this book is long.  Ridiculously so.  The story is funny, and I wanted to see how it'd turn out, so I stuck with it, but I could see teens putting the book down when it just drags on too long.    However, this book definitely belongs in the library's collection.

Recommended for: adults and teens who enjoy satire, strong readers, people who enjoy mocking reality TV and beauty pageants

Red Flags: mild violence, mild language, alcohol use (rum, because we're on an island with pirates), some pretty explicit sexual scenes

Overall Rating: 4/5 stars

45 Pounds (More or Less)

Barson, K.A. 45 Pounds (More or Less). Viking Juvenile, 2013.

Ann lives with her perfect, skinny mother, her stepfather, and her twin siblings Justice and Liberty. Ann's mother is obsessed with her own weight, and Ann has been on every diet imaginable and has failed every one of them. But when Ann's aunt decides to marry her girlfriend and asks Ann to be a bridesmaid, Ann decides she needs to lose 45 pounds before the wedding. Thus begins Ann's journey on yet another diet, which leads her to see what has happened to Liberty, her four-year old sister, after living in a house with two weight-obsessed people.

I enjoyed this book. The characters were both believable and likable - except the ones I loved to hate, of course - and the drama in Ann's life was appropriate without being over-the-top. Ann does a lot of growing and changing in this book, and I appreciated the ending as well. Unlike some other books I have reviewed, Ann's life seemed very realistic: she lost weight by eating better and exercising, instead of attempting expensive and dangerous surgery; she reinvented herself at home, rather than insisting on being sent to a boarding school halfway across the country. I also appreciated that Ann's aunt is a lesbian, but that her orientation isn't the focus of the book, but rather simply a fact. I would definitely add this book to my library's collection.

Recommended for: teens

Red Flags: Ann's grandmother is a bigot, but she's a ridiculous bigot, similar to the grandmother on the failed TV series The New Normal. 

Overall Rating: 4/5 stars

I received a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley for the purposes of review.

The Lucy Variations

Zarr, Sara. The Lucy Variations. Little, Brown, 2013.

Lucy used to be a semi-famous child prodigy in piano, with her grandfather and her mother controlling her career. However, when she was forced to go to Prague for a competition and did not get a chance to say goodbye to her dying grandmother, Lucy gave up on piano and let her younger brother Gus take her place. 8 months later, Lucy is trying to decide whether she still wants to play, or if she wants to redefine herself as something else.

I was intrigued by the concept and enjoyed the mystery surrounding "why Lucy doesn't play anymore," but this book was only kind of enjoyable. Lucy is weirdly obsessed with older men, and she's uber-selfish (okay, so that is typical teen behavior, but still). I wasn't impressed with the climax of the story at all, and wished there had been more music throughout the narrative. I didn't see Lucy change as much as I'd like by the end, either. I also didn't sympathize with her as much as I would have liked, so it got to the point where I didn't really care what happened to her. I'm glad that there are more music-related books being published recently, but I'm just not a big fan of this one.

Recommended for: teens, people who enjoy classical music or play an instrument

Red Flags: Alcohol, Lucy's pretty much illegal and unhealthy relationship with her brother's piano teacher

Overall Rating: 2/5 stars

Openly Straight

Konigsberg, Bill. Openly Straight. Arthur A. Levine Books, 2013.

Rafe is tired of being the token gay kid.  His parents are beyond supportive, his friends at school are kind to him, but Rafe wants to be himself instead of representing the entire gay community. Also, Rafe feels like "gay" is the only thing that defines him in others' eyes.  So he decides to start over.  He convinces his parents to send him to boarding school in New England, where he doesn't come out as gay - not to his roommate, his friends, his teachers.  He doesn't tell his parents or his best friend what he's doing.  Although Rafe enjoys life as a pseudo-straight guy, he soon finds himself tangled in his web of lies and half-truths.

I enjoyed this story, both the coming-of-age and identity aspects and the fact that Rafe's parents were so supportive of him. It bothered me that Rafe was so self-centered, but he changed by the end of the book.  This book definitely should be in every library's collection of LGBTQIA works.

Recommended for: teens, adults who work with teens, people who enjoy LGBTQIA lit, as a read-alike for A Separate Peace

Red Flags: This a book full of teen boys at a boarding school, so there is drug use, alcohol, lots of foul language, some minor sex scenes between Rafe and his bromantic friend Ben.

Overall Rating: 5/5 stars