Miles from Ordinary. Carol Lynch Williams. 2011. St. Martin's Press. 208 pages.
There are mice.Lacey, our heroine, is holding on to hope. Hope that everything is going to be okay. Hope that her mom will be able to handle her new job at the grocery store. Hope that she'll get to volunteer at the local library as she's planned. But with Lacey's mom, it's hard to be certain about anything. So much depends on what her Granddaddy tells her momma.
The novel opens with a bad dream, but one could argue that Lacey's bad dream is nothing compared to her real life, the daily trauma of living with a mother who is mentally ill. It's a painful life, a lonely life, having that much responsibility, feeling the weight of the whole world on her shoulders.
In the quietest of moments, Lacey dreams of simple things: having a friend to talk and laugh with, having some time to herself--time for herself, I should say. No one is taking care of Lacey. No one is helping her, supporting her.
Miles from Ordinary is the story of one day--just one day--in the life of a troubled family. On this one day, her mom will start her new job, she'll start her new volunteer job for the summer at the library, she'll talk to the cutest guy in the neighborhood, Aaron, and maybe just maybe make a real friend. Of course, that is just the part of the day that goes well...
Miles from Ordinary is a compelling read, dark yet powerful. It's well written, and oh the characters! Especially Lacey and Aaron.
Carol Lynch Williams is also the author of
The Chosen One and
Glimpse.
© 2011 Becky Laney of
Becky's Book Reviews
Bleeding Violet. Dia Reeves. 2010. January 2010. Simon & Schuster. 454 pages.
The truck driver let me off on Lamartine, on the odd side of the street. I felt odd too, standing in the town where my mother lived. For the first seven years of my life, we hadn't even lived on the same continent, and now she waited only a few houses away.
Fleeing her Dallas home (where she lived with her aunt), Hanna didn't know what to expect from her middle-of-the-night confrontation with Rosalee, the mother who'd abandoned her. Will her mother let her stay? Would her aunt even take her back? (To say she left on bad terms is an understatement!)
Rosalee reluctantly agrees that she can stay. For two weeks. And two weeks only. Unless Hanna can prove that she belongs in this anything-but-sleepy small town. Hanna thinks it will be easy. It might take a little effort on her part to make friends, but surely there's someone worth being friends with. Like Wyatt.
What she doesn't expect is that those two weeks will be filled with danger. Sure danger can be exciting, thrilling, intoxicating. But it can also be deadly. Is Hanna willing to risk it all for a chance at a future with her mom?
Hanna's mental health is questionable, but there were certain things Hanna did that I couldn't excuse away.
For those looking for a good paranormal read, I think this one could work well. While, Hanna isn't perfect--far from it--she has a bit more gumption than other heroines I could mention. (Cough, cough, Bella). But this one probably won't be for everyone. I think the casual sex and violence might be a bit too much for some readers.
This one actually reminded me a bit of the Midnighters series by Scott Westerfeld.
Other reviews: Kids Lit, TheHappyNappyBookseller, Pure Imagination, Frenetic Reader,
© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews
Ackroyd, Peter. 2008. The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein. Doubleday. 353 pages.
I was born in the alpine region of Switzerland, my father owning much territory between Geneva and the village of Chamonix where my family resided.
This book is a reimagining of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Our narrator is Victor Frankenstein. It weaves small doses of fact into the fiction by having Victor become friends with Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and John William Polidori. Sounds interesting, right? Like it might have some potential.
This might be a good time to talk about expectations. I had high hopes for this one. I *really* wanted to like it. I wanted to connect with this one right from the start. I wanted it to be really smart and clever and fun. I wanted it to be engaging. Perhaps if I'd had lower expectations, I wouldn't have been so let down.
I can't say if it's fortunate or unfortunate, but the jacket flap is really something else. Containing phrases like: "tour de force" "world's most accomplished" "incomparable" "brilliantly reimagines" "penned in period-perfect voice" and "sure to become a classic of the twenty-first century." (I've long thought that the phrase "sure to become a classic" should be banned from all jacket flaps and blurbs.)
Did I like this one? Not really. Why didn't I like this one? Well, it disrespected Mary Shelley's original. I could live with it playing around with the original novel. (Elizabeth being his sister and not his love interest. There being different murder victims than in the original book.) I could even come to like the directions and twists this one took. The character development of this Victor Frankenstein. The big twist did make me think. It is still making me think. (I'm still trying to puzzle out if it really truly works as a whole. Knowing the ending, does all that come before still work. Or does it all fall apart?) So the fact that this one wasn't faithful to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein didn't bother me all that much. But it disrespected history itself. By having Victor Frankenstein interact with real people--with Percy and Mary Shelley, with Lord Byron, with others of the time period you add in a whole other level.
Yes, this book is fiction. It never claims otherwise. But what few facts find their way into the book get so compressed and distorted and out of order that it was just weird. At least weird to me. It is fiction. The author can do anything he wants. It's his choice, his right. Will this bother most readers? I don't know. Probably not. And I suppose that's the good news.
Plus, this one got disgusting. Unlike the original which tended to leave things to your imagination, this one got too detailed and disturbing. (I could choose a scene or two to describe, but I don't really want to go there. I'm not comfortable going there.)
Is it readable? Is it compelling? I read it in two days. Half the time I was hating it, but I still kept reading. This isn't a book I wanted to give up on in the middle, you know, just in case it got good and redeemed itself by an oh-so-amazing ending. How easy is it to read? Well, I'd say it was about as challenging as the original novel. Ackroyd did fairly good at imitating Victor Frankenstein's complex style. Is this one for you? Maybe. Maybe not.
© Becky Laney of Beck
Hopkins, Ellen. 2008. Identical.
If you're familiar with Ellen Hopkins' other novels (verse novels)--Crank, Burned, Impulse, and Glass--then you know what to expect from her newest novel, Identical. For those that aren't familiar, you may find yourself in a state of shock at the issues Hopkins' touches on in her novel: alcohol, drugs, cutting, eating disorders, suicidal thoughts (and attempts), and sex. And of course some may squirm at the language.
No doubt about it, her novels won't suit everyone's tastes. Yet her novels do have fans. And there's a reason--her novels are powerful, very very potent. Raw. Emotional. Very gritty. Very in-your-face. There's always a depth and complexity to the characters that make them compelling. (Even if you don't happen to *like* the characters. You can't deny that they're humanly drawn.)
Identical is a shocking book in many ways. It deals with secrets, lies, brokenness, betrayal. It has more than angst, it has burning and haunting pain on almost every single page. It focuses on a dysfunctional, abusive family with much to hide--the Gardellas. A father who's a district court judge. A mother who's running for Congress. Our narrators are two teen girls Kaeleigh and Raeanne. These two angry-and-bitter narrators share a common enemy: their father and mother.
I hesitate to say much more because really in this instance, the less you know going in...the better the book will read.
© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews
I've got a copy of this I need to read and review, you've definitely made me look forward to it :)
I've read and enjoyed this one. Great review!