Book Review: Just Like That by Marsha Qualey

When Hanna breaks up with her boyfriend of almost a year, she knows she’s supposed to feel . . . something. Liberated, maybe? Sad? Instead, there’s only one thing she feels for certain: She’s in for a pretty dull winter. Her job in the swimwear department certainly isn’t very exciting. But in an instant, everything changes. 

Hanna finds herself the bearer of a major secret: She was the last person to see two teenagers before they died in an accident on the icy lake, and she thinks she could have prevented their deaths. She can’t possibly tell her mother or her two best friends. She can’t tell anyone. Even drawing and painting — always her therapy in the past — aren’t the recipe for calm they once were. So when Hanna finds herself drawn to Will, the elusive boy she’s noticed around town, the kind of boy who’d quicken any girl’s pulse, she doesn’t hold back. Anything. What she learns about him will astonish her. But what she learns about herself — her friendships, her family, her life — will affect her far more.

Review:

This book is terrific! In spite of the fact that very little happens during the book (it mainly focuses on Hanna's guilt over not warning the two teenagers who die, her and Will's relationship, and her friendship with Maura and Kelsey) I think Qualey did a fabulous job with what little bit of a plot she was working with.

Qualey's development of the main characters was stunning. Hanna is an artist to the core, and Marsha Qualey beautifully wove that aspect of her through the novel. Hanna's character was easy to relate to, and Will was a really awesome guy who  definitely played a major roll in majority of the surprises throughout the book. I think that it was the characters themselves, and how well you grew to know them, that makes the book so good, so difficult to put down. The characters suck you in from the start and don't let you go until the last page! 

Just Like That wonderfully showed how its the smaller things--the things that, at the time, don't seem so big--end up changing your life the most and often end up changing you. With great characters, quite a few plot twists, unbelievable shocks, and an awesome author, Just Like That is the a perfect short read, and a great book to get sucked into. Check it out!

Grade: A

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Hooked by Catherine Greenman

Thea Galehouse has always known how to take care of herself. With a flighty club-owner mom and a standoffish, recovering-alcoholic dad, Thea has made her own way in her hometown of New York, attending the prestigious and competitive Stuyvesant High School. But one chat with Will, a handsome and witty senior, and she's a goner—completely hooked on him and unable to concentrate on anything else.

Always worried that she loves Will more than he loves her, Thea is pleasantly surprised when their romance weathers his move to college and Will goes out of his way to involve her in his life. But then, Thea misses a period. And that starts Thea and Will on a wild ride that neither of them could have possibly prepared for.

When they decide to keep the baby, their concerned parents chip in what they can to keep Will in school and give both teenagers a comfortable place to raise their child. But when a freak accident leaves Thea shaken and threatens to upend their little family altogether, Thea is forced to turn to the last place she would have chosen for comfort: her stiff, uncompromising father.This smart, touching first novel brims with realistic, beautifully drawn characters, and reminds us that love is never as easy or predictable as we might like it to be.

Review:

This is my third teen pregnancy novel, and the first that I've really, really liked. The first was Dessen's Someone Like You which just didn't have any appeal for me at all, and the second was such a terrible experience, in fact, that it became the only book that I have ever reviewed negatively.I was pleasantly surprised with Catherine Greenman's debut novel Hooked and dually shocked by the negativety of other reviews I've seen.

The entire novel is very fresh and relatable; it's a sweet (and sometimes not-so-sweet) story of teen romance, pregnancy and parenthood that hasn't been told before. The plot is thoroughly developed and carried out perfectly. The writing is stunning and shines with personality. The characters are what draw you into this book from the start, and keep you hooked--Thea especially. She's your average teenager--sort of--with doubts about college and the future, issues with her parents, and boy troubles. Until it gets a little trickier; pregnancy tends to do that.

There are common stereotypes and misconseptions in our country about teen pregnancy. This novel--and Thea herself--push the boundaries of these stereotypes until they've been completely demolished. Thea is not irresponsible (at least not any more so than any other American teen), she is not extremely poor, she is not a hooker, she is not a slut. She is on the pill. She uses protection. The affect that this has on the reader's view of the novel is overwhelming: this could happen to me.

And, of course, this just happens to be Hooked's selling aspect. The fact that it is so relateable just makes you admire Thea so much, and question those stereotypes that I'm sure most of us must have hidden in the dark corners of our mind; the kind that comes up when you see a pregnant girl in the hall at school, or overhear someone in the bathroom talking to their doctor over the phone about the effectiveness of the pill.

I absolutely loved this novel. Don't listen to what anyone else says. It's fantastic.

Grade: A+

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Sleepwalk Society by Kendare Blake

Violet Monroe has just fumbled her way through the first year of college. All she wants now is to go home and have one great summer with her best friends, Terran, the beautiful one, and Joey, the perpetually angry underachiever.

But when she goes home, she finds that everything has changed: Joey's charismatic cousin, Brandon, has come to town, and pays more attention to plain girl Violet than she's used to. Terran and Joey meanwhile, decide to give in to their mutual attraction, only to deal with a troubling aftermath. In the midst of everything, Violet must decide who she is, something which her parents insist is intrinsically linked to what kind of job she gets after graduating.

Review:

SSLEEPWALK SOCIETY really--truly and honestly--blew me away. Violet has one of the strongest voices of any character's I've read before, and that means a lot, especially coming from me. She isn't a kick-ass heroine, she isn't a CIA agent, she isn't in love with a vampire or werewolf--she's an 18 year old girl, and that is, in it's aches and pains, more real and more raw than any other book I've picked up in a while.

If you've read my reviews before, you know that something I value the most in novels is character development, and if the characters in these books aren't developed thoroughly, than I've never read a decent book before. Violet, as I've said, is stunning; she is constantly searching for a moment of clarity, a moment where, for just that one moment, everything will make sense, and she'll know who she is, and what she wants to do--who she wants to be. But, of course, it's rare that we have those moments at all, and even rarer if you can cling to that feeling of lucidity for more than a single second, before it slips through your fingers and is gone for good.

Violet is brimming with the heart-warming thoughts and daydreams of a teenager who doesn't quite know what to do with herself. She can't grasp the one thing that most of us need to grasp at her age: how can I decide, now, what I want to do for the rest of my life? Because, really, nobody wants to risk making the wrong choice; we all want to do something that we're good at, that we're better at than anything else--but can you ever really know?

She questions the meaning of the four-letter-word we'd all like to hear--what does it really mean to love someone? ". . . And it's beyond my energy to explain why I don't think that four-letter word that everyone's so obsessed over and that gets everyone into so much trouble and pretty much makes everyone behave like an ass can live in a place like this. Somewhere during dry cleaning, details, and missed meals, it flakes away and what you're left with is married people with a tolerable affinity for each other. . . This place of dull details and irksome obligations is a home only to other four-letter words, which are used much more frequently."It's these things, that we, as people, cling to--does he really mean it, when he tells me he loves me? And it's these thoughts of Violet that make this book so innocent and wonderful, even with all of the awful things that happen around and to this eighteen year old girl.

Some people may complain about the mature content, drug references, and drinking in the novel, but my response to that is simply: if you're looking for real life, this is it--this is the real life of teenagers today. Not all, but most; and even if you're not the one directly involved, it's still there, around us, every day. Real teens in real life do these things--and worse--and that is the terrible truth that we need to face. And it's probably not going to change.

Sleepwalk Society is a true, honest, coming-of-age novel that girls and boys of all ages can't miss out on. It isn't just about school, and finding who you are--it's finding out who we are, people as whole, and deals with so many little things that we don't ever think about, even fleetingly, but once you finally do, you can't help but turn it over in your head again and again, trying to find some hidden meaning--because things can't actually be what they are; there needs to be a reason, an answer to the why? that we tag onto the end of almost every single thing that comes out of our mouths.

This book is drowning in it's simplicity--the value of love, the value of life, and the value of actually living. And it's absolutely stunning because of it!

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