A Certain Slant of Light

Whitcomb, Laura. A Certain Slant of Light. Boston: Graphia-Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/73919]

Awards:
ALA Best Books for Young Adults (2006)
ALA Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults (Death and Dying, 2009)

Booktalk:
Helen has been "haunting" writers for 130yrs. By haunting, I mean acting as their unnoticed muse. She's grown used to existing on the sidelines of the lives of her writers. She has a happy afterlife. Her current writer, Mr. Brown, teaches English during the day. It's in his class that everything changes. A student looks at her, hears her, knows that she's there. And now that Helen has someone to interact with rather than thanklessly inspire, she can't let him go. Even if she has to "borrow" a human body, like he has, to keep him.

Review:
I've been eyeing this book since it came out 4 years ago, but I'm not a big fan of ghost stories (read: I'm a big wimp when it comes to scary stuff with no explanations). I put off reading it. Happily for me, this book is not scary. At all. There are some suspenseful moments, but they have nothing to do with ghosts so much as crazy parenting. But I'll get to that in a minute.

Basically, James, who used to haunt the park, found an empty body. The soul had walked off when the body OD-ed, so James decided to hop in. Because he's still a ghost, he can see Helen. They've both been alone for decades and relish in each other's company. They fall in love. Unfortunately, all of these inconvenient physical urges come with James' borrowed body. He wants to satisfy them with Helen, but to do that she also needs a body. They find her an empty body at, where else, the mall. Now James, in Billy's body, and Helen, in Jenny's body, are free to go at it like rabbits.

There are of course, complications such as when Billy's brother, who is raising Billy while their mom is in a coma and their dad is in jail, catches James and Helen (Billy and Jenny?) in the act. Or when Jenny's mom, who is ruled by her EXTREMELY religious husband, finds bloody panties when it's not Jenny (Helen?)'s time of the month and assumes, correctly, that someone has popped Jenny's cherry. Or when Helen starts to get nauseous every time she smells food after having lots of condoms-weren't-invented-before-I-died sex. But these are small roadblocks in Helen and James' love story.

This is paranormal romance at its best. Everyday concerns are left by the wayside as the extraordinary circumstances that make this love story work take precedence. As long as that's what you're looking for, you'll love this. But if you want a good almost Halloween ghost story, look elsewhere.


Book source: Philly Free Library

A Great and Terrible Beauty

Bray, Libba. A Great and Terrible Beauty. New York: Delacourte Press, 2003.
[Book cover credit: www.librarything.com]

Awards:
New York Times Bestseller, Children's Chapter (2003)
ALA Best Books for Young Adults (2004)
Teens Top Ten (2004)

Booktalk:
During the Victorian Age in England, young women, like the ones attending the Spence Academy finishing school, did not have much freedom. Ann, Spence's charity case, is only their so she may be a knowledgeable governess some day. Felicity has been all but abandoned by her parents at Spence. Pippa's parents are preparing to marry her off to the highest bidder. For these young women, nothing would seem more intoxicating that a legend about a society of women who control a world of magic, magic that they can use in this world to gain independence and power. For Gemma, who has been having visions since her mother's death, this is no legend bur a frightening reality. When she takes her friends into the realms with her and lets them to taste the magic will they all succumb to their fates or succumb to the magic of the realms, hoping to wield its powers? Or will they go against everything they have been taught and forge a third choice of their own.

Also, even though this has little to no bearing on the rest of the plot, how can you not love a book about a magical society in the Victorian Era that has the balls to make fun of and disprove Victorian Mysticism?

Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

Crutcher, Chris. Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes. New York: A Greenwillow Book, HarperTempest, 1993.
[Book cover credit: www.librarything.com]

Awards:
ALA Best Books for Young Adults (1994)

Summary:
Tough Sarah (who has severe burns all over her hands and face) and doughy, frightened Eric (also called Moby, after another famous whale) have been friends for a long time, mainly because no one else wanted to be friends with them. High school changes everything when Eric starts to shed pounds as a result of joining the swim team and Sarah, who turns out to be not so tough, cracks and winds up in a psychiatric hospital.

Review:
A friend said in class the other day that talking to your best friend, at the age of 13, about the death of a parent is dumping so much on a kid, even if that kid is your age, that they can't possibly comprehend. Sarah Byrnes has been avoiding doing that most of her life, protecting her friends and also protecting herself. When the truth finally comes out about why she is in the psychiatric hospital and about her scars, she is more exposed than she has ever been and must learn to trust Eric as well as a small handful of adults that he trusts.

When Eric's best friend, who he was secretly afraid of because she's so tough, stops talking and is committed, his life changes dramatically while not changing at all. He still has to go to school, where he is taking a Contemporary American Thought, a class that erupts into dramatic and emotional debate on an almost daily basis. He still has to go to swim practice, where he and Ellerby are stars plotting to take out their fellow teammate. He still has to deal with his mother's new boyfriend, who is about as interesting as cardboard. He still has to deal with being a high school boy who wants to laugh and eat and joke and crush on girls and not talk nonsense to his best friend, who won't respond and possibly can't hear him, in a mental ward everyday. But he does.

This harrowing (yet hilarious at times) story not only touches on, but addresses so many touchy subjects: weight, image, abuse, abortion, religion, suicide, fault, what it means to be a victim and who can be a hero.