Title: The Sculptor
Author: Scott McCloud
Genre: Graphic Novel
Stars: * * *
I have complicated feelings about Scott McCloud’s The Sculptor. I very rapidly became immersed in the narrative, so much so that I blew through 200 pages while standing around in a store. However, despite the ease at which I devoured the book, it wasn’t wholly satisfying as McCloud relies too heavily on overused tropes and fails to rise above what other writers have done, often better, before.
SPOILERS AHOY
Title: Goosebumps #10: The Ghost Next Door
Rating: * * *
Hannah is convinced that a ghost has taken up residence in her town. During a boring summer holiday while all her friends are away at camp, she meets a new boy who has supposedly lived next door for several years. Hannah decides that he must be a ghost as surely she would have noticed having a neighbour? As she follows him around, she realises that he isn’t the one haunting the neighbourhood, she is, and her purpose in coming back is to save him from dying in a horrible accident.
The Ghost Next Door is one of the most affecting and emotional books of the series. Its strengths lie not in the spookiness of the story, but in the emotional feelings that it inspires. It has no twist ending. Instead, the finale is heartwarming, though also bittersweet. My only issue with this novel was the cruelty of the young boys who broke into and set fire (accidentally) to older man’s house simply because he was a grump. It was a rather disturbing addition to an otherwise sweet story.
Title: Goosebumps #11: The Haunted Mask
Rating: * * *
The kids at school think that Carly Beth is a giant scaredy-cat. After one particularly vicious prank leaves her in tears, she decides that she needs to find the most horrifying Halloween costume so that she can get revenge on the two boys who slipped worms into her lunch. She visits a local costume shop, and discovers the most terrifying masks in the backroom. When the owner refuses to sell one to her, she runs off with a mask anyways, and finds out quickly that her Halloween costume is something far more sinister than a piece of plastic. After she puts it on, it fuses to her skin, and she starts to develop a crueler, more monstrous personality…
The Haunted Mask is a Goosebumps classic. It’s probably the most well-known novel of the series, was the first story to be turned into a TV episode, and is one of Stine’s most remembered books. Upon re-reading, it holds up! Carly Beth is a likeable protagonist, and she changes for the better by the end of the novel. There are parts of the story that don’t make all that much sense, but overall, it’s a creepy and scary Halloween story that should feel just real enough to a kid to offer an appropriate number of chills.
Title: Goosebumps #12: Be Careful What You Wish For
Rating: * ½
Samantha Byrd is an awkward pre-teen who just can’t seem to catch a break. She’s constantly bullied by a fellow classmate, and all she wants is a fresh start. When she helps a mysterious woman, Clarissa, across town, she’s offered three wishes for compensation. As the title suggests, however, wishes must be carefully used. Every time Samantha wishes for something, her desires come true, but with terrible repercussions. She becomes the best basketball player when everyone else on the team falls ill. When she wishes to be left alone, everyone in the world disappears. And when she wishes that her bully was actually her best friend, she ends up with a stalker in her closet. Clarissa gives Sam one more chance, so she wishes that her bully was the one to meet the mysterious old woman. However, the bully’s first wish turns Sam into a bird, giving her a fresh start, but taking away her humanity.
The plot of Be Careful What You Wish For is not particularly innovative. The riskiness of wishes appears throughout many fables and stories, and this particular book does little to add to the mythology. However, it is quite possibly one of the first times that a young child is introduced to the trope, so it is probably best that the message remains simple. What is unforgiveable is the personality of the main character. Sam is whiny and petulant, and she never thinks before she acts. Given the fact that her first wish taught her just how dangerous thoughtlessness could be you would think that even a twelve year old would pause before using her wishes. However, Sam is not particularly talented at patience and forethought, so she suffers through a terrible series of situations, and an even worse fate.
Rapid response reviews are shorter entries for books that I want to comment on, but don’t have enough time or material to finish a normal post. Given the sheer length of the Fables series, the only way I’ll ever be able to tackle most of its volumes is if I keep my comments short and sweet! My reviews for the actual Fables series are simple: go read them all! To get the whole story, readers need to finish all of the books, and even though there are 19 volumes (as of now), all of them are worth the read. Today’s RRR, therefore, is dedicated to the Fables spin-offs since they are almost as voluminous, but differ widely in their importance to the main series and their overall quality.
Title: Jack of Fables (Volumes 1-9, including The Literals mini-series)
Author: Bill Willingham
Rating: *
Genre: Fantasy, Fairy Tale, Graphic Novel
I’m cheating a bit with Jack of Fables as I am lumping all of the books into one write-up (though I did write mini-reviews for volumes one and two here). Simply put, I hated this series. Jack of Fables is extraordinarily different from its predecessor, and very little of what I loved about Fables was present in Jack. Admittedly, the story premise is quite intriguing as these books deal with the existence of the Literals, beings that are the anthropomorphic representations of writing tools, but the titular character makes the story all but unbearable. I read the full series because there is a cross-over between it and Fables, but after trudging through these books, I am pretty sure I could have just skipped Fables 13 and saved myself the trouble. While the Literals are an interesting concept, most of the series is dedicated to showing how Jack is a terrible human being. The humour is sexist (for example, Jack sleeps with his half-sisters and this fact keeps coming up throughout the entire series as something that is supposed to be funny or admirable), the art is inconsistent, and I could not care less about any of the characters. Unless you are a diehard Fables fan, these books should be a skip. Continue reading
Title: Goosebumps #7: Night of the Living Dummy
Rating: * *
Like Monster Blood, Night of the Living Dummy is one of the central, re-occurring Goosebumps stories, but I am not a very big fan of this initial installment (though I am quite fond of the sequels). So what made this one so different? Character development is not a strong point for the Goosebumps series, but I found the main characters in this story were particularly irritating and flat. Night of the Living Dummy stars twins Lindy and Kris who find a dummy in the trash. Lindy decides to keep the dummy, naming him Slappy, and Kris becomes jealous of her ventriloquism skills and the attention that it brings her twin. To stop the two from fighting, the twins’ father buys Kris a second dummy that she names Mr. Wood. However, Mr. Wood isn’t a normal dummy, and he acts out violently, taking control of Kris’ acts. No one will believe her when she claims that the dummy is alive, so the sisters have to team up to defeat this evil marionette.
The idea of a living dummy is nerve-racking, and the Slappy and Mr. Wood characters are scary because they seem to be sociopathic, unkillable monsters. The part of the story involving the dummies doing evil things worked well because it is pretty chilling to think about strange, living dolls wandering around your house at night, destroying things and trying to mess up your life. However, I could have done without Kris. I generally do not have a problem with well-written, unlikeable characters, or young characters that act their age. Kris, on the other hand, just gives me a headache. She’s so intensely jealous of her sister, and I felt that there wasn’t enough pushback against her bad behaviour in the narrative telling her that she should just chill out and figure out her own way to shine. I know that the relationship between twins is unique, but one would think that she wouldn’t want to strive to do the exact same things as her sister. I also felt that her parents should definitely not have encouraged Kris to try and steal the stoplight from Lindy so obviously. However, if they had done that, we wouldn’t have had this story, so the awkward characterisation can be forgiven as it led to a particularly memorable villain.
Title: Goosebumps #8: The Girl Who Cried Monster
Rating: * * ½
Lucy is obsessed with monsters. She’s always looking to learn more about them, and her favourite activity is scaring her little brother with monster stories. However, she talks about monsters so often that no one believes her when she sees a real one! When she stays late in the library one night, she sees the local librarian turn into a disgusting creature that eats flies! Though she tries all sorts of things to prove to her parents that the librarian is a monster, all her efforts fail, and he discovers that she knows what he is. Lucy is convinced that she’s going to get eaten when her parents invite him over for dinner, but the tables are turned rather quickly when Lucy’s parents devour the librarian before the rest of the community is alerted to the presence of monsters among them. As it turns out, Lucy is obsessed with horror story creatures because she is one!
The Girl Who Cried Monster is a solid horror book for kids. Lucy is a bit obnoxious, but within reason for a precocious twelve year old. The plot is a fairly typical one, with Lucy getting herself into all sorts of suspenseful situations trying to get proof that the librarian is a monster. However, it is the ending that really makes this particular addition to the series stand out. I did not guess that Lucy’s family were monsters, and it was a delightful creepy ending to a creepy story.
Title: Goosebumps #9: Welcome to Camp Nightmare
Rating: * * *
Camp Nightmare is a strange story, but it certainly delivers in terms of scariness. This Goosebumps stars Mike, a normal 12 year old heading off to an overnight camp for the first time. However, his trip seems cursed from the start as the bus that was supposed to take all the kids to camp drops them off in the middle of nowhere, leaving them to be attacked by strange, dog-like creatures. They are saved by the camp director, but it seems that the troubles with this camp are just beginning. One of Mike’s campmates is bitten by a snake, but the camp has no nurse to treat him, and he disappears overnight. Slowly, members of his cabin fall victim to mysterious accidents, but the camp staff don’t seem to care. Mike finally decides he has to stand up to this callousness when the camp director orders the campers to hunt through the forest with tranquilizer guns for two run-aways. With this choice, he finds out he passed the test that his parents were putting him through in order to take him along on a scientific expedition to an alien world: Earth!
The idea that a camp could exist that is so careless towards the children that it is responsible for seems pretty unlikely, and as a reader, I was trying to figure out what the catch was from the very first few pages. However, with the twist reveal at the end, suddenly the callousness and neglect makes sense, even if the plot was a bit silly. Despite the ridiculous plot, Camp Nightmare is great for scaring younger readers. Camp can be a frightening experience at the best of times, and this story plays on those fears of abandonment and danger. Camp myths turn deadly, and Mike has no adults to turn to. He must survive on his own, and stand up against those who are supposed to be protecting him. All in all, this is one of my favourite books in the Goosebumps series.
Title: Grim
Editor: Christine Johnson
Star Rating: * * *
Genre: Fairy Tale Retellings, Short Stories, Young Adult
Thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin Teen for a review copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.
Synopsis
Grim is a collection of short stories based on classic fairy tales with new twists and reimaginings.
I was searching through books from my childhood on GoodReads when I had the whim to reread some of the old series that I used to enjoy. From things like Nancy Drew to Animorphs, there were a lot of stories that I read as a kid that were fun and short and might provide some entertainment even to me now. I was also curious to see how they stood up to the test of time and maturity. Since I had a particular love for horror novels and TV shows as a child, I decided to start with Goosebumps!
Goosebumps, the series by R.L. Stine, were introductory horror novels for children of my generation. There are 62 books in the series, and most feature 12 year old protagonists who are confronted with strange, paranormal events. While the children are often threatened, there is never much violence in these books, and the kids usually escape their enemies (though sometimes they are changed in odd and unnerving ways). There are usually at least two protagonists in each book, and at least one boy and one girl. The books often end with a silly, but creepy twist that makes the reader rethink the story, or entraps the characters in a bigger or more long-lasting problem than expected.
Rating these books is rather hard. They are not particularly well-written, but neither are they really meant to be pieces of great literature. Goosebumps is a series for entertaining and scaring kids, not necessarily expanding their horizons, or making them think about deep questions of life. However, this absence of a philosophical underpinning is perfectly fine. I have no problem with books that are really just about entertainment and silliness as long as there are also books for kids that do offer a more insightful reading experience. As a child, I loved challenging myself to see how many Goosebumps I could read in a day because even then I took them to be short tales whose sole purpose was to keep me amused for an afternoon. I also read books like A Wrinkle in Time and The Phantom Tollbooth, so the presence of Goosebumps didn’t discourage or prevent me from reading novels with a bit more substance. Thus, Goosebumps are a perfectly legitimate part of a kid’s reading diet, but they don’t tend to warrant all that many stars. Make no mistake, they are entertaining, but this is often despite their poor construction and writing. I have given most of them low-star ratings, but I have been enjoying my re-read even though they have numerous literary problems. I can definitely understand why kids devoured stacks of these books as they are often ridiculous, but scary stories that capitalise on the worst fears of children.
Title: Goosebumps #1: Welcome to Dead House
Rating: * * ½
Welcome to Dead House is where the Goosebumps phenomenon started, and it is a very standard example of what one will get with this series. The Benson family finds out that they have inherited a house from a forgotten relative, so they move to the small town of Dark Falls to start over. Amanda and Josh are our protagonists, two siblings who are 11 and 12 years old (the standard age for all Goosebumps protagonists). Right away they start making friends with some of the kids in their new town, but they soon find that things seem a bit off in Dark Falls. The kids discover that all their new friends have gravestones in the town cemetery, and Dark Falls is actually a city of ghosts that needs to sacrifice the entire Benson family in order to survive!
This first book of the series is moderately suspenseful and creepy, but it’s also not all that memorable. There are a lot of spooky house scenes, but Welcome to Dead House is a fairly standard evil ghost story. It gives kids what they want – a few scares and frights, and that’s really all Goosebumps ever aims to do. It sets the tone of the series and the general parameters of how these stories work, and was a very safe opening to the series.
Title: Neptune Noir: Unauthorized Investigations into Veronica Mars
Editor: Rob Thomas
Star Rating: * * *
Genre: Literary and pop culture analysis
Note: Review copy obtained from NetGalley.
Synopsis and Background
Before I can talk about the book, I have to talk about a TV show: Veronica Mars. Long story short, go watch it. Go watch it right now! I am not generally a TV person, but Veronica Mars is one of my absolute favourite stories. It’s a noir mystery series with a spunky teenage girl as the protagonist. It’s dark, morally challenging, and has a complex and imperfect female main character that drives the show forward. The show ran for three seasons, but was cancelled in 2007.
So why talk about a TV series that was cancelled several years back? In 2013, a massively successful Kickstarter campaign was launched to fund a new Veronica Mars movie, and that movie was released on March 14, 2014 (check your local theatres!). The movie takes place several years after the series when Veronica is a fully fledged adult coming back to Neptune to help out an old friend. I went to see it on opening night, and I can guarantee that fans are going to enjoy this new addition to the Veronica Mars canon!
But what about Nepture Noir? This book is a compilation of essays written about various literary and social aspects of the series with commentary from Rob Thomas, the creator of the series. The essay authors, fans of the series themselves, explore many different aspects of the show, including the symbolism that it uses, and discussions about why the show worked so well.
The Good
If you have not watched Veronica Mars, this book is not for you (yet). But for fans, it’s an interesting addition to the series that celebrates some of the best aspects of the show.
Some of the essays are quite unique, and I really quite enjoyed Chris McCubbin’s piece on why Veronica Mars has a surprisingly big conservative fanbase, and Lawrence Watt-Evans’s character analysis of the cars used in the show. I was also a big fan of the two essays from Joyce Millman and Amy Berner on the role of fathers in the show, particularly the focus on Keith Mars who is one amazing fictional dad. While there was nothing truly ground-breaking presented in this volume, the authors caught onto little details that add quite a bit to one’s experience of the series.
The Bad
Despite my enjoyment, there are some downsides to the book. For one, the pieces were all written before the third and final season came out, so there is a lot of speculating about future development that is no longer relevant as the show moved forward. But since I enjoyed seasons 1 and 2 quite a bit more than season 3, this didn’t bother me at all.
For people looking for more critical academic work on this show, Neptune Noir is more of a lighter, analytical look at the show. This isn’t a fault unless you come in looking for something deeper than you will get, so don’t expect scholarly quality and depth. Just enjoy a series of essays produced by a bunch of articulate fans of the series.
There was only one essay that I truly did not like in Neptune Noir, and that was Heather Havrilesky’s “The Importance of Not Being Earnest”. Before I explain my discomfort, I should give readers a spoiler warning for the show and a trigger warning for content involving sexual assault. One of the most controversial plot elements of Veronica Mars is that the main protagonist is a rape survivor. It’s an integral aspect of her backstory, and part of the reason that she is so driven to root out the evil in Neptune. In Havrilesky’s essay, she concentrates on talking about Veronica as a world-weary teen that has crossed into adulthood too soon, specifically in relation to her views on love. She applauds Veronica’s maturity in understanding that love isn’t this perfect state of being, and that the people you love can hurt you. She then goes on to talk about her first high school breakup. However, this comparison is pretty tasteless when one realises that Veronica’s issues with love arise out of the fact that her first love dumped her without telling her why (and she later finds out that it’s because they might be half-siblings), shortly thereafter, her best friend was brutally murdered, the entire town then turned on Veronica and her father for attempting to solve the crime (Veronica’s dad was the sheriff at the time), she was drugged and raped at a party when she tried to fit back in with her former group of friends, the new sheriff refused to believe her when she reported the assault, and her mother ran off when her father lost his job. In short, Veronica’s views on love have been affected by some severely violent and emotionally disturbing events that are not equal to an average high school breakup. To compare to the two diminishes the severity of the harms that Veronica suffered, so the essay, despite saying some interesting things, left me uncomfortable and frustrated.
Final Thoughts
If you like Veronica Mars, Neptune Noir is probably going to be a fun and thoughtful addition to the series as you wait for what Rob Thomas is going to produce next (and fans should know that the Veronica Mars movie continues in book form with the release of The Thousand Dollar Tan Line on March 25th!).
Title: Will-O-the-Wisp: An Aurora Grimeon Story
Authors: Tom Hammock and Megan Hutchinson
Star Rating: * * *
Genre: Graphic Novel, Mystery, Paranormal
NOTE: Review copy obtained via NetGalley.
Synopsis
After her parents died from accidentally ingesting poisonous mushrooms, Aurora is sent to live with her estranged grandfather deep in the southern swamps. Not only must she contend with this cantankerous old man, but she must figure out how to fit in with the diverse residents of Ossuary Isle. When strange occurrences begin to happen, she starts to explore the realm of Hoodoo magic alongside a priestess from the swamp in order to protect her new community from a vengeful spirit.
Title: Sherlock Holmes and the Vampires of London
Authors: Sylvain Cordurié (Author), Laci (Illustrator)
Star Rating: * * *
Genre: Graphic Novel, Mystery, Paranormal
NOTE: Review copy obtained via NetGalley. Publication date is February 11, 2014.
Synopsis
After the events at Reichenbach Falls, Sherlock Holmes goes into hiding. By convincing everyone that he is dead, he hopes to avoid any reprisals for his part in Moriarty’s death. However, he finds himself drawn back to London for a case from a very strange client. Individuals linked to the royal house are being brutally killed, and it is not the queen that has sent for him, but a demonic master vampire who needs Holmes to track down a rogue monster. With Watson and his wife being threatened, how can Holmes crack this case without handing over his soul to the proverbial devil?
My “what I’ve read” versus “what I’ve written about” piles are completely out of balance again, so it’s time for another RRR (rapid response review)! Today’s theme comes from one of my current literary obsessions: YA dystopias.
1. The Eleventh Plague – Jeff Hirsch
Star Rating: * *
The Eleventh Plague is about a world destroyed, not surprisingly, by plague, and the remaining people are scavengers just trying to survive. At the start of the novel, Stephen must suddenly fend for himself after his grandfather dies and his father is badly injured during an accident. He joins up with group of strangers who take him to a hidden town that has managed to maintain some semblance of order and safety. However, this isolated village is not as perfect as it seems, and Stephen begins to wonder if he’d be safer on his own.
The main problem with The Eleventh Plague is that it is boring. Books don’t need constant action to be interesting, but they must have some believable tension. Hirsch was trying to portray a very insular community where freedoms were restricted in order to ensure social cohesion, but the stakes never seemed that high. The expectations were pretty low (contribute and don’t be disruptive), and readers were only given one example of a family being banished. Additionally, an adopted Chinese teenager named Julie lived in the town, and she faced mistrust and racism from the community, but not nearly as much as I would have expected given the fact that China unleased the plague. Julie refused to participate in community functioning, and caused a lot of havoc and disharmony by fighting. However, the town let her skip school and do her own thing most of the time. She faced little punishment for her indiscretions, and this is surprising as I would assume that fear and distrust could cause people to react violently to a person that they see as an enemy. Many authors have used isolated villages to really explore the horror of human emotions under pressure, but The Eleventh Plague only brushed the surface of human depravity. For a dystopia, it was pretty lightweight, and there are a lot of better books that deal with the subject in a more nuanced and in-depth manner.
2. The Fifth Wave – Rick Yancey
Star Rating: * * *
The Fifth Wave has received a lot of hype this past year, and while it is certainly not one of the best novels that I have ever read, I thought it was quite enjoyable. The story is about an alien species trying to kill off the human race through waves of different attacks. First came the destruction of our technology, then a series of tsunamis that wiped out the coastal regions, followed by a devastating plague, and finally the revelation that some of the aliens had been living among us all along and were quite happy to start killing the remaining humans. Now only a scattered few people remain, clinging to the hope that the government can protect them as they wait for the start of an unknown fifth wave…
My one major complaint about this book was that I really didn’t like the perspective changes. For a good hundred pages, readers follow Cassie, a teenage girl who has managed to survive the first several waves. Then the narrative shifts to Zombie, a teenage boy’s perspective, without any warning. Not only was this transition too abrupt, I wanted more Cassie! Subjectively, I found her more interesting than Zombie and his crew, despite the fact that his plot was essential for the book as a whole. Those who like Ender’s Game, on the other hand, will probably love Zombie’s segments of the book.
Overall, The Fifth Wave was an entertaining read with lots of action sequences and good characters. The plot is a bit stereotypical, but the author manages to keep things interesting regardless.
3. All Our Yesterdays – Christin Terrill
Star Rating: * *
All Our Yesterdays is an overly-promoted YA dystopia that left me disappointed. It is a very exciting and fast-paced book, but it also doesn’t make any sense. The narrative is told from the perspective of one character during two different periods of her life. Em is a young woman kept captive and tortured by an evil scientist, and she and her lover must travel back in time to ensure that this terrible future never occurs. Marina, on the other hand, is a normal teenage girl who has fallen in love with her childhood friend and just wants a happy ending. Marina’s crush is a brilliant young man who graduated early and is already conducting experimental research at a top university. He is, of course, the evil scientist from the future who has invented time travel and remade the world into a terrible place because of the pain that he has suffered after his family died.
The plot of this story is not particularly unique, and the world-building does little to set this novel apart from other dystopias. Readers know that the future is bad, but the author doesn’t give very many details as to what this terrible new world looks like. The characters aren’t particularly compelling, and I often found myself frustrated with them. For example, Em knows that she absolutely must kill James, but despite having several opportunities to do so, she keeps avoiding taking this final step. While I do accept that killing people is something that most people are going to struggle with, this is a person that Em knows will torture her and her loved ones in the future. Her hesitancy is questionable if the future is as bad as she claims that it is. Furthermore, her younger self, Marina, is a terribly valid and insipid character. Her life is centered around her crush on James, and this informs basically every action that she takes. She has few positive characteristics to endear her to readers, and generally acts like a silly, flighty, often mean-spirited brat. She is certainly not the worst character in terms of attitude, but I didn’t find her very interesting or enjoyable to follow. Being that I liked neither her nor Em, it was hard to really get into the story, and the plot inconsistencies involving time travel made my heart hurt. This is definitely not a book on my recommend pile.
4. Fallen World Series: The Way We Fall and The Lives We Lost – Megan Crewe
Star Rating: * * * / * *
The Way We Fall is a plague-based dystopia set in Canada. Since I am Canadian and I really like medical-based thrillers, this book won a lot of points from me just for existing. The story involves a teenage girl, Kaelyn, who lives on an island that is beset by a strange flu that causes people to slowly lose their inhibitions and eventually die while suffering terrible hallucinations. The island gets cut off from the mainland, and society begins to crumble as more and more people become ill. Kaelyn’s father is a research doctor and he is working frantically to figure out what is going on, but with food becoming scarce and families being torn apart by disease, someone needs to set up and try to maintain order in the town. Kaelyn and several other teens take on this task, praying that the mainland will come to save them soon.
Kaelyn’s story is told through journal entries that she is writing to a friend that she has had a falling out with. I found this to be an excellent frame for the plot since it allowed Kaelyn time to reflect on what was happening before she told her story, and the format mirrors the desire that many people have to “communicate” with someone even when they are no longer part of one’s life.
The Lives We Lost begins with the island re-establishing contact with the mainland. The characters find out that the plague made it to the rest of the world, causing mass devastation. Now Kaelyn and her friends must take the vaccine that her father prepared to a group of scientists in Ontario.
Unfortunately, this second book of the Fallen World series was a lot weaker than the first. While I do appreciate it when YA protagonists are allowed to act like young adults, I found that most of the characters were irritatingly obtuse. For example, when Kaelyn finds the vaccine, she decides that she must deliver it to other scientists as soon as possible because the vaccine must be kept at a particular temperature and she is worried that the generators on the island will fail. Being that I have to take a temperature-controlled medication myself, I know how nerve-wracking it can be to have to protect your meds in less-than-perfect situations. However, the last thing in the world that I would do with my medication is to take it on a long hike in a Canadian winter because, at least in Ontario where Kaelyn ends up, the temperatures can easily dip below -30C. There is no way in hell that a vaccine would survive a trip like the one she took, and this was only one of the flaws that I found in the mechanics of the plot. I will be reading the third book in the series because now I feel invested in seeing what happens to the world, and I am really hoping that this final installment improves.
5. Life as We Knew It – Susan Beth Pfeffer
Star Rating: * * * *
Life as We Knew It remains one of the most affecting YA dystopias that I’ve read all year. It’s about a world where the moon has shifted orbit due to an asteroid crashing into it, resulting in the climate changing dramatically, and humanity is now struggling to survive. The book is told through the eyes of Miranda, a high school age teenager living in a small town with her family. Her mother is smart enough to recognise the first signs of trouble, and she makes sure that her family has enough supplies to support themselves while the world crumbles around them. Canned goods, however, don’t last forever, and illness and injury are things that your average North American family can’t always handle on their own. The group starts to struggle as it becomes more and more apparent that there isn’t a government left to save them and hard choices must be made.
The only thing that really bothered me in Life as We Knew It was the fact that Miranda’s family was so worried about ensuring that her youngest brother would survive. It is true that many people try to protect the most vulnerable around them, but the explanation given by the family was that Jon was the most likely to survive the apocalypse, so all the family resources should be focused on him. Jon, however, was 12. Miranda was 15-16 years old, and Matt was around 19 years old. These older teens were more likely to be able to take care of themselves and survive than the kid who still needed a babysitter before the world ended. This “feed Jon at all costs and let everyone else die” wasn’t a story-breaking issue, but it did irk me that the rest of the characters were so ready to sacrifice themselves so stupidly.
Unfortunately, despite the fact that I really enjoyed this book, the rest of the series is not something that I want to read. The perspective changes multiple times, and the characters develop into people that I don’t particularly like. So for those going forward with Pfeffer’s novels, you might have to check out a few plot synopses first.
Maggie's Towering Pile of Books 