7. Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You

Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, by Peter Cameron (2007)

My friend SJ recommended this and I ordered it from the library immediately. I suggest you do the same.

The narrator, James, is an eighteen-year-old alienated misfit from a wealthy family in New York. Don't let that description turn you off. I really liked this kid and his descriptions of the people around him. There are lots of novels about angsty teen outsiders, but this one didn't come off as pretentious or derivative.

James can't really relate to most people, but he isn't cruel or weird. He's just uncomfortable and disinterested. I can't really explain what I liked about this, but I read it in a two-hour binge when I was tired and it was well-past bedtime (check the timestamp on this post). I just couldn't stop reading it. I especially liked the semantic arguments James has with other people, most notably his therapist. It made sense for this character to really care about using the right words. I also liked all the art references in the book. James' mother owns a gallery, and three pivotal scenes take place in museums. It works.

6. Notorious

Notorious, by Michele Martinez (March 2008)

This book wins the prize for creepiest cover I've run across in a while. Seriously, look at the obscenely long toenails on the woman pictured. The trend of showing just a woman's feet or legs on a book cover is getting kind of old in general, but they could have at least given this model a pedicure before taking the picture.

Anyway, there's nothing remarkable about Notorious, really. It's well-written and the story was interesting enough to make me finish it, though it did take me almost a week to get through it. I generally read books in one or two sittings, but the last two haven't grabbed me enough to sit still. This one's the fourth in a series, which I didn't realize when I picked it up. I'd never heard of the author, but then, I don't really follow the genre.

The protagonist, Melanie Vargas, is an Assistant U.S. Attorney on a big murder case against a ganster-turned-rapper named Atari Briggs. Her opposing counsel is blown to bits in front of her, right after approaching her with an offer of cooperation. The story follows the case as Melanie and the feds unravel the story of who killed Lester Poe and why, at the same time they continue their investigation and case against Briggs. The problem I had was that there's really no mystery. We know from the beginning who's good and who's bad and the conspiracy is pretty easy to figure out. The characters rang true, and that's probably why I kept reading, but I think the story suffered because we knew too much about too many of them. Maybe I harp on this too much, but it's not fun to know more than the hero of the story. I wanted to figure out the case right alongside Melanie, but I was always two steps ahead of her because Martinez let us inside the heads of the other characters. It was disappointing.

5. Night Road

Night Road (A.M. Jenkins, 2008)

Vampire novels are fun, and I enjoy seeing the different mythologies authors come up with. This story is the first that makes being a vampire seem completely unglamorous. Jenkins' vampires don't even like to be called vampires--they're hemivores and regular humans are omnivores, or "omnis."
The story is about Cole, who's part of a hemi collective in New York City, but spends most of his time traveling alone on the road. Johnny, the leader of the group, calls Cole back to the Building and charges him with the task of mentoring a new and problematic young hemi.

Night Road is very well written and I was interested in the characters, but the story is pretty flat. Not much actually happens. This is pretty effective, because it reinforced how dreary and repetitive the lives of the hemis really are. I liked the novel, but I wasn't completely captivated by it. It has potential as the start of a series, but I don't know for sure that's what's going to happen. The pots would have to get more interesting, but the characters are interesting enough that some excitement would keep my interest. So, I have mixed feelings about this one.

4. The Loser's Guide to Love and Life

The Loser's Guide to Love and Life (A.E. Cannon, June 2008)

Teen lit is so easy to read between journal articles, and I'm afraid I won't be able to get into adult lit for a while. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I'm not familiar with the author's other work, but she's won some impressive YA awards. The book is pretty entertaining. It focuses on four teens, but I'd say that Ed is the main character. He works at a video store and doesn't have his own name tag yet, so he wears one left behind by a former employee named Sergio. You see where this is going, right? So a cute girl comes into the store and thinks his name is Sergio. Ed takes the opportunity to create a suave alter ego and doesn't correct her. It kinds of reminds me of John/Giovanni in Hard Love, not that the situations or stories are the same.

The novel is made up of alternating chapters from the four characters' persepectives. Ed and Scout, his best female friend, get first person narratives. Quark, Ed's next-door neighbor and other best friend writes in his lab manual, and Ellie, Ed's love interest, writes letters to her family and mentally composes unsent emails to her ex-boyfriend. I'm all about the epistolary device, but in this case, Quark and Ellie are less developed characters because of it. I'm also not a huge fan of shifting first-person narratives. It seems cheap and easy, instead of letting the reader see the characters through the eyes of the narrator, whether omniscient or a protagonist.

So, this one was okay, and a decent way to spend a couple of hours on a lazy Sunday, but it probably won't stick with me like some of the better YA fiction I've found.

3. Girl v. Boy

Girl v. Boy (Yvonne Collins & Sandy Rideout, July 2008)

I picked up the authors' last book, The Black Sheep, last year at Midwinter and enjoyed it. So when I swung by the Hyperion booth and saw they had a new one out this year, I grabbed a copy.

This one's another story about an outsider. Luisa has two best friends, but she doesn't mix with other kids at school or participate in any activities. That changes when she starts writing an anonymous column for the school paper. Hijinx ensue, natuarally.

I liked that the book was about a bunch of mostly Hispanic teens in Chicago. And none of them are wealthy or fabulously gorgeous, except the stock evil, queen-bee bully, Mariah. That's pretty rare, in my experience. The kids were likeable and pretty realistic, although it did require a healthy suspension of disbelief that Luisa would all of a sudden attract not one, not two, but four cute boys at the same time.

It's a good read and recommended, though the ending was a bit too tidy for my taste and the big plot reveal was foreshadowed a little too much.