'Words in Deep Blue' by Cath Crowley

Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:  

Second-hand bookshops are full of mysteries  

This is a love story. 

It's the story of Howling Books, where readers write letters to strangers, to lovers, to poets, to words. 

It's the story of Henry Jones and Rachel Sweetie. They were best friends once, before Rachel moved to the sea. 

Now, she's back, working at the bookstore, grieving for her brother Cal. She's looking for the future in the books people love, and the words that they leave behind.  

Sometimes you need the poets

‘Words in Deep Blue’ is the new contemporary young adult book from Australian favourite, Cath Crowley.

Crowley’s ‘Words in Deep Blue’ is her first new book since 2010’s extraordinary ‘Graffiti Moon’ – and it was worth the wait. It’s a book about books – about loving, reading, and imprinting on books – with the story pivoting around a second-hand bookshop called Howling Books, where a long-lost friend returns to escape grief, and where a family unit and all its individual members have love lives that are well and truly in the in the tumults. It’s mostly the story of Rachel and Henry – once best friends, until Henry fell for a girl called Amy, and Rachel confessed her love only to move away. It’s a story about the Letter Library that resides in Howling Books, where people are encouraged to write in the margins, underline, and use books as conversations to be had with other readers. It’s a book about finding the right book at the right time.

But before I get into just how much I loved this particular book, I want to tell you all about this 2015 article I read in The New Yorker that stays with me. It was by Adam Gopnik, and titled ‘When a Bookstore Closes, an Argument Ends.’ I have a favourite line from that article, and it’s something I kept thinking about while reading ‘Words in Deep Blue’ (indeed; I got so caught up in this story and its wisdom, and especially the characters – that I wanted nothing more than to print out a copy of Gopnik’s article and leave it for Henry or his father Michael, folded into a book in their Letter Library). Here is that line of Gopik’s that I love;

At a minor level, once a bookstore is gone we lose the particular opportunities for adjacency it offers, determined by something other than an algorithm. It is rarely the book you came to seek, but the book next to that book, which changes your mind and heart.

The pivotal setting of ‘Words in Deep Blue’ being Howling Books – a second-hand bookshop – is nothing short of genius. On one level, a book about books is just catnip for readers, and young adult readers especially. And Cath Crowley gets very meta in this book, where she frequently title-drops and author-drops the names of works and writers she loves dearly. Be prepared to read this book with a notepad and pen beside you, so you can quickly jot down the books mentioned that you’ll definitely want to check out later. From John Green’s ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ to Kirsty Eagar’s ‘Summer Skin’, ‘A Visit from the Goon Squad’, Karen Russell, Kelly Link, Neil Gaiman, and the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges – this is Crowley revealing quite personal parts of herself, I feel, in the books she loves and has loved. Readers will feel a spark of joy and closeness to the author when they read one of the characters espousing dearly about a book they likewise adore, just as I did with this remembered exchange between father and son;

He and I have had hundreds of conversations about the characters in books. The last one we had was about Vernon God Little, a book by D.B.C. Pierre. I’d love it enough to read twice. 

‘What did you love?’ Dad had asked. 

‘Vernon,’ I’d said, naming the main character. ‘And the way it’s critiquing America. But mainly it’s the language. It’s like he’s left the words out in the sun to buckle a while, and they don’t sound like you’d expect.’

I also loved that this is a book about imprinting on books – which means highlighting, scribbling in the margins, and dog-earing – all the things some bibliophiles get horrified over the very notion! But I am an avowed dog-earer, under-liner, margin-scribbler and I’m glad the characters in ‘Words in Deep Blue’ are too. I’m of the firm belief that creases and scribbles in a book are like laugh-lines on a face – signs of love.

This is also a book about loving the places where books can be found and talked about – flesh and bone books, with spines and smells and heft. Though its setting is a second-hand bookshop, the way these characters talk about finding books and connecting with people over stories is in itself a love letter to all bookshops, and libraries, friends who loan their copies, street libraries and any place else that good books and the people who recommend them can be found;

‘I read an article that said second-hand books will be relics eventually,’ I tell him, still trying to make excuses for how things went tonight. 

'Do you know what the word relic actually means, the dictionary definition?’ he asks, offering me the prawn crackers. 

I take one and tell him I don’t know. 

‘It means sacred,’ he says, breaking his cracker in half. ‘As in “the bones of saints.”’

What’s kind of ironic and meta in this book about loving books though, is that all those authors and stories Crowley’s characters mention? Just as many people would list Crowley’s own works amongst the greats that have changed and upheaved them.

‘Words in Deep Blue’ is also a love-story … or, a few love stories really. Rachel and Henry take centre-stage for much of the book, as their history of unrequited love and friends-to-more unfolds amidst grief, jealousy and heartbreak, to eventually evolve into acceptance, forgiveness and revelation. There’s also Henry’s sister, George, who has a secret letter-writing admirer and a boy from school who wants to break through her tough exterior and become friends. Then there’s Henry’s parents whose great love story is in its final throes, and Henry and Rachel’s mutual friend Lola whose great love is music and the band she’s been dreaming about for years.

Anyone who has ever read any of Cath Crowley’s books knows that her characters are exquisite, and those in ‘Words in Deep Blue’ are no exception. I remember a long time ago (2013, to be exactly exaggerated) and Cath Crowley wrote in her blog about what I can only assume now was writing this very book. She said;

‘I keep hoping that one day I’ll find a shortcut, a door that takes me from one novel into the next. Takes me straight from Ed and Lucy’s kiss, through a small gap in the air, onto the street where Giselle and Charlie are waiting. Or even better, couldn’t I just walk a little way down the road, and have them existing on different streets in the same world?’
 

I know Crowley was writing about the frustration of finding story, but as one of her readers and biggest fans I wish for it too, on a fundamentally non-fictional level. I think the best way to describe how much I love Cath Crowley’s books is to say how much I want the characters to be real people that I could go visit. I’d love nothing more than to go from watching one of Gracie’s soccer matches, to hearing Charlie Duskin sing and seeking out new Shadow street-art – and now visiting Howling Books to tell Henry that my absolute favourite poem is Anna Akhmatova’s ‘You Will Hear Thunder’, so I could lend him my Everyman's Library Pocket Poets book of hers.

I loved these characters. I loved Henry and Rachel’s enduring friendship amidst complication. I loved meeting Cal in letters. I adored George’s bite;

‘What are you reading?’ he asks this afternoon. 

‘Kafka’s Metamorphosis,’ George says, without looking up. 

‘And what’s it about?’ 

‘Guy turns into a giant bug and eventually dies.’ 

‘Not exactly life-affirming,’ Martin observes. 

‘Life isn’t exactly life-affirming,’ George says.

And my Gosh, did I love reading new words from Cath Crowley. She has a way with language that’s poetically blunt when necessary, or can be languidly lush and is just utterly genius – and there’s just as much to admire in her words as the great wordsmiths her characters esteem.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged according to George, that shit days generally get more shit. Shit nights roll into shit morning that roll into shit afternoons and back into shit starless midnights. Shitness, my sister says, has a momentum that good luck just doesn’t have. I’m an optimist but tonight I’m coming around to her way of thinking.

I loved ‘Words in Deep Blue’. I waited six years for it, but I fell in love after the first page, and by the last it was a new favourite.

5/5

'When Michael Met Mina' by Randa Abdel-Fattah

Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

A boy. A girl. Two families. One great divide.

When Michael meets Mina, they are at a rally for refugees - standing on opposite sides.

Mina fled Afghanistan with her mother via a refugee camp, a leaky boat and a detention centre.

Michael's parents have founded a new political party called Aussie Values.

They want to stop the boats.

Mina wants to stop the hate.

When Mina wins a scholarship to Michael's private school, their lives crash together blindingly.

A novel for anyone who wants to fight for love, and against injustice.

‘When Michael Met Mina’ is the new contemporary Australian young adult novel by Randa Abdel-Fattah.

Michael is a teenager growing up in Sydney’s North Shore. He gets good grades, has great mates, and parents whom he describes as ‘good people’ – but for most of his life they’ve been ‘angry about almost everything.’ Michael’s Dad is so angry and riled up, in fact, that he’s founded an organisation called ‘Aussie Values’ – rallying a group of like-minded people who want to “stop the boats” and the “Islamisation of Australia”.

Mina grew up in Kabul, Afghanistan. She and her family escaped the war-torn city then travelled to Pakistan, where they were interred in an equally uncertain and unsafe refugee camp, before booking passage on a leaky boat to the safety of Australia. From there her family were placed in a detention centre, where they waited until being granted asylum. That was ten years ago, and these days Mina’s family couldn’t be happier – especially since she’s just been granted a scholarship to a prestigious private school for the next two years.

Michael attends an ‘Aussie Values’ rally, against asylum seekers.

Mina attends the same rally, supporting asylum seekers.

The next time they meet will be at Michael’s North Shore high school, where Mina’s just won a scholarship.

Randa Abdel-Fattah’s ‘When Michael Met Mina’ is a timely and intelligent new contemporary YA novel. In many ways it is a modern Aussie suburban interpretation of ‘Romeo and Juliet’– A boy. A girl. Two families. One great divide. – Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Sydney, where we lay our scene. Because for all that there’s a lot of political examination going on (and I’ll get to that in a moment) ‘When Michael Met Mina’ is also very much a romance. There’s undeniable chemistry when these two meet; and the tension of their two families and conflicting values make for a compelling if rocky love story.

But the political and social underpinnings of the romance is really where this book thrives, and finds unique footing in the Australian YA contemporary landscape.

In many ways it’s rather depressing to think how long this book has been in the making. The first I can remember being aware of such issues as Abdel-Fattah is touching on here, was the 2001 ‘Children Overboard affair’ of the Howard government. I have a friend for whom the rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party (1997–2002) was the first he had an inkling of something being not-quite-right in Australian political rhetoric. For teenagers today I can imagine there are any number of events making them hyper-aware of the manipulation of media and empty-rhetoric of politicians when it comes to human rights and asylum seekers. From the deaths of Aylan Kurdi and Reza Berati, to the rise of politicians like Cory Bernardi, or the horrifying images out of war-torn Syria juxtaposed with the National Inquiry into Children in Immigration. Australian teen readers will be very much aware of the background to Abdel-Fattah picking apart these issues, but what’s fantastic is that she’s written characters who are closer to them than many of us can imagine.

Mina being a refugee who arrived with her family by boat, and Michael living in a household with angry parents entering into the political fray – and the book being written in alternate chapters from their perspectives – puts readers closer to these issues than they’ve maybe ever been. And while there are many instances of both Michael and Mina witnessing the wider social ramifications and community reactions, for the most part they are in the thick of the action;

The report ends with the reporter outside a mosque, telling the audience about some people’s fears of ‘creeping sharia’. There’s a shot of the man who’d harassed us in the restaurant. He’s a member of a new organisation that wants to stop the ‘Islamisation of Australia’. There’s a shot of the founder, Alan Blainey. Then there’s some file footage of a group of people at an anti-asylum seeker rally. 

‘But is all this just fear-mongering?’ the journalists asks in the end. 

A bit too late for that. 

I feel like vomiting.

A lot of this book hits uncomfortably close to home, especially reading it as I did in the thick of an election campaign. Pauline Hanson has reared her ugly politics again, for instance, and the ‘Aussie Values’ of Michael’s father hints disturbingly hard at the United Patriots Front anti-Islam, xenophobic rhetoric. Indeed – the very concept of Michael attending an ‘Aussie Values’ rally while Mina wants to ‘stop the hate’ is a reference to the many United Patriots Front and ‘Anti-Racism’ rallies.

What I love though, is how slowly and thoroughly Abdel-Fattah teases out the fact that Michael needs to think for himself, and not just swallow his father’s rhetoric. Mina’s political and worldviews are clear – growing up a kid in Kabul, escaping with her family and ending up in a detention centre – but Michael’s growing up in his father’s household has influenced his opinions for far too long, and meeting Mina is what prompts him to seek truth through connection and reason. 

‘I don’t worry about them,’ he says with scorn. ‘Do they know what I have seen? Do they think they can scare me after what I’ve been through?’ 

‘No, Baba.’ 

'When we arrived in this country we had to learn the differences of this new place and we had to also learn that for everybody we are the difference. I think, Mina, there is something the majority wants us to do in order to be fully accepted, but they never tell us what it is.’

This is a fantastic book with good timing – I can’t think of a better novel for kids to be reading this post-election, especially after a certain xenophobic senator is back front and centre in Australian politics. It’s a book that asks kids to think for themselves, and to look outside their own worldviews and walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. There’s a cracking good romantic subplot here, but the politics playing front-and-centre is what makes this book a thoughtful and intelligent winner.

5/5

'The Sidekicks' by Will Kostakis

But first – a little note …

There are things I want to say. About this book, and its author … but also about the state of Australian politics right now, and how it’s overwhelmingly children and teenagers being betrayed by our national discourse, or lack thereof. Some may think I’m drawing a long bow, at the mere thought of politicizing and reviewing this book – but Mr Kostakis was in the news just yesterday, because conservative politics have almost certainly crept into his private and author life, unfairly and with great discrimination, hitting right on a topic I’m extremely passionate about. 

 So. There are things I want to say … but I won’t say them all here (beyond how they oh so sadly and ironically echo one of the storylines in ‘The Sidekicks’). Because here’s the thing: Will’s private life and his sexuality are not the most interesting things about him. I’m sure they inform who he is as a person – but allow me to throw some Aristotle at you, and say; “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” 

 Will is an intelligent, funny – I really want to use the word ‘rapscallion’ here too – charming and thoughtful guy. And he’s one of Australia’s best and brightest young adult writers, who I’ve heard speak so passionately and honestly about the business of writing, and writing honestly, with young people. He helps students to crack open their imaginations and just write – and he encourages them to read, read, read! and become readers for life. That’s Will Kostakis. And Will has written a devastating and devastatingly funny book called ‘The Sidekicks’ that I really want to tell you all about, because I loved it and want to recommend it to you. 

 There are things I want to say – and I will say them, elsewhere (though you could just look at everything I’ve ever written about diversity, inclusivity and YA to know my thoughts). But here is where Will and ‘The Sidekicks’ deserve my undivided attention and applause – as a fantastic new Australian YA book, written by one of our most celebrated authors. 

 … though if I could say just one tiny thing, it would be – sometimes the people who write the books really are as awesome as their words on the page suggest, and they more than live up to the characters they create and we love. Will’s one of those guys too, and we in the Australian youth lit community are damn lucky to have him.

 •••••••

From the BLURB:

The Swimmer. The Rebel. The Nerd.

All Ryan, Harley and Miles had in common was Isaac. They lived different lives, had different interests and kept different secrets. But they shared the same best friend. They were sidekicks. And now that Isaac's gone, what does that make them?

‘The Sidekicks’ is the new young adult book from Australian author Will Kostakis.

Will is the author of fantastic 2013 book ‘The First Third,’ which went on to win the prestigious Gold Inky Award in 2014 (in which teen readers chose the shortlist, and selected the winner!). So, Will’s third book and first after ‘The First Third’ (wow, tongue-tied) was a most-anticipated fare … and I’m happy to say, it absolutely lives up to high reader-expectation.

The book is in fact three linked novellas – from the points of view of three boys after the tragic death of their mutual friend (and actually, Isaac is the only thing these boys have in common). The book opens with Ryan, ‘The Swimmer,’ and sets up a lodestone scene the next two boys will come back to – when they’re called into the Principal’s office to learn of Isaac’s death the night before.

From there we see how each of these boys – Ryan, Harley, and Miles – cope with the death of Isaac, and how he fit into each of their lives … and maybe, how they can each fit into each other’s lives as they embark on this new normal, without the glue that held their tentative friendship together.

Ryan refers to himself, with little ego, as; ‘Ryan Patrick Thomson, Olympic hopeful.’ He’s a minor celebrity at his private Catholic school, and is well aware that his currency on the swim team grants him certain leeway, which his mother (as Head of the English Department) is quick to counteract. Ryan also has a boyfriend that nobody – except Isaac – had any idea about. In a candid discussion with sympathetic teacher Mr Collins, Ryan confronts the idea that in only letting his best friend know the truth about his sexuality, he has compartmentalized his life; 

‘I didn’t want to leave my legacy to one person, and risk it being lost. I gave as much of myself to as many people, so that when they put all those pieces together, that would be the mark I left on the world.’

I will say that of all the boys, Ryan’s novella was the most powerful and there may have been a slight dip in the action when his chapter concluded. There was just so much nuance there, particularly when his sexuality was at logger-heads with the casual homophobic rhetoric he was hearing from his fellow students, and even the teachers at his Catholic school – all of which added to his paranoia, and wish not to come out to his friends and family. That being said, once I got over my reader-grief at losing Ryan as narrator, I could really appreciate what each boy’s point of view bought to the story – and in many ways, how they each helped to build a picture of who Isaac was.

Each novella – Ryan, Harley and Miles – takes a different look at grief. For Ryan, it’s coming to grips with the loss of the person who knows you best – right down to your biggest secret. In many ways, the book is about a certain degree of selfishness is one’s grief, when we look at how the loss of someone affects us, as individuals. This is also partly because Isaac was a bit of an enigma to all his friends, as we see each of them had a very different relationship and connection to him, he played a very unique role/function in each of their lives – as people tend to do in high school, when you’re more likely than ever to be narrowed into your most public ‘persona’.

For ‘The Rebel’ Harley, he and Isaac (or ‘Zac’ as he insisted on cooler calling him) found mutual ground in partying and getting wasted. With Zac’s death, Harley is forced to confront feelings of guilt, and also abandonment – a feeling he can’t help but connect to Zac’s departure, since Harley is still combating feelings of rejection since his American-born mother moved back to the States – making Harley feel as though he and his father were merely an uninteresting stop-over in her life.

Harley is someone who has tried not to get close to anyone for fear of rejection, but with Zac’s death comes the stark realization that he craves affection, from the very people he insists on pushing away – one of whom is his friend, a girl named Jacs, who has her own thoughts on Harley’s attempts at keeping his distance;

‘… Growing up, he’d say we spend our lives wrapping rubber bands around people. Some bands are so tight that you can feel them pulling you together. Some are loose and stretch for miles, there’s so much give you hardly notice them. But you’re still connected, and sooner or later …’ She releases the band and it snaps back into her wrist.

Miles, ‘The Nerd’, triggers a mystery sub-plot in the book when, immediately after learning of Isaac’s death, he rushes to the dead boy’s locker to retrieve a mystery bag … Miles’s chapter plays around with form, and is often laid out like a screenplay. This is partly because of how he and Isaac connected, as both were in a young filmmakers programme at school. But it’s also a way for Miles to candidly discuss his emotions that don’t come easily, and there’s certainly suggestion here that he’s somewhere on the spectrum.

Something I loved about this book was that, in many ways, Will Kostakis has taken the cliché male characters that sometimes appear in YA books (and pop-culture, or society generally), and made them multi-dimensional, relatable and real. The prosaic ‘Breakfast Club’ labels of The Swimmer, The Rebel, and The Nerd feel very tongue-in-cheek, and what’s clever is how Kostakis breaks them down to normality and humanity – takes them beyond the label of ‘Sidekicks’, and makes them the heroes of their own stories.

Harley, arguably, is what that marvelous parody Twitter account ‘Brooding YA Hero’ is poking fun at. Miles feels like he could be akin to all those nerd-lite characters John Green loves to write, those who could be built with a John Green Plot Generator. While Ryan reads like the perfect tick-box ‘Book Boyfriend’, outwardly designed for girls to swoon over.

But those are what they’d be if broken down to their most basic traits – The Swimmer, The Rebel, and The Nerd – the faces they show the world are not all that they are … and the book is really about how grief confronts them, and frees them.  

I’ve often said that I crave contemporary YA books in which male characters are actually allowed to show their emotions, in a plot that’s not cloaked by quest or end-of-the-world catastrophe. ‘The Sidekicks’ is exactly why I crave those sorts of stories – in a book that shows the honesty and intimacy of male friendship and complicated friendship groups. A book in which the seemingly typified male characters are so much more than the sum of the parts they’re often broken down to, by various pop-culture portrayals and societal expectations. This book – like the multi-layered, and nuanced characters – shows grief to be a prism with many sides. It’s devastating and devastatingly funny, and just makes me excited for whatever Will Kostakis writes next.

5/5 

'Summer Skin' by Kirsty Eagar

Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

Jess Gordon is out for revenge. Last year the jocks from Knights College tried to shame her best friend. This year she and a hand-picked college girl gang are going to get even.

The lesson: don't mess with Unity girls.

The target: Blondie, a typical Knights stud, arrogant, cold . . . and smart enough to keep up with Jess.

A neo-riot grrl with a penchant for fanning the flames meets a rugby-playing sexist pig - sworn enemies or two people who happen to find each other when they're at their most vulnerable?

It's all Girl meets Boy, Girl steals from Boy, seduces Boy, ties Boy to a chair and burns Boy's stuff. Just your typical love story.

‘Summer Skin’ is the new young adult novel from Australian author, Kirsty Eagar.

Fair warning: when I love something I like to talk about it and examine it from all angles. I really loved ‘Summer Skin’, so prepare for a long, loving review …

First I’m trying to think of how to describe this book and what happens, plot-wise, when I don’t actually want to give too much away. Also that there’s isn’t really much to give away that the blurb doesn’t already beautifully summarise, like with this pithy one-liner that I think is just pure fucking poetry: a neo-riot grrl with a penchant for fanning the flames meets a rugby-playing sexist pig. Or how about feminist commentator Clementine Ford’s endorsement, that explains ‘Summer Skin’ is: a keen look at modern day intimacy in a hook-up culture. You already know all you need to entice you to pick up this smart, sexy YA read.

So instead I want to tell you about ‘Summer Skin’ by going back to 1975 – the year Judy Blume’s ‘Forever’ was first published. I love this page about ‘Forever’ on Blume’s website, where she explains the kernel of an idea for what would become, without a doubt, one of the most important books in young adult history: My daughter Randy asked for a story about two nice kids who have sex without either of them having to die. She had read several novels about teenagers in love. If they had sex the girl was always punished—an unplanned pregnancy, a hasty trip to a relative in another state, a grisly abortion (illegal in the U.S. until the 1970's), sometimes even death. Lies. Secrets. At least one life ruined. Girls in these books had no sexual feelings and boys had no feelings other than sexual. Neither took responsibility for their actions. I wanted to present another kind of story—one in which two seniors in high school fall in love, decide together to have sex, and act responsibly.

Pretty radical notion, huh? Writing about two teenagers who have sex and don’t die. But that was radical back in 1975, when young adult literature (and especially American YA) had to have moralistic undertones – and when it came to sex that was meant to be abstinence is best.

Fast forward to 2016 and Kirsty Eagar’s ‘Summer Skin’ is adding new layers and nuances to a discussion Blume started 41 years ago. In this book, Eagar is talking about sex and sexuality, pleasure and politics in a way that’s taking Aussie YA literature into a new and daring stratosphere, and it’s absolutely worth celebrating.

‘Summer Skin’ runs quite the sexual gamut – exploring everything from young women who are sexually degraded by men, to sex being used as weapon or revenge, and the pressure women feel to have sex though it’s often divorced from feeling and pleasure … there’s even discussions in here about how pornography has impacted the way in which young people view sex today – as more performance than pleasure, and the impact of its dangerous unrealism;

If high school was all about whether or not you’d give it up, uni seemed to be about nothing but giving it up. Suddenly, inexplicably, the rules changed, and – bam – you were Adult-with-a-capital-A. There was no means to the end, there was just the end, just sex, and you pretended to keep up. Sometimes Jess had felt it, the flaring of her own appetite, but she’d rarely let herself go. Too busy performing.

This book is also built on discussions and dichotomies of sexism and feminism – not running just as an undercurrent, but an in-your-face refreshing statement not to be messed with or overlooked. Indeed, the book is about Unity Girls versus Knights Boys on college campus – and through them these discussions are made manifest. The Knights Boys in particular are beautifully portrayed in their truth and – it must be said – Neanderthal ways. And if you don’t believe me, know that ‘Summer Skin’ made me think all the way back to 2012 and a particularly disturbing story about a drinking scandal, near-death of a teenage girl and unearthed misogyny at St John's College at the University of Sydney. These boys Eagar is writing about, and the society they belong to, absolutely exist and she’s chilling in her scarily accurate depictions.

There’s also a perverse beauty to Eagar exploring these topics, because she is such a marvellous author for detail. I found myself marking so many pages in this book, just because her descriptions took my breath away for their vividness;  

… widening his stance as if experiencing a sudden and significant surge in ball size, speaking in the drawl used by guys who are fluent in Brah.
 

I also want to celebrate this book for its grey-areas and sexiness – because ‘Summer Skin’ is both sensuous and subversive, scathing and scintillating. And this, in itself, is making a statement in YA as big as Blume’s ‘Forever’ did – as Eagar’s protagonist Jess enters into something steamy with her antithesis, Knights Boy, rugby player, Blondie Brah – Mitch. And their relationship is hot – something which is still not as prevalent as it should be in YA. Honest depictions of sexual desire and pleasure (particularly emphasis on female pleasure and self-pleasure) – it’s still a radical thing to find in YA.

Blondie held the can there, just out from her breast, until she looked at him. And when she did, his eyes were so intense that she released his wrist. She gasped when he pressed the can to her nipples, first one and then the other, but then he replaced it with his mouth, sucking each nipple in turn, his hands supporting her, and Jess closed her eyes, her breath catching. She arched her back.
 

As someone who reads a lot of romance, I can tell you that ‘Summer Skin’ is up there with the best. But I do want to say that I still consider this book to be young adult – even for its college campus setting and abundant sex. I have no problems with people bandying the label ‘New Adult’ around – but I will say that I absolutely believe teenagers (boys and girls alike) should find their way to ‘Summer Skin’ and embrace its many messages, particularly around sex-positivity and politics.

Kirsty Eagar has long been one of Australia’s most daring and rebellious YA writers, dating back to her powerful debut ‘Raw Blue’. ‘Summer Skin’ is more brilliance and fearlessness from this Aussie favourite, and I absolutely applaud Eagar for elevating such conversations around modern romance in our young adult literature.  

5/5 

'Burn' The Rephaim #4 by Paula Weston

From the BLURB:

Suddenly, Gaby remembers everything. 

For a year she believe she was a backpacker chilling out in Pandanus Beach. Working at the library. Getting over the accident that killed her twin brother. 

Then Rafa came to find her and Gaby discovered her true identity as Gabe: one of the Rephaim. Over a hundred years old. Half angel, half human, all demon-smiting badass and hopelessly attracted to the infuriating Rafa. Now she knows who faked her memories, and how—and why it’s all hurtling towards a massive showdown between the forces of heaven and hell. 

More importantly, she remembers why she’s spent the last ten years wanting to seriously damage Rafa.

‘Burn’ is the fourth and final book in Australian author Paula Weston’s young adult supernatural series, ‘The Rephaim’. 

I did not want to read this book, and at the same time I’ve been dying to read this book! Yes, the epic struggle every reader must face as they come to the end of a favourite series – when we want to find out what happens, but don’t want the adventure to end. So perhaps the highest compliment I can pay to Ms Weston is a conflicting one; when I say I absolutely loved this book, but I hate that the series has ended. 

‘Burn’ picks up from the epic cliff-hanger of Book 3 ‘Shimmer’, when Gaby’s beloved Pan Beach was facing imminent attack by demons … and she also happened to get her lost memories of some 130+ years of life as an angel-spawn-warrior back. Yes – Weston hits the ground running in this epic finale, and she never lets up. 

In ‘Burn’, fans will be reminded that the events of these four books take place over just one week in the series’ timeline. Yes, ‘Shadows’, ‘Haze’, ‘Shimmer’ and ‘Burn’ are set in just one week of Gaby’s life; from the moment Rafa’s mysterious hooded figure first appears in her sleepy beach town, to Gaby getting 130+ years’ of memories back in the blink of an eye. But Weston makes beautifully perfect sense of this elastane timeline – she has, after all, written a supernatural series with immortal, heavenly creatures who can transport to any place in the world with just a thought. And at one point, Gabriella muses on the complexity of her immortality, revealing that Weston has craftily made readers feel as infinite as she does via the book’s elongated timeline; 

A thousand stars fill the sky, ghosts of dead suns suspended in infinite blackness. 

Infinite.  

I’ve never been able to get my head around the concept. How can space be endless? How can time have no beginning and no end? How can I – made of flesh and blood and bone – live forever? How can other realities exist somewhere out there – or right here – side by side with ours? Hell dimensions and heavenly dimensions. Endless realms in between, one of which is probably hiding, or holding, the Fallen.  

Where do we fit in the universe? We exist in this world but we’re tied to other, unseen worlds. We are Rephaim, children of the forsaken. What future exists for us if we find the Fallen? What future exists for us if we don’t?  

God, my brain hurts. 

Weston really plays around with time and memory in this book, which is no easy feat when the crux of the story has been a very human Gaby discovering that she’s actually a very old angel-spawn warrior whose memories were wiped. Weston provides back-story to the decade-old feud between Gabriella and Rafa that saw her turn away from her twin brother Jude when he formed the Outcasts … we are also flung back to just a year ago, and the events surrounding Jude and Gaby’s reuniting and disappearance. 

I have to work out how to wear my old life. I’ve been someone else for a whole year; I’m a different shape now. 

I’m not always a fan of the flashback – but Weston has a beautifully nuanced and complex few in ‘Burn’. I was particularly impressed at how well Gaby’s interior voice changes – between her human self being given back her past memories, and going back to ten-years-ago when Gabriella is a hardened Rephaim fighter. There’s real distinction in the Gaby/Gabriella’s first-person-narratives, and I found myself liking old-Gabriella just as much as the Gaby I’ve been reading since ‘Shadows’. 

I especially loved the way Weston reveals Gaby and Rafa’s tumultuous history. We all knew it was coming – this couple who’ve been drawn and repelled to one another, who have a slow-burn chemistry that’s simply delicious to read – but I tip my hat to Weston for making the pay-off so completely worthwhile. It’s been building up over four books now, but Weston managed to both give Gaby and Rafa enough plausible hurt in their history, tempered with the fiery romance they’ve been building throughout this series … they’re a masterstroke of a coupling, and as this series concludes I’m mostly going to miss their duck-and-weave romancing. 

Jude is another stand-out in this book which, again, is kinda impressive for a character that readers were only formally introduced to one book ago. But loving Jude so much in ‘Burn’ is bittersweet … but only if this really is the last-last-last time we’ll get any ‘Rephaim’ stories from Paula Weston. Probably because he’s been such a big part of this story, even with so little real-time page-time, Jude still feels like a mystery that readers could have fun unwrapping. And because I loved where Jude ended up by the end of this book, I’m crossing my fingers that maybe Paula Weston has some spin-off, short-stories SOMETHING – ANYTHING up her sleeve!

Highlight for spoiler!

[And because I loved where Jude ended up by the end of this book, I’m crossing my fingers that maybe Paula Weston has some spin-off, short-stories SOMETHING – ANYTHING up her sleeve!]

I don’t want to go too much into the plot details of ‘Burn’ – save to say, Paula Weston answers all our most burning questions and still leaves us wanting MORE … indeed, the book ends with so much possibility. Which is what you want from a series that was all about immortal teenagers – the sense that their crazy, supernatural life goes on and on and on. For me; I’ve loved everything about this series, and the finale was exactly what I wanted. Secrets revealed, lies exposed, romance galore and second-chances. I’m going to miss this world and these characters so damn much, but I thank Paula Weston for gifting readers this epic rollercoaster of a ride. 

5/5

‘Illuminae’ The Illuminae Files_01 by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Received from the Publisher 

From the BLURB:

Kady and Ezra thought their break-up was messy until they witnessed their entire world literally falling apart. Now they're are piecing together what's left of their lives, and their romance, and trying to survive an intergalactic war. An innovatively designed story that's best described as Battlestar Galactica meets 10 Things I Hate About You.

The year is 2575, and two rival mega-corporations are at war over a planet that's little more than an ice-covered speck at the edge of the universe. Too bad nobody thought to warn the people living on it. With enemy fire raining down on them, exes Kady and Ezra - who are barely even talking to each other - are forced to fight their way onto the evacuating fleet, with an enemy warship in hot pursuit.

But the warship is the least of their problems. A deadly plague has broken out and is mutating, with terrifying results. The fleet's AI, which should be protecting them, may actually be their enemy; and nobody in charge will say what the hell is going on. As Kady hacks into a tangled web of data to find the truth, it's clear only one person can help her bring it all to light: the ex-boyfriend she swore she'd never speak to again.

‘Illuminae’ is the first book in ‘The Illuminae Files_01’ trilogy, written by Australian young adult authors, Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff – two of our most exciting LoveOzYA exports!

‘Illuminae’ is a 599-page book of sheer awesomeness, and one of my favourite reads of 2015. Hands down. It’s an epistolary novel written in classified documents, interview recordings, Wikipedia-like entries and other extravagantly detailed materials … to give you some idea of the scope of the thing, let me just say that ship insignia illustrations were done by Stuart Wade, ship blueprint and schematics by Meinert Hansen and movie poster illustration by Kristen Gudsnuk. And to further blow your mind, know that the audiobook has 20 voice actors. Um. Yeah. It’s space operatic-epic and a real triumph of design and story.

And to that story – it is the tale of two teenagers and recent exes, Kady and Ezra who have lived their whole lives on the Kerenza Colony … their very existence was basically illegal, as Kerenza was mining concentrations of a substance called hermium in direct violation of the law, and only able to do so for their remoteness in the galaxy. But it’s why the Battle of Kerenza came about, and Kady and Ezra’s whole lives blown to high hell by BeiTech Industries who were trying to stomp out their competition and contribute to the ongoing but unspoken Stellarcorp War.

But that’s the Unipedia entry of events; footnotes to the bigger, overarching ordeal. ‘Illuminae’ is really all about Kady and Ezra, two teens with no love lost between them who find themselves pawns in the middle of intergalactic corporate warfare … of which they want no part, but find themselves drawn deeper and deeper into this galactic game of cat and mouse.

Y’know how Battlestar Galactica is actually exploring religion and civil liberty … Or, okay – how Joss Whedon’s Firefly isn’t really just an intergalactic-Western? But rather it’s inspired by the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg and the everyday people who are stepped on in the great moments of history, and that it’s even a story of the immigrant experience and outsiders pushed to the fringe by the victors in a war they never wanted any part of? Yep, okay – well, in the same way there is a lot happening beneath the surface of Illuminae.

The universe was here long before you. 

It will go on long after you. 

Do something worthy of remembrance.

On the one hand it is indeed “Battlestar Galactica meets 10 Things I Hate About You,” and a fantastically entertaining space opera with explosions and romance to boot. BUT it’s also an incredibly thoughtful and breathtakingly expansive tale of political intrigue and subterfuge, the chilling parallels for which can be found in the real world … need I remind of America’s bombing an M.S.F. hospital in Kunduz city of Afghanistan? (which seems to have already vanished from the headlines and peoples conscience).

What makes Illuminae a particularly hard-hitting, gut-punch of allegory and action is that we are following two teenagers, Kady and Ezra, in this epic fallout of a battle that has forever changed their lives. These two are so relatable and likeable, both for their messy break-up and steely fortitude in the wake of tragedy and disaster. I understand that Illuminae is the first time Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman have written characters that share their gender – Kristoff of course has written the bestselling ‘The Lotus War’ trilogy with female protagonist Yukiko, while Amie Kaufman is one-half of the ‘Starbound’ writing duo with Meagan Spooner, it’s Kaufman who writes all the male roles in that series. So with Kristoff writing Ezra and Kaufman Cady, ‘Illuminae’ is the first time they’ve written to their own gender, and the results are kind of incredible. Neither Ezra nor Cady pander to gendered stereotypes – neither is the hero while the other a damsel; instead they take turns saving themselves and each other right back, they are each formidable, and it’s especially worth mentioning that they are angry – gloriously, understandably angry.

There’s also a seriously intriguing element of unreliable narration in this epistolary book, when readers are sometimes forced to consider where a document has come from and who has written it with a hidden/public-relations agenda … and then of course there’s that element to the classified documents readers are privy to, which force you to consider why they were not made public in the first place. I actually think a fair amount of the book can be summarised with the George Orwell quote; “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”

‘Illuminae’ is a seriously impressive coalescence of story and design. And perhaps it is because of how closely aligned the visual and story are, that I kept thinking this was like some sort of graphic novel treat – indeed I’d say that if you enjoy Brian K. Vaughan’s Saga, then Illuminae is the book for you! The narrative is extraordinary, not least for the ways it harnesses the epistolary format to heighten tension, drama and add another layer of intrigue for readers to wade through … it’s actually a novel that has to be seen to be believed.

An absolute favourite of 2015, I can’t wait for the next two books in ‘The Illuminae Files_01’ and I’m just in awe of what Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, two of our best and brightest, have created. The buzz is legit, people – this one is seriously special.

5/5  

 

 

'The River And The Book' by Alison Croggon

From the BLURB:

Combining magical realism and fable, this lyrical tale is the story of a landscape and community destroyed by Western greediness.

In our village we had two treasures: the River, which was our road and our god; and the Book, which was our history, our oracle and our soul. Simbala is a Keeper of the Book, the latest in a long line of women who can read the Book to find answers to the villagers' questions. As developers begin to poison the river on which the villagers rely, the Book predicts change. But this does not come in the form that they expect; it is the sympathetic Westerner who comes to the village who inflicts the greatest damage of all.

‘The River and the Book’ is the new youth literature work from Australia author Alison Croggon. 

This is a thought-provoking and wildly compelling book of magical realism, exploring colonialism, and exploitation of indigenous people by the First World. It’s the story of a village that has a Book which is both oracle & soul – predicting future, answering questions – but when developers come and poison the nearby river, everything changes.

Our protagonist is young woman Simbala ‘Sim’ – part of a matriarchy within her village, of women who can read The Book. But then a stranger comes, a writer, who perhaps has her own best intentions, but they inevitably unravel the Indigenous Culture with corporate greed.

Yes, there are a lot of metaphors and not terribly subtle allusions to Western Imperialism in this short, 136-page book. But I don’t know that the subject of human rights and colonialism, alongside the annihilation of Indigenous cultures can be done light-footedly. And why should it?

This is a book appropriate for readers aged 12+, I’d say – and those young readers will find important, insightful discussion within its pages. That it’s often confronting and uncomfortable reading is one of its strengths. And the proof is in the fact that the book is endorsed by Amnesty International UK, “as contributing to a better understanding of human rights and the values that underpin them.”

Mely asked me today why I keep writing this book. I was surprised by her question, and thought about it for some time. I want, I told her, to tell my story to someone, even if it is only Mely who hears it. Mely pointed out that I could just say it to her, without all the bother of scratching the pen over the paper, and cursing at my mistakes, and having to start again. “I would listen,” she said. “I like to listen to you.”

While it is slow in parts, this book will nevertheless ignite serious discussions for young readers – among them can be investigating tribes that went undetected in the modern world and avoided Westernisation. But there’s also a bit of magical realism fun in here – including a sassy talking cat – and beautiful illustrations by Katie Harnett. A small book with a powerful message.

4/5