'As Stars Fall' by Christie Nieman

Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

In north-eastern Victoria, bush-covered hills erupt into flames. A Bush Stone-curlew escapes the fire but a woman studying the endangered bird does not.

When Robin's parents split up after the fire, her mother drags her from the country to a new life in the ugly city. Robin misses her dog, her best-friend, the cows, trees, creek, bushland and, especially, the birds. Robin is a self-confessed, signed-up, card-carrying bird-nerd. Just like her dad.

On the first day at her new school, Robin meets Delia. She's freaky, a bit of a workaholic, and definitely not good for Robin's image.

Delia's older brother Seth has given up school to prowl the city streets. He is angry at everything, but mostly at the fire that killed his mother.

When the Bush Stone-curlew turns up in the city parklands next to Seth and Delia's house the three teenagers become inextricably linked. Soon their lives are circling tighter and tighter around each other, and the curlew.

The book begins with a curlew watching a bushfire rage: 

The light was strange. The darkness was a deep red, and there was a thickness between the stars.

There is a human caught in the “stinging air”, and the curlew watches on as the human is, “Taken away. Bought forever to the stars.”

Thus begins Christie Nieman’s debut Australian YA novel, ‘As Stars Fall’.

From the beginning alone, readers will know that they are about to go on a somewhat harrowing journey made no less painful for the poignancy of Nieman’s masterful words. I was not surprised to discover that Christie Nieman is in fact a playwright, even being nominated for a Green Room Award for her play ‘Call me Komachi’. She sets the stage for this novel so beautifully – beginning with a scene many Australians will be familiar with. Even if you’re not someone who has found themselves and their town ravaged or threatened by bushfire, the summer seasons in Australia are often marked by a tragedy we are all too familiar with. Watching the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires on the TV, visiting the eerie memorial to the 2003 Canberra bushfires, I’ve even heard first-hand accounts of the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires from my dad, who was a police officer at the time and sent to direct fleeing traffic. Nieman’s book begins from the point of view of a curlew bird watching the flames come, and then alternates to the perspective of a human woman about to be swallowed up by the fiery monster – it’s a viscerally frightening scene made even more so for the calm beauty of Nieman’s words, describing something so sinister and mindless. 

From there, we are introduced to three main players. There’s first-person narration from Robin Roberts (cruel parents), a country girl who has moved to the city with her mum – leaving behind her beloved Murramunda after fires ravaged the land.

Robin meets and reluctantly befriends a strange girl at her school called Delia … whose mother was the human that the curlew bird was watching in the beginning, being consumed by a firewall. 

Delia and her brother Seth’s chapters are in third person, perhaps a reflection of the disconnection they feel, living in the fallout of their mother’s tragic death. A lecturer, their mum was in the bush doing research on the bush stone-curlew – the very same bird that Delia notices Robin idly sketching during detention one day. 

Robin is, in fact, a “bird nerd” feeling unsettled in the concrete city jungle, partly because she misses the variety of birds. When Robin, Seth and Delia discover a bush stone-curlew in nearby parklands, the discovery binds them together ever tighter. 

Christie Nieman really needs to be commended – she’s clearly done a lot of research into the psychological impacts of bushfires, particularly on teenagers. Delia and Seth are coping in their own, very different ways. For Delia, it’s throwing herself into her mother’s research on the curlew and looking for connections and glimpses of fate in the wake of her loss. For Seth, it’s choosing oblivion with the drug ‘angel dust’, and many of his chapters read like wading through the smoky haze of his subconscious and self-hatred. 

Robin is also feeling the impact of the bushfires, but mainly in the displacement of home and the fractures she’s felt in her family; 

But two months ago, when the fire came through, all the birds disappeared. Dad said it was worse than any fire anyone had seen in decades. He said we were lucky that we’d had all our sheep up in the top paddock: we hadn’t lost any, not like some of our neighbours. The fire was fast and hot, which is bad. It killed someone, some woman up in the hills, not a local, right on the fire track where Dad and I used to go to collect wood. It was in all the papers. And the fire stripped so much of the landscape that only days after it went through, there were absolutely no birds left.  

I should have seen it as an omen, the birds all leaving like that. They left first, and then Mum and I left for the city a few weeks later. And I haven’t been back since. I don’t even know if any of them have returned.

I really loved that Nieman went into the range of loss for these characters – particularly because their pain is so viscerally connected to nature. This is really a recurring theme in the novel, as Nieman explores the side-by-side affects of disaster on both humans, nature and wildlife; 

And that’s the complicated thing about disturbance. It’s a natural part of an ecosystem. It compels life, it changes life, it makes like dynamic. It makes an ecosystem what it is, and it makes us who we are too. But it can be dangerous: give an ecosystem, or a person, too much disturbance, and it can drive them past their point of no return. 

I did occasionally feel quite cold towards Seth and Delia, but only because they felt deliberately distanced from readers with their third-person narration. Compared to Robin’s voice – vibrant, sometimes combative, a little bit cheeky – Delia and particularly Seth’s chapters were harder to get through. I appreciate that this was deliberate, and a way for Nieman to communicate just how disconnected the siblings are after the loss of their mother, but it was my response to their chapters nonetheless. 

‘As Stars Fall’ is a tender morsel of a novel, a ‘Silent Spring’ for young adults that also explores dramas of the heart in the wake of nature’s tragedy. Christie Nieman is bringing something very different to contemporary YA, and I can’t wait to see what she writes next.

4/5

'Guy in Real Life' by Steve Brezenoff

From the BLURB:

From the acclaimed author of ‘Brooklyn, Burning’ comes ‘Guy in Real Life’, an achingly real and profoundly moving love story about two Minnesota teens whose lives become intertwined through school, role-playing games, and a chance two-a.m. bike accident.

It is Labor Day weekend in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and boy and girl collide on a dark street at two thirty in the morning: Lesh, who wears black, listens to metal, and plays MMOs; Svetlana, who embroiders her skirts, listens to Björk and Berlioz, and dungeon masters her own RPG. They should pick themselves up, continue on their way, and never talk to each other again.

But they don't.

This is a story of two people who do not belong in each other's lives, who find each other at a time when they desperately need someone who doesn't belong in their lives. A story of those moments when we act like people we aren't in order to figure out who we are. A story of the roles we all play-at school, at home, with our friends, and without our friends-and the one person who might show us what lies underneath it all.

It’s a pretty typical night for Lesh Tungsten (his mum is a big Grateful Dead fan), he’s spent the night at a heavy metal concert with is best friend Greg, watching one of their favourite bands, and now he has a belly full of alcohol and the long walk home to puke his guts up. But while stumbling his way homeward bound he crashes into a girl on a bike – a beautiful, hippy girl wearing an odd long skirt and with her gold-white hair streaming around her. Even in his drunken, sorry state Lesh is struck by her beauty and commitment to alternative swear words – fiddlestick! He thinks that’s the last he’ll see of the mysterious girl …

Svetlana’s favourite sketchbook was ruined in the encounter with the drunken metal-boy last night. But it’s alright, because she has copies of her precious gamekeeper log – complete with drawings of the fabulously frightening monsters she and her friends encounter while playing their fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG). It should be the last time she thinks of that wretched drunkard boy, until she returns to school and spots him eating in the cafeteria. To avoid an unwanted amorous encounter with the son of her family’s friends, Svetlana decides to use the metal-boy as a distraction and dine with him … whereupon she learns that his name is Lesh and he isn’t so vile.

Lesh can’t quite believe that beautiful bike girl – real name the lip-bitingly sexy Svetlana – sat with him, let alone had a conversation with him. Admittedly, it was to avoid a fellow senior (and seeming lap-dog) named Fry, but Lesh will take it. Especially since his parents have recently grounded him, and Lesh is finding room confinement so awful, he’s turned to playing his best friend Greg’s ridiculously stupid and geeky multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). Lesh is currently playing as an ogre – a boring, stupid, smelly ogre in this stupid boring online game. But, actually, since his second encounter with Svetlana, Lesh can’t stop thinking about her … that’s the excuse he’ll go with, if he gets caught out making a character in this online game who looks just like her (in elf form) named Svvetlana.

‘Guy in Real Life’ is the new contemporary YA novel by American author Steve Brezenoff.

This was such an interesting book, particularly for being a YA romance. I’d certainly say it’s unlike any other contemporary romance I’ve ever read, and that’s one of the book’s biggest strengths. It’s alternately narrated in first-person by Lesh, Svetlana and Lesh’s elf character creation ‘Svvetlana’, as she navigates the online game he’s playing. The book is really interesting for observing the teen worlds of role-playing (reminiscent of ‘Dungeons and Dragons’) and online game-playing (akin to ‘World of Warcraft’), but it’s real heart and soul lies in Lesh’s explorations into his feminie side when he enters into the online domain as female Svvetlana … and how confusing that is for him.

I started reading this book the same week that the news story broke about feminist video game critic, the fantastic Anita Sarkeesian, receiving a number of murder threats that resulted in her fleeing her home – further highlighting the reality behind the online misogyny she discusses in her YouTube show. Perhaps for that reason I found myself wishing that Brezenoff explored more the online harassment women experience online in MMORPG’s – particularly because Lesh was in a really interesting position to comment on it. As it is, there were one or two disturbing scenes that touched on the sexual harassment and brutality against women and they were fascinating and disturbing. Lesh observes his friend Greg playing the online game, and at one point stalking a female character (though it’s not clear if the actual person playing her is male or female), killing her, and then waiting for her resurrection to kill her again;

“This is lame,” I finally say after the next cold-blooded murder. I wonder why this girl doesn’t just log off, come back later. Go have a snack, talk a walk, whatever. Certainly this murderous d-bag I call Greg Deel wouldn’t stand here for that long, waiting for the resurrected elf to present herself for murder again. 

Maybe she was enjoying it too. 

“Don’t be a homo, Tung,” Greg says. “We’re not actually murdering a girl repeatedly. We’re messing with some faggoty noob who has no idea how to play his class. Any rogue should be able to rez, vanish, sprint the hell out of here without my killing him again.” 

“Her.” 

“Him,” he says. “This is not a girl. I promise. There are no girls on the internet.”

I really, really loved this book – I got suckered into it so quickly, not unlike Lesh being unwittingly sucked into the online game. Brezenoff has done a marvellous job of teasing out Lesh and Svetlana’s real and fantasy worlds – in the real world Svetlana adores Björk, dragons, drawing and sewing, and is the black sheep in her all-American family of soccer fanatics who can’t understand why she doesn’t reciprocate the affections of Fry, the son of their oldest friends.

Lesh, meanwhile, has two parents who work all the time to put food on the table. He’s trying to deal with his raging hormones that alternate between fantasizing about beautiful, strawberry-smelling Svetlana and metal girl Jelly, whose belly-button ring sends him to distraction. He loves heavy metal, but his time as the good, loyal and morally righteous Svvetlana has him feeling shame and wondering if the next step after game-playing as a woman online is turning to drag in real life.

If I had any other complaints about the book, it’s that a character who is only revealed at the very end felt interesting enough to have perhaps warranted a fourth narrative. But that’s a minor complaint, and I think that character still served an important service that spun back around to highlighting the online/offline abuse of women.

I loved ‘Guy in Real Life’. It’s the first YA book I’ve ever read (though I’m not claiming there are none others out there) that so beautifully explores these fantasy-created worlds that many people live in, and the disconnection between who we are online and who we wish we were offline. Brezenoff touches on sexism and misogyny, and through Lesh’s creation of Svvetlana he really excels at having his male character walk a mile in a woman’s shoes. Outstanding, and a favourite novel of 2014 for sure.

5/5

How to buy books for young adults

'"Excuse me, where are the boys’ books? I’m looking to buy for a 16-year-old." 

This is what sparked my idea for the latest 

Kill Your Darlings column. 

How to buy books for young adults

'Like No Other' by Una LaMarche

From the BLURB:

Fate brought them together. Will life tear them apart? 

Devorah is a consummate good girl who has never challenged the ways of her strict Hasidic upbringing. 

Jaxon is a fun-loving, book-smart nerd who has never been comfortable around girls (unless you count his four younger sisters). 

They've spent their entire lives in Brooklyn, on opposite sides of the same street. Their paths never crossed . . . until one day, they did. 

When a hurricane strikes the Northeast, the pair becomes stranded in an elevator together, where fate leaves them no choice but to make an otherwise risky connection. 

Though their relation is strictly forbidden, Devorah and Jax arrange secret meetings and risk everything to be together. But how far can they go? Just how much are they willing to give up? 

In the timeless tradition of West Side Story and Crossing Delancey, this thoroughly modern take on romance will inspire laughter, tears, and the belief that love can happen when and where you least expect it. 

There’s a storm raging across New York, and at a Brooklyn hospital two teenagers from vastly different worlds are about to collide.

Jaxon is sixteen-years-old and currently sitting by his best friend’s bedside, after Ryan attempted to jump a fallen tree branch with his skateboard and got a broken arm in the process. 

Devorah is also sixteen, sitting in a waiting room with her pious brother-in-law, Jacob, awaiting the premature birth of her first niece. As the generators power on, Devorah becomes increasingly worried for her eighteen-year-old sister Rose as she goes into labour; their parents are out of town visiting a sick aunt, and it’s down to Devorah to be her sister’s strength. 

But when Jaxon and Devorah – two perfect strangers who couldn’t be more opposite – get into the hospital elevator, they have no idea what fate has in store for them. The elevator stops and throws them into darkness – stuck, as the storm outside cuts power to the hospital. 

Forced to keep one another company, Devorah only remembers that the boy in the elevator is very tall, and black and she’s breaking ‘yichud’ by even just telling him her name – because her Jewish religious law says she cannot speak to men outside her family and unchaperoned … never mind that her family really wouldn’t want her talking to someone who is so very secular.

Devorah, Jaxon learns, is a Hasidic Jewish girl who lives practically next-door to him in Brooklyn … except she’s from the Hasidic community of Crown Heights. When he can’t contain his shock at this revelation, and Devorah replies with a snappy; “What? We all look the same to you?” he feels himself falling harder and faster for this girl than he ever has in his not-so-illustrious romantic history. 

And even though the two of them part ways after an elevator rescue – they both conspire to meet again, each intrigued by the other and consumed by the need to see where their attraction may lead … 

‘Like No Other’ is the new contemporary young adult novel from American author Una LaMarche. 

This book has been on my radar for a while now – after that gorgeous cover came out (illustration by Michael Kirkham) and the story promised some much-needed diversity in YA. I went into this book with extremely high-hopes … and by about 10 pages, I was relieved to discover that each and every one would be met. Because I knew after those 10 pages, that ‘Like No Other’ was going to be a deserving hit. 

The story begins on August 28 and ends on September 22 – and in that timespan we get alternate chapters told from both Jaxon and Devorah’s point of view. And even though it’s a relatively small slab of time for these characters, I was surprised that the whirlwind romance they enter into feels no less raw and vivid for being so condensed. Indeed, the page starts igniting with sparks from the moment of Devorah and Jaxon’s fateful meeting;

She stands up and takes a step toward me, and as the light filters down through the hole above us, like artificial moonlight on a movie set, I can really see her eyes for the first time, big and gray flecked with shimmering hints of sky blue, like someone bottled that moment when Dorothy steps out of her black-and-white farmhouse and into Oz. 

That’s the moment I know I’m in trouble.

But even though Jaxon and Devorah both tell their sides of the story, make no mistake that the real protagonist of ‘Like No Other’ is Devorah. She’s the one who goes on the bigger hero’s journey, and of the two of them she’s the one who most needs her world shook up, and her foundations rocked by Jaxon.

From our first meeting Devorah, readers will suspect that this is a girl who will not be tamed. Indeed, while reading this book I had many goosebump moments from LaMarche’s words, never more than when Devorah is witnessing the birth of her niece; 

I want to stand up and burst into applause – people do it for all kinds of lesser miracles: when a pilot lands a plane, when a pre-schooler bangs tunelessly on a piano; when sweaty men manage to throw a ball into a metal hoop, so why not now? Why not for this miracle? There is life in this room. A new life. And I saw it happen. 

Readers will then be surprised to discover that Devorah is considered to be the very definition of ‘frum’ (very pious) by her family and friends; she’s top of her class, respectful, modest and shuns technology and the secular world in a way that even her peers consider extreme (indeed, Devorah’s young brothers hide iPods and magazines). But, after her sister’s marriage and now her pregnancy (and only at the age of 18!) Devorah has to acknowledge that she’s scared of what the next two years will bring – when she’ll have to leave her education behind and her parents will go to the matchmaker to find her a husband. Devorah can quietly admit to herself that she’s not ready for that life, but it’s meeting Jaxon that causes her to start questioning the reasons why… 

Back in July I read 'Invisible City' by Julia Dahl, a murder-mystery set inside a Hasidic Jewish community of Brooklyn. From reading that book I was already familiar with a few traditions, and in particular the patriarchal system. Una LaMarche really must be commended for how tenderly she portrays this community and questions it – yes, through the character of Devorah she is critical of many aspects of how this community operates, but she never does so in a disrespectful way. In the acknowledgments LaMarche thanked a group of women – “I dove into ‘Like No Other’ knowing that the book would be doomed if I didn’t give Devorah a real, vibrant inner voice, family life and community, and I am forever indebted to the women who told me their stories so that I could tell hers.” That respect and attention to detail shines in the text, and young readers will be both captivated and forced to question the foundations of the community while still acknowledging Devorah’s deep love and respect for it. A hard balancing-act, but LaMarche does it.

Though Devorah’s is very much the larger character arc (purely for needing the most change in her life) Jaxon is a no less wonderful protagonist. Particularly because LaMarche touches on so many relevant racial tensions in this book; indeed, the horrible events surrounding Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri were playing out while I read the book, and highlighted the importance of continuing to campaign for diverse voices in YA such as LaMarche’s Jaxon: 

It’s funny; I forget sometimes how I might look to other people. I could be reading ‘The Great Gatsby’ on the 3 train, or walking down the street listening to a podcast on my phone, or coming out of my orthodontist’s office with Invisalign braces feeling like the biggest nerd on the planet, but some people don’t notice anything but an almost-six-foot-tall black man. After Trayvon Martin got shot in Florida, Mom wouldn’t let me wear a hoodie for six months. 

‘Like No Other’ was also a great book for teaching me so much. About the Hasidic Jewish community, of course, but LaMarche also highlights some pertinent historical markers that I never knew about – like the Crown Heights riot of 1991, when tensions between Hasidic Jews and the Crown Heights black community boiled over. This book has been praised for its diversity, and I do think it’s entirely deserving: 

“How does it feel to be a minority?” I ask him as we pass a big store called Judaica World. 

“Fine,” he says – the only answer that a privileged white kid can give to that question without getting a beat-down. 

I loved this book, and it’s going down as one of my favourites of 2014. It’s a tough book, even while cloaked in the very romantic story of Devorah and Jaxon. LaMarche is writing a deeper tale of star-crossed lovers, one that discusses racial and religious tensions, feminism and independence – an absolute triumph for Una LaMarche.

5/5

Like No Other is being released in Australia by Penguin Books Australia. Available from September 24. 

'Isla and the Happily Ever After' by Stephanie Perkins

From the BLURB:

From the glittering streets of Manhattan to the moonlit rooftops of Paris, falling in love is easy for hopeless dreamer Isla and introspective artist Josh. But as they begin their senior year in France, Isla and Josh are quickly forced to confront the heartbreaking reality that happily-ever-afters aren’t always forever.

Their romantic journey is skillfully intertwined with those of beloved couples Anna and Étienne and Lola and Cricket, whose paths are destined to collide in a sweeping finale certain to please fans old and new.

Isla has been in love with Josh Wasserstein for most of her high school life – though it takes a trip to the dentist and heavy medication for her to get up the nerve to have an actual conversation with him.

That conversation takes place at Kismet, a café around the corner from their respective New York apartments – and the fate aspect of that is not lost on Isla. You see, she and Josh actually attend the America School in Paris, so she has plenty of opportunities throughout the year to talk with him (and, actually he once commented on their mutual love of Joann Sfar – so there was that, their most significant exchange … until now). While still slightly high on dentist meds, Isla strikes up a conversation with Josh when she spies him at her favourite café drawing in his ever-present sketchbook, and because it’s Josh (!) and she’s feeling brave she can’t help but flirt with him … and be mortified the following morning when she remembers snapshots of their exchange.

Her best friend, Kurt, assures Isla it couldn’t have been so bad. But she’s not so sure Kurt really understands – partly because he’s on the autism spectrum and has a hard time reading people’s emotions – and partly because he’s borne witness to all the insignificant exchanges between her and Josh over the years (as Kurt also attends the America School) but he wasn’t there to properly catalogue the Kismet event.

Sure enough, when School’s back for the year Isla feels her connection to Josh has strengthened (and that fate is still playing a part, when she finds herself assigned to Josh’s old room from last year).

Something is happening between her and her crush-from-afar, Josh Wasserstein – they have a connection, and as they both start building on their Kismet encounter, the more she’s convinced that Josh can feel it too.

‘Isla and the Happily Ever After’ is the third and final book in Stephanie Perkins’s romance YA series that started with ‘Anna and the French Kiss’, continued with ‘Lola and the Boy Next Door’ and will finally end with Isla and Josh’s story.

I was really nervous to read this book. ‘Lola and the Boy Next Door’ came out in 2011, a year after ‘Anna and the French Kiss’ … but ‘Isla’, although announced as the third and final book around the same time that ‘Lola’ came out, took three years to get here. Stephanie Perkins has been very open and honest about how hard this book was to write and explained the hold-up (which sounded like a combination of all the worst things that can happen to an author – writers block, lack of confidence and sheer exhaustion). Perkins also teased fans that this book would not be all smooth sailing for Isla … and that warning, coupled with the knowledge that this was her hardest book to write, was a little nerve-racking as a reader and fan. I didn’t know how Perkin’s creative struggle would translate to the finale of one of my favourite contemporary YA series…. But I can say, with hand over my heart, that Stephanie Perkins has done it. She has given fans the most wonderful of endings to this series.

It took me a while to get into this book, however. Probably down to a few niggling reader-worries going in, but I found myself starting to read ‘Isla’ and then putting it down … picking it up for a few pages, and then putting it down. I wasn’t getting hooked, initially, but once the story took us back to Paris (and the original setting of ‘Anna and the French Kiss’) I stayed glued to that page.

So, the book begins with Isla having her ‘Kismet’ moment with Josh (while high on meds, admittedly) – fans will recognise Isla as the few years younger pupil at the America School who Anna figured out was crushing on Josh, one of the boys in her group of friends. For the reason that Isla stretches back to the first book, it’s easy to fall into sympathy with her one-sided crush on the beautiful Josh Wasserstein (son of a senator, artist- extraordinaire and bad-boy of the America School who is always on his third and final warning);  

The next few days are unsettling. 

Josh is aware of me. 

Whenever he enters a room, an unmistakable mass of chaotic energy enters with him. It rattles the air between us. It buzzes and hums. And every time we surrender – every time our eyes meet in a flash of nerve – a shock wave jolts throughout my entire system. I feel frayed. Excited. Unravelled.
 

I both really loved the melodrama of ‘Isla’, and sometimes it bugged me (but only slightly). Look, a lot of the appeal of YA lies in the fact that it’s all about firsts – and the heightened emotions surrounding them. But so much of ‘Isla’ is about falling hard and fast – I mean, it’s like a piano falling on both Josh and Isla’s heads. And I loved that, I really did – but at one point Josh shows Isla a panel from his graphic novel memoir and he’s included a drawing of the two of them, and the thought-bubble ‘salvation!’ above his head. Moments like that made me chuckle, and I don’t think that was the intended reaction.

But I did love Josh and Isla. They feel like a couple straight out of a Cameron Crowe movie (I’m looking at you, Lloyd Dobbler!) they’re this perfect combination of sweet and heat – and, speaking of, Stephanie Perkins writes a seriously good sex scene that’s commendable for being about female satisfaction, without venturing into inappropriate smut. It was refreshing to read something so frank in contemporary YA.

My confession leaves him stunned. 

“There’s no story,” I say. “I saw you one day, and I just knew.”Josh stares at me. He looks inside of me. And then he kisses me with more passion than he’s ever kissed me with before.

I also really liked Isla's friendship with Kurt - who is on the autism spectrum (what was once called Asperger syndrome), though I did think they had a lot of problems with their friendship towards the end of the book that I don't feel were given proper page time. The Kurt/Isla friendship also had echoes of Sibylla and Michael's friendship (perhaps minus romantic undertones) from Fiona Wood's marvellous 'Wildlife', but I think Wood handled that friendship better than Perkins did in the end.

While I was worried that Stephanie Perkins’ struggles with writing this book would show through in the final product, I was actually surprised at how it helped shape Isla’s story. Anna and Lola’s romantic struggles were a mix of physical and emotional struggles – Anna had Etienne’s girlfriend to contend with, Lola had her current boyfriend at the time, and a long history with the Bell’s as her roadblocks. A lot of Isla’s struggles in coming together with Josh are internal, they’re her own hang-ups that she needs to conquer (though she tries to make out physical obstacles as her excuse, readers know better). I feel like that’s a reflection of what sounded like Perkins’ internal struggles to write this book (like her lacking self-confidence). Then there’s the moment when Isla offers some harsh editing critiques of Josh’s very personal graphic memoir – I feel like that was a little author moment creeping in, commenting on how hard (but necessary) it is to hear those criticisms. I really liked that Isla’s hang-ups were about her confidence, and overcoming something in herself – that was so interesting and relatable to me.

I also loved that we’re back in Europe with this book. I liked the San Francisco setting in ‘Lola’, but a lot of the fun in ‘Anna’ came from the Paris setting. This time we’re back at the America School in Paris, but there’s also a jaunt to Barcelona that I absolutely adored because I’VE BEEN THERE! and it’s one of my favourite cities in the world. I particularly liked the description of Antoni Gaudí’s Catalan modernist architecture (which is like something out of a dream) and cathedral Sagrada Família:

It’s a monster. 

It wants me to cower. It wants me to weep. It wants me to save my soul from hell. Gaudí started work on this church in the late nineteenth century, but it won’t be finished for at least another decade. It stretches twice as high as the tallest cathedrals of France. It looks like a fantasyland castle – wet sand dripped through fingers, both sharp and soft. Bright construction lights are everywhere, and workers are tinkering around its massive spires in dangerously tall cranes.

  

‘Isla and the Happily Ever After’ is the finale fans were hoping for. Isla and Josh are the perfect way to finish this series, and fans will absolutely squeal in delight when we get to catch up with Lola and Cricket, but especially Anna and Etienne.

4.5/5

A to Z of YA

I've written a little something for the wonderful Writers Bloc blog - in honour of Children’s Book Week 

'A to Z of YA' 

Everyone should follow the Writers Bloc blog because they have some amazing posts, including the recent 'An Editorial Confession' and 'The Book That Ruined My Career (then found me another one)' not to mention weekly writing prompts! 

‘Waiting on You’ Blue Heron #3 by Kristan Higgins

From the BLURB:

Does being nobody's fool mean that you're nobody's love?

Colleen O'Rourke is in love with love... just not when it comes to herself. Most nights, she can be found behind the bar at the Manningsport, New York, tavern she owns with her twin brother, doling out romantic advice to the lovelorn, mixing martinis and staying more or less happily single. See, ten years ago, Lucas Campbell, her first love, broke her heart... an experience Colleen doesn't want to have again, thanks. Since then, she's been happy with a fling here and there, some elite-level flirting and playing matchmaker to her friends.

But a family emergency has brought Lucas back to town, handsome as ever and still the only man who's ever been able to crack her defenses. Seems like maybe they've got some unfinished business waiting for them—but to find out, Colleen has to let her guard down, or risk losing a second chance with the only man she's ever loved.

Colleen O'Rourke is a modern-day Emma. At least seven children in her local town of Manningsport have been named after her, in thanks for matchmaking their parents. She’s drummed up plenty of business for the local bridal store and lots of people in town are lining up to have Colleen match them with their soul mates.

Colleen’s so good at matchmaking other people only because her own love life is so abysmal. Not many people in town know (because that’s just the way Colleen wants it) but she was burned by her first true-love and never recovered from the heartbreak.

Lucas Campbell was the new boy in town when Colleen was a senior, he and his cousin Bryce moved to town after Lucas’s mother died and his father was thrown in prison then sent to live with his aunt and uncle. Before Lucas Campbell arrived, Colleen was the perfect popular girl – adored by everyone, but always turning down dates from her male classmates. But that all changed when Lucas came to town – with his Spaniard eyes and reluctant smile. In Colleen, Lucas found someone that was just for him, and Colleen finally had someone worth taking a chance on.

But then it all came apart, quickly and devastatingly. Ten years later, Colleen still hasn’t let her heart recover from missing Lucas Campbell. So the last thing she needs is for him to breeze back into Manninsport – in town to spend time with his dying uncle and help get his dopey cousin straightened out and grown up, and reminding her of what they lost.

‘Waiting on You’ is the third book in Kristan Higgins’ ‘Blue Heron’ romance series.

I am so glad that I loved this book, after thinking ‘The Perfect Match’ was fairly ho-hum. This instalment takes us away from the Holland sisters, and focuses on local bartender and Faith’s best friend, Colleen (one half of twin-duo with her brother and restaurant co-owner, Connor). Colleen had been established as the expert flirt in town, and beloved amateur therapist who hears everyone’s problems when she pours them their brew. But it has also been hinted that a break up in Colleen’s past still haunts her to this day, which is why she’s more predisposed to flings than relationships, and no man has been able to turn her head in years.

I have to admit, I wasn’t thrilled with an instalment that took us away from Blue Heron – I was actually hoping for a book about the Holland brother. But Higgins very quickly establishes Colleen’s broken-hearted past, and I was totally in her corner after getting the story of how Lucas Campbell screwed her over. And that’s the thing that bugged me a little about this book – when they were (admittedly) younger, Lucas did a stupid thing that spiralled into really hurtful and left a break in Colleen that still hasn’t healed. It’s bad, and will make you a little weepy when the whole, sad story is pulled out – but I never entirely felt like Lucas accounted for his actions or felt the right level of remorse. But maybe that’s just me.

Considering how hurt Colleen was by Lucas ten years ago, it’s understandable that when he returns to Manningsport she’s at def-con zero;

“About my new man,” she said. “I need someone hot and romantic and intelligent with a great sense of humour who can cook and is also a cowboy or a firefighter.” 

Faith snorted. “Okay, I’m thinking … uh … cowboys are pretty scarce. And for hot firefighters, we only have Gerard.” 

“You know what would be great? A tragic widower type, like Jude Law in ‘The Holiday.’ Definitely my type. Or Hugh Jackman in ‘Les Mis.’ Le sigh!” 

“Right, right. Impoverished fugitives who burst into song. Coming up empty, Coll.”

Something I really loved about this book (and something that Higgins does so damn well) is write robust and interesting secondary characters’ with back-stories to surround her protagonists. In Colleen’s world; it’s her father who cheated on her mother with ‘Gail the Tail’ ten years ago, but her mother has never recovered and to this day expects her ex-husband to come crawling back. Colleen has a beloved nine-year-old stepsister called Savannah who is struggling with her weight and body image, particularly when her mother is so body-conscious herself. And Colleen’s father hasn’t been apart of her life since he cheated on his wife and started a new family ten years ago. Then there’s Paulie – a local girl and princess to the Chicken King (who owns a chain of deep friend chicken stores) who asks for Colleen’s help in roping her dream man … who just happens to be Lucas’s cousin, Bryce. But when Lucas comes to town to spend time with his dying uncle, and straighten Bryce out with a job, he gets wind of Colleen’s matchmaking scheme and is not happy.

Higgins is brilliant at writing these interesting secondary characters to round-out her story and heroes, and ‘Waiting on You’ is one of the best examples of this.

I really loved Colleen. A few times Higgins slips in how beautiful and desired Colleen is, but I never resented her as I so often do when female characters are presented as practically perfect in every way. Colleen’s wicked sense of humour and compassion save her from venturing into Mary-Sue territory, as does her brilliant repartee with the people she loves, like her twin;

“Hey, placenta hog. Just because you were born three minutes sooner doesn’t mean you know everything.”

I also really loved Lucas, despite feeling that he didn’t account enough for his actions ten years ago (and, actually, in recent years when he didn’t attempt to reach out to Colleen). He has a really complicated history, that’s definitely dictating his current hang-ups. But his chemistry with Colleen is insane, and towards the end I definitely got the impression that he was reeling from the realisation that he lost so much ten years ago, with a couple of stupid mistakes.

This is probably the biggest emotional roller-coaster Higgins book I’ve yet read. She really presents a fractured couple in Colleen and Lucas, but she makes it work with a delightfully varied and sprawling cast of secondary characters with back-stories as interesting as the protagonists’. I got a little frustrated with the slut-shaming focus towards the end, but otherwise this was a fabulous instalment in the ‘Blue Heron’ series (I WANT MORE!!!!) and one of the best Higgins books I’ve read. Fabulous.

4/5