Self-Published Spotlight || Neverland by Shari Arnold

Besides being the cover-whore that I am, I love the tease of a retelling. Neverland, by Shari Arnold, was just too much bait rolled into one package for me to resist. At the same time, it’s a self-published book, and I’m still in the middle of confronting my prejudices about those.

Neverland was able to meet me where I was at, and far exceeded my expectations. The editing was spot on, the structure was well-developed, and the idea was interesting—a contemporary Peter Pan told from Wendy’s point of view.

Wendy in this book is named Livy, and she is in the midst of grieving over her younger sister who had lost the fight against cancer. Everyone in her family is still grieving, actually, and they are expressing it in different ways. Her father is socially unresponsive, and her mother is busy trying to pretend that everything is fine by throwing herself even further into her career. I was impressed by how they show different sides to their grief, and how its complexity was revealed even in the mechanics of the storytelling.

It was fun to hunt for familiar characters—Peter Pan, Captain Hook—but even more fun to realize that their story isn’t as black and white as I remembered from childhood. For example, in this story Captain Hook is a quasi Grim Reaper character, but is passing from this life to an unknown (and potentially better) life such a terrible thing?

Perhaps one of the best things this book speaks to is romantic relationships. Okay, yeah, sometimes the teenage girls sound more like moms of teenage girls (‘Stalkers are only sexy in the movies.’), but I think it’s nice that they are able to set some real ground-rules for what a normal dating relationship should be (especially with all the examples of harmful dating relationships that teenagers/new adults are eating up these days). The characters aren’t there to preach, however. They do make bad decisions, and express real, authentic insecurities. I think the self-doubts were the most therapeutic parts of the book, because when you read them you realize that you are not alone with those doubts. And by seeing you are not alone, you can begin to see doubts for what they really are: just a story we tell ourselves.

Note: I got an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. That of course didn't affect my opinion of the book.

‘Belzhar’ Strikes a Good Note

There are no spoilers in this review, I pinkie swear.

Jam Gallahue is in love, in that bubblegum hormone-fueled hurts-so-good way. She’s in love with a smooth, hot British exchange student, and she knows that this is the real deal.

“Our entire relationship consisted of smiling, smirking, and saying funny things to each other. But I wanted our shoulder to touch. It was as if I thought our shoulders could almost communicate.”

You remember that feeling, right?

So she’s in this relationship where they don’t really have much to say to each other, they just have a mutual understanding of their avowed until death-do-us-part love. Oh and btw, they discovered this love 16 days after they met for the first time.

Fast forward a bit: the boyfriend dies after 25 days of dating (this is not a spoiler), and Jam enters such a state of grief that after one year she still hasn’t emerged. If you are thinking that her grieving seems...like she has deeper issues to deal with… you wouldn’t be alone in that. Her parents send her to a special boarding school for teens that need non-medicated psychological support.

At the school, Jam is placed in an exclusive, invite-only “special topics” English class with an intimate handful of other students. They study Sylvia Plath (hence the wordplay between The Bell Jar and Belzhar) the entire semester, and like Plath, must make regular journal entries throughout. These journals come with a special ability to help the students process their grief and pain in a very unique way.

Throughout the book, I was interested in the story, but had to keep taking two-second reading breaks to roll my eyes. I really dislike romances where the characters don’t show me how they have a long-term sustainable relationship based on something other than, “I just knew it,” or “We had a special connection.” I couldn’t get past how Jam was so in love with a guy that she knew for approximately a month, and whom we as the reader know nothing about besides she thinks he’s hot.

I’m glad I kept reading, however (full disclosure: until 3am). The author, Meg Wolitzer, is not a bad writer of romances, and everything made sense in such a clear way in the end. It’s one of those endings that makes you think back and remember all the clues and hints that were dropped along the way. Like, “Duh, dumb Alisa, why didn’t you pay more attention!?”

As the book progresses, Jam begins another relationship with a guy at the boarding school. She struggles with feeling like she is cheating on the dead British bloke, but Wolitzer makes an elegant contrast between the ways the two different guys treat Jam. It’s not in-your-face and preachy, like some authors that are new to the YA club tend to be. The ongoing comparisons are quiet and demure, yet I think that it could help out a reader who is wondering if their current relationship is healthy or not.

Despite my review’s focus on the romances in the story, the Belzhar’s overall message isn’t about dating. All of the characters are trying to stay living in the past, and are missing out on the present as a consequence. The story is built to illustrate the problems of being too self-abrading with mistakes (hellooo, perfectionist self!), and left me with a powerful punch of one of my favorite self-affirmations: You cannot go back. You can only go forward.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

The first Haruki Murakami book that I ever read was 1Q84. It was written like nothing I had ever read before—magical, calm, layered, connected, obscured, symbolic. Over the next couple years, I made my way through more of his books, as my local used bookstore and library allowed. Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore, and After Dark were all enjoyable, but they didn’t give me the same high that I had been searching for since I lapped up the final pages of 1Q84.

I approached Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage with high expectations. I pushed away the thought that perhaps the reason that the majority of Murakami’s books don’t match up to 1Q84 means that 1Q84 is more of an anomaly than a rule. “Naah,” I told myself, “1Q84 was the last book published before Colorless, and it represents a newer and better leaf in his career.” I avoided reading any reviews, so as to preserve every drop of a virgin reading experience, but I was so certain that Colorless would be even better than 1Q84 because of how much display area it got in bookstores. Good marketing does not a good novel make.

The basic plot: middle aged Tsukuru has trouble forming and keeping relationships with other people, and it’s not because he is on the Autism spectrum (though his train station obsession hints at that). His close group of high school friends broke up with him out of nowhere, and that experience hurt him so badly that he has been apathetic about getting close to people ever since. When his love interest detects that he has a psychological block, she quests him with reconnecting with his friends and tying up loose ends.

Many people compare Colorless to Norwegian Wood, and I agree with making that comparison. Both center on unhealthy relationships that the main male character needs to address before he is able to move on with his life. Both of them have an older female character who intuitively knows what the main character needs to do and tells him so. Neither of them have magical or occultish themes like we see in Kafka on the Shore and 1Q84.

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I guess it’s important to remember that Norwegian Wood was Murakami’s breakthrough novel, and the one that endeared him to the Japanese public. So there are people out there, millions of them, who enjoy reading about ruminating on old relationships in Murakami’s slow, steady, rainy-day way. And besides Japan, it seems that the whole Man Booker Prize committee also enjoys this (read five prize winners in a row and you’ll see what I mean). But personally, I don’t have lingering regrets about past relationships, or discontentment with my current one, and I wasn’t able to identify with any of Tsukuru’s problems. I’m thankful for this. Maybe when I reach middle-age, I’ll feel regrets about the what-if’s in my life, but I doubt it. Not dwelling on the past is one of my coping mechanisms and is important to my worldview.

So, I was fundamentally disappointed with the plot, but all the other Murakami hallmarks were there to redeem it. The linguistic style is smooth and calculated, the pace moves in a contemplative and careful manner, and as always, it gave me a desire to go live in Japan and be an introspective, clean, reserved, polite person. And listen to records and pet cats.

Looking for Romance and Finding Friendship in Will Grayson, Will Grayson

*Contains very minor spoilers! Ye have been warned!!*

Will Grayson, Will Grayson was my first exposure to both John Green and David Levithan, the ever-so-trendy YA authors. It’s like a crime that I call myself an avid YA lit consumer, and haven’t read The Fault in Our Stars or Boy Meets Boy. This was also my first time reading a book with LGBTQ prominent characters. Dumbledore doesn’t count, you guys.

At first, I was a bit averse to picking this book up on account of its being stuck in the GAY & LESBIAN genre. There are multiple sides to the genre debate, I know because my boyfriend and I argue about genre labels all the time. On the one hand, It makes it easier to find books with topics you are interested in, but on the other, it’s also possible that the label will turn you off from reading a book that you would actually enjoy because you didn’t like the last book you read in that genre. I just always assumed that a book filed under “Gay & Lesbian” as one of its defining characteristics wouldn’t interest me. I mean, even if I read a book with straight characters who are thinking of / talking about / taking action on sexual thoughts all the time, I’m not too interested. I usually breeze through those parts and judge the author. So I always thought, “Well, the only way this book would have enough content to be in this category is if the characters are all lusty all the time.”

Will Grayson, Will Grayson isn’t like that. It does have a couple gay characters: one of them is stereotypical (likes musicals, says words like “FABulous”, makes it clear who is hot and who is not) but the other is not. The other, Will Grayson, is an average lower-middle class teenager growing up in suburban America, struggles in a single-parent home, takes medications for depression and anxiety, is unaware of how arrogant and self-absorbed he is, and gets butterflies in his stomach about holding hands with his crush. He is a remarkably realistic, believable character, and more importantly to me, was not what I imagined when I read the label that he came with.

The book is set up so that the chapters alternate between two characters. In the first hunk of the book, the times remain consistent, so when one chapter ends at say, 3pm on Tuesday, the next chapter will start at 3pm on Tuesday. One uses proper formatting, the other uses all lowercase (because I was reading an e-ARC, I assumed the final edits weren’t done yet...true story). Besides this, you don’t get a lot of clues that you are reading about different people until about 25% of the way through the book.

Now, I assume you are a much more clever person than I, because it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that, guys, there are TWO WILL GRAYSONS in the book. They are completely separate characters who happen to have the same name. There is no magical explanation of alternate realities or changing space time or reincarnation. It does not get awkward super weird Freudian theory puzzling and they don’t fall in love with each other. Read in peace. Because I certainly didn’t.

Straight Will has basically everything in life going for him: chill parents with well-paying jobs, good looks, good connections, and a super cool standoffish attitude that doesn’t allow him to get sucked into school drama. Gay Will, as I mentioned, is a little more believable. Both Wills struggle with expressing their emotions and have trouble when it comes to commitment in romantic relationships. But ultimately, the story isn’t about romance. It’s about friendship.

Will Grayson and Will Grayson have a mutual friend named Tiny. Tiny has a big build, a big personality, a big presence, and is pretty mature for his age. He is always going out of his way to build confidence in other people, and he looks outside of himself to push and encourage those around him to reach further. Though Tiny plays a supporting role in this book, he actually is the one that ties the whole story together. In the end, the two Wills emerge from their self-absorbed bubbles and work together to show Tiny how much he is appreciated.

This book was an enjoyable read, it surprised me in really good ways, and it has a refreshing emphasis on healthy friendships (not psycho lust interests like so many other YA books that SHALL NOT BE NAMED). It definitely broadened my horizons and showed me some of my own biases. Read it, it’ll be good for you!

I got an e-ARC for review purposes, but that in no way affected my honest opinion.

Cecilia Gray Sketches a Good Character in ‘Drawn’

The saying, “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover,” must have been first said by a book reviewer. Since I’ve started to review advanced copies of books, I’ve been surprised more often than not that the story I thought I was going to read is quite a bit different than the story actually is. I’m still in the process of learning that lesson, though. ;)

The official description of Drawn is this:

Take a journey into the gritty world of political espionage through the eyes – and lies – of one extraordinary girl. A wholly original tale of friendship and betrayal.

Sasha has a secret – that she can make you spill your secret with nothing more than a question. Her strange gift makes her a burden to her foster family and a total freak of nature. Not that Sasha cares. Why should she when no one cares about her?

Then the CIA knocks on her door. They want to give Sasha a new identity and drop her into a foreign country to infiltrate a ring of zealous graffiti terrorists. They want to give Sasha something to care about.

To survive a world where no one is who they seem, Sasha needs to make people trust her. But when that trust blossoms into love, Sasha is forced to decide between duty and friendship, between her mind and her heart, and whether to tell the truth or keep her secrets.

I wouldn't have guessed that based on this cover! It is about friendship, lies and partial truths, the CIA, a Banksy-type character named Kid Aert, and a girl with a mutant ability to make people tell the truth if they hear her voice. Drawn is about all of this.

But to summarize it as only those things misses the mark. The authoress, Cecilia Gray, dug much deeper to address what is in the psyche of a person who has been abandoned by parental figures multiple times at such critical points in life--when her brain is forming relational patterns--and how that affects her relationships with everyone.

Sasha constantly blames others for giving up on her. Her voice is difficult to be around because it makes people say exactly what is on their mind (and those are generally less than flattering things), so people naturally gravitate away from her. Rather than risking being rejected again, she pushes potential friends away.

Though her voice is bad for keeping relationships, it is useful for obtaining information for the CIA. Sasha has been working for the government since her gift was discovered as a young child. She has worked as a tool of the government her whole life, and her relationship with adults is based solely on her value as a tool. She places her entire worth as a human in her ability to do her job for the government. Because she feels used, she justifies using others. And she manipulates her friends into helping her accomplish her job.

Sasha is a pretty well-developed character and has legitimate inner-conflicts. The author did a great job thinking through the effects that treating people as less than human will have. She shows a lot of patterns that a girl who has been trafficked, abused, or abandoned would have. Plot-wise, however, it was a little too farfetched for me. No matter what fictional world is created, all worlds have to abide by the law of Allowed Amount of Coincidences. I wouldn’t recommend this book because it breaks the law.

Note: I received a free e-copy of this for review, but that didn't affect my honest opinion here.

Dating Advice from Hush

Super-short synopsis of Hush by Stacey R. Campbell: The Princess Diaries + more romance between hot co-eds.

At first pass, I was irritated with some large leaps in logic that I was asked to take. Example: one character finds the Prime Minister’s phone number after a quick search online. As in, Oh gimme a minute and I’ll google David Cameron’s phone number. This sort of thing happened frequently. But then I realized that this story would be perfect as a Disney Channel Feature Film starring the latest Blondie McStarlet — you know, the kind where the unfeasibility of the story is passed over like last year’s homecoming dress in favor of the idea of a hot British guy falling in love with a laid-back all-American girl-next-door.

I am a logical person. Even fantasy books still need to follow the properties of physics. But say I laid that aside, there was still an important problem that bothered me.

Even though the main character Blakely has a lot of positive qualities, she can’t help that she was written in such a way that she passes on bad advice from the author when it comes to romantic relationships.

1. The cure for a broken heart is to get in a new romantic relationship.

“She needed to get over Stewart. The only way he could see Blakely accomplishing that was for her to get together with someone else, and Max was the perfect candidate for the job.”

I understand that sometimes you need to tell your friend: “Look, you are dwelling too much on the past. Let’s find a way to get your mind off it.” But the way to recover from a hole in your heart is not by filling it with another person. It’s by becoming a WHOLE person. Maybe this means finding a new hobby, setting a goal of some kind, learning a skill, journaling, or understanding more about yourself through personality discovery tools.

2. Ignoring someone will make them want you more.

“...the more he tried to charm her, the more she ignored him. She was driving him mad.”

I think this idea feeds into rape culture. Whenever I see this scenario in movies, it makes me so angry that I usually stop watching. The girl says “No”, the guy says, “She doesn’t mean it,” in the end the girl says “Yes” and the guy says “I knew she didn’t mean what she said. She didn’t know what was good for her.” I don’t just mean about sex. It could be about eating two cookies instead of one. There is a difference between saying “I changed my mind” and caving in to the nagging of someone else. Can I get a book with some examples of relational maturity and respect, please?

3. Making your crush jealous will speed up your relationship status.

“Was that jealousy he saw in her delicious chocolate eyes? Oh, this was rich. … If Blakely felt threatened by Marley, maybe she would finally act on her feelings for him.”

Love/friendship does not try to make the other person feel bad. Love/friendship does not manipulate. Love is honest. Love is patient.

4. Saying that you belong together is pretty much proof that you do belong together.

“The way they laughed, the ease in the way they talked, it was like they belonged together.”

The characters think a lot about how perfect they are together, how perfect their friends are together, etc etc. But as a reader, we don’t actually see them working well together. And we don’t see them having a real conversation about their thoughts, speculations, likes and dislikes… things that people who are dating usually try to find out. Instead, they flirtatiously put each other down, make sexually suggestive comments to each other, and sometimes they talk about homework assignments. Yup, that’s gonna last in the long run.

Note: I got a free copy of this for review, but that didn't change my honest opinion of the book.

Poking past The Hedgehog hype

Sometimes I am a little late to the conversation. I know everyone was talking about The Elegance of the Hedgehog back when it hit the English-speaking shelves in 2008. Six years later, I decided to dive in. (Speaking of being late to the game, Starbucks in Dubai just got seasonal pumpkin spice lattes for the first time…)

The story alternates between the confessional-style musings and conversational-style writings of a rich, super-intelligent Parisian tweenage apartment resident and an astute, menopausal concierge of the said apartment. On the surface level I enjoyed this book immensely—two people on opposite ends of the societal spectrum confront some of their assumptions about the other side and come out better because of it.

I read others’ reviews of it after I finished, and I must say that I have to hand it to the critics. These characters spend the whole book moaning about how other people just assume things about them based on appearances but they don’t really get to know them. But the same two people who are doing the complaining don’t put in the effort to push past the pokey defenses of their cold neighbors, either. I’ve seen this conversation happen before:

“I feel so left out because no one invites me to do anything.”
“Do you invite anyone to do anything either?”
“No, but I’m new here / not good at it / boring so I shouldn’t be the one to do it.”

Except in the book it sounded more like:

“No one wants to get to know who I really am.”
“Did you try to get to know who they really are?”
“No, but I’ve spent enough time with them to know that they don’t care about me / aren’t worth my time / aren’t intelligent enough / won’t provide me with effortless, meaningful conversation.”

Once I realized that, it soiled my impression of the book. But I will hold on to the parts that I liked and made the book worth the read. A truly beautiful aspect of the story was the timid friendship between Kakuro Ozu and the main character Renée Michel. Both middle-aged, both introverted and kind-hearted, both epicurean. Their friendship is one that was in its beginning stages of development, yet already so familiar and trusting. I wanted to become a part of that intimacy. It is a modified Cinderella and Prince Charming story, but with realistic people who are in the afternoon of their lives rather than their mornings, who come with some baggage and history, who are looking more for someone they can talk to than someone they can keep up appearances with.

And, call me out for being a girl who likes to read about romantic relationships (then go right on dissing Jane Austen while you’re at it), but I wish the book was more about that. I don’t wish the story had cut straight to the part where Prince Charming/Kakuro Ozu is introduced. I wanted the story to be longer, and I wanted them to enjoy each others’ lives more. And I wanted that precocious, pretentious 12-year-old to take her know-it-all self elsewhere.