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The Secret History Meets The Breakfast Club: The Chandler Legacies by Abdi Nazemian

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the cover of The Chandler Legacies by Abdi Nazemian

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At a private boarding school, five writers are selected for the elite writing group called the Circle: Beth, the “townie” who feels very much out of place; Sarah, Beth’s former roommate who carries her own secrets about the school; Spence, who struggles to carve out her own identity while also benefiting from the privilege of her famous parents; Freddy, the star athlete who isn’t sure if he can do anything else; and Ramin, an international transfer student who left his previous school after being outed and finds that Chandler has its own hazing traditions. Though they’re from such different backgrounds, the Circle brings them together in ways that they never could have expected.

Based on Nazemian’s own experiences at a private boarding school in the 90s, it’s at times a brutal read as it navigates the ways abusers remain in positions of power. I appreciated, though, how this is a dark academia interested in the actual horror of places like Chandler. A lot of books in this genre involve magic or overexaggerated cults with a collection of oddball characters that can stretch the limits of believability. These can be fun in their own ways, but here the true villains are the all-too-familiar authorities plagued by apathy and cover-ups that allow the abuses to continue festering. Nazemian portrays these horrific events with such care and sensitivity while also not turning away from the reality of their impact—a hard balance to strike, but this story manages to do both.

That’s not to say that this book is all doom and gloom. Where Nazemian really shines is in the ways that the characters grow to love and support one another. A lot is packed in here, and yet each of the five characters, with their own POV chapters, felt distinct and real. They were at times annoying, at times charming, at times naïve, and above all else, they felt like actual teens navigating their lives and how they fit in.

The book falters a bit towards the end as certain looming secrets and problems are wrapped up sooner than expected, but the rest of the book’s strengths come through enough for me to buy into the ending. For fans of The Breakfast Club or Dead Poets Society who wanted to see more of themselves in those movies, this book is a great addition to the coming-of-age genre.  

Trigger warnings: violence, homophobia, racism, bullying, references to suicide, references to self-harm, sexual assault

Elinor reviews The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy

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I have long-standing love for Ariel Levy’s work, so I was eager to read her memoir The Rules Do Not Apply. For those who’ve read her essay “Thanksgiving in Mongolia,” about her miscarriage at 19 weeks pregnant, you have some idea what you’ll be getting in this book. Essentially, it’s a brutally sad story told gorgeously. The memoir gives context to Levy’s loss of her pregnancy, marriage, and home, all within a single month, and delves into her life before, during and after this central tragedy.

Much of the book explores Levy’s adventures as a successful writer, interviewing fascinating people all over the world, and how her work informed her ideas about gender, family, work, queerness, marriage, and a meaningful life. Alongside this is the story of Levy’s personal life, from a childhood spent witnessing her mother’s long-term affair and the dissolution of her parent’s marriage, to dating men and women as an adult. When Levy falls in love with and marries a woman before such a marriage was legally recognized, you can feel the heady excitement. Together the pair bought a home and wrestled with question when and how to become parents. Though Levy’s marriage was loving, it was complicated by Levy’s destructive affair with a creepy ex and her spouse’s increasingly serious drinking problem. Still, when they decide to have a child after many years together, she believes that they have things under control, that they’d weathered storms and gotten bad behavior out of their systems. Then the unthinkable happens and the story takes a turn Levy never expected.

Levy resists the cultural rules for women throughout her life, managing to have brilliant ambition, professional success, lust, love, adventure and a rich domestic life. But those are only a superficial rejection of the “rules” that the title references. This memoir rejects tidy lessons, platitudes, and the idea that loss is avoidable. Often in stories like Levy’s, the unstated rule is that it all works out in the end, that there’s a silver lining, or that everything happens for some ultimately rewarding cosmic reason. Levy refuses to pretty up her pain or to resolve the story neatly. Here, there is no happy ending. In fact, the book ends ambiguously, with Levy stepping out into an uncertain future.

The rawness and incredible writing draw you in, and leave you unsettled. You might want to line up something soothing after this. I was very glad I didn’t read it until after my child was born, because if I’d been pregnant or trying to get pregnant I would have been an anxious wreck reading this book. Having said that, I still highly recommend it. It’s a fascinating, honest, unique book.

Elinor Zimmerman is the author of Certain Requirements, which will be released by Bold Strokes Books in Spring 2018. Her website is ElinorZimmerman.com

Korri reviews Sister Mischief by Laura Goode

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SisterMischief

Sister Mischief is a coming of age young adult novel about a group of friends who form the titular hip hop group in the predominantly white suburb of Holyhill, Minnesota. It’s narrated by wordsmith Esme, whose footnotes scattered throughout the book reveal the contents of text messages, lyrics scribbled in her notebook, and drop backstory in the form of memories the group shares on each other’s Facebook walls. The narrative is punctuated by earnest conversations during car drives where the girls weigh in on misogyny and racism in lyrics, if it is cultural appropriation for white girls in the affluent suburbs of the Twin Cities to love hip hop music, and if it is possible to reclaim the word bitch in rap music.

Each of the friends grapple with their identities and relationships over the course of the book: Esme is Jewish but without her mother around she doesn’t know what that means. She is out to her friends and when she finds herself falling for Rowie she is uncomfortable keeping their relationship under wraps. Tessa tries to balance her religious faith against the hypocritical and mean “Christians” she knows from church while Rowie, who usually likes boys, struggles with her feelings for Esme and the pressure from her Bengali family. Marce, who doesn’t understand why her best friend Esme never spends time with her any more, lets the slurs she receives because of the androgynous/masculine-of-center way she presents roll off her back. The four girls are bound together by their love of listening to, writing, and performing hip hop music.

The new Holyhill High School code of conduct bans rap music and “any apparel associated with this violence-producing culture,” which spurs the girls to form a queer-friendly group to discuss hip hop in an academic setting: 4H (Hip Hop for Heteros and Homos). The administration is not pleased with the idea. Shortly thereafter Esme and Rowie kiss while high in kiss in Rowie’s tree house. Before long the nights get darker earlier and Esme is sneaking over every night to make love to Rowie in the tree house. Rowie wants to keep their relationship quiet because the hetero/homo hip hop alliance has people questioning. When Esme says that that is exactly what the group is meant to do, Rowie points out that their classmates are less interested in lyrics and social attitudes than speculating about members’ sexual identities. Esme and Rowie’s relationship is revealed around the same time a 4H meeting is firebombed, leaving the future of each uncertain.

The author Laura Goode introduces readers to an engaging voice in Esme. She reminds me of Lin Manuel-Miranda’s witty and ambitious Alexander Hamilton: Esme writes like she’s running out of time. In her own words, she is “becoming the author of my own chaos” and she feels “like there’s so much work to do, so much time and so little all the same…. Time to create and re-create myself and everything I create.” I raced through this book and thoroughly enjoyed my time with the close-knit cast of characters.

 

Elinor reviews Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld

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Afterworlds may be one book, but it’s also two YA novels told in alternating chapters. Half of the chapters are about Darcy Patel. At the story’s start Darcy has just graduated from high school, sold her novel Afterworlds to a major publisher (along with its yet-unwritten sequel) for six figures, and is moving to New York City to revise her manuscript and write her next book. The other half of the book is Darcy’s novel itself, a fast-paced supernatural tale as told by Lizzie, a ordinary teenager girl until she survives a terrorist attack. In the midst of the terrible slaughter around her, Lizzie wills herself to the afterworld, the alternate plane of existence for ghosts and their psychopomps spirit guides. In doing so, Lizzie becomes a psychopomp herself and her life floods with ghosts and with dangers she never imagined.

Darcy navigates New York publishing while Lizzie begins a romance with Yamaraj, a handsome fellow psychopomp. Lizzie meets Mindy, the ghost of her mother’s murdered childhood friend, who has lived in her mother’s closet for decades. Darcy falls in love for the first time with Imogen, a YA writer who is full of secrets. Lizzie sets out to solve Mindy’s murder while learning about her new powers and wrestling with the moral questions of the new realm she’s uncovered. Darcy struggles to polish her novel, find her place among her literary heroes, and have her first relationship.

This is an engaging book for YA fans. Both teenage heroines are struggling with the transition to adulthood in extraordinary circumstances. Lizzie has a host of otherworldly issues to contend with, along with trauma and survivor’s guilt. Darcy has had all her dreams come true thanks to incredible success as a first-time novelist, but wrestles with imposter syndrome, questions of cultural appropriation in fiction, and the sudden freedom of adulthood.

The weakness point for both stories, at least for me, were the romances. Yamaraj is, like plenty of teenage heart throbs, too perfect to be really interesting, though the novel ultimately addresses this smartly. Imogen is more complex but Darcy’s apparent sudden sexual awakening wasn’t fleshed out. Prior to Imogen, it seemed Darcy had never any romantic or sexual interest in anyone, though she wrote a novel with a significant romance. On the one hand, it was refreshing that Darcy was relatively unconcerned with her sexual orientation or labeling herself. She struggles to tell her family about her girlfriend, even knowing that it won’t be a big deal, but there’s no tortured coming out story. Many of the challenges in the relationship are challenges in any first relationship. On the other, it seemed like Darcy was written to be vaguely on the asexual/demisexual spectrum without actually acknowledging this. Darcy, at eighteen, had never thought about her sexuality before, and I’m tired of female characters who had no sexual fantasies or desires until the right love interest comes along. It distracted me from the beginning of the Imogen/Darcy relationship, though that relationship did evolve in interesting ways.

All and all this was a fun read. I’d recommend to young adults looking for a different take on paranormal romance, for aspiring writers (the six-figure book deal is an excellent fantasy), for YA fans, and for readers looking for unique read.

Elinor reviews Searching for Celia by Elizabeth Ridley

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SearchingCelia

Searching for Celia by Elizabeth Ridley is a fast-paced mystery about identity. It starts with our American narrator, Dayle, on a plane to visit London and deliver a keynote speech at a writing conference, and more importantly, to visit her lifelong friend and one-time girlfriend, Celia. Dayle and Celia meet as young teenagers when Celia’s father was working in the U.S., and Dayle and Celia have been friends ever since. Six years before the novel begins, Celia and Dayle completed a writing graduate program together in England. During that time, they were briefly a couple, sharing dreams of writing serious, important fiction.

Celia and Dayle both succeeded in getting some of their serious, important fiction published shortly after graduating. Both women ended up experiencing tremendous commercial failure with their fiction in the years that followed, and were devastated by this failure. Dayle handled this by adopting a pen name, dying her hair, and writing a bestselling series of over-the-top spy novels and buying a Chicago condo with her profits. In just half a dozen years, Dayle’s gone from idealistic would-be writer to wealthy blockbuster novelist who worries about being a sell-out. Celia, on the other hand, started off with some success in her chosen field, followed by a flop that was also ripped apart by critics, and quit. Instead of writing, Celia’s been single-handedly running a nonprofit out of her London apartment, serving refugees and asylees, especially women and girls trafficked in sex trade. Not surprisingly, they’ve drifted apart. When Celia invited Dayle to stay with her during Dayle’s visit for the conference, Dayle hoped to revitalize their lagging friendship. A heartbreaking personal loss Dayle has recently suffered only fuels her longing for someone she knows so well.

Unfortunately, Celia doesn’t greet Dayle at the airport. Dayle goes to Celia’s address and she’s not there either, but she lets herself in. Soon she learns that Cecelia’s car has been found on a bridge and it appears Celia has died by suicide mere hours before Dayle arrived. This shock launches Dayle into an investigation of her friend’s life. While staying at Celia’s apartment and meeting with Celia’s recently dumped girlfriend, Edwina, Dayle discovers sides to Celia she never expected, casting doubt about everything she thought she knew from twenty years of friendship. Dayle suspects that the police account of Celia’s disappearance is not the whole truth, and her search for answers raises even more questions. Did Celia die or fake her death? If she’s dead, was it suicide or murder? Was Celia’s nonprofit broke, mixed up with organized crime, or both? Was Celia keeping the nonprofit afloat with her own money or using it as a personal piggy bank? Who was the real Celia? Dayle keeps digging, even when it begins to put her own life in danger.

The plot moves along at a quick and engaging clip, with menacing themes of terrorist threat and mistaken identity woven throughout. I read the whole thing over a weekend, eager to find out what would happen. This novel is suspenseful without being gruesome or gratuitous, and deftly avoids gore and sexual violence. Dayle and Celia’s friendship feels real, complicated, and fluid the way long-term queer friendship often is.

Searching for Celia isn’t perfect. Dayle’s launch into literary success seems too quick and easy. Edwina is underutilized, and too many characters–such as Celia’s therapist–offer up crucial information that should be private, seeming just because Dayle asked. Some of the most interesting questions are never answered, even when the rest of the story comes to a fairly satisfying end. For example, we never learn why Celia chose to work with refugees, asylees, and trafficked women when she faced difficulty with fiction, or why she revised an unpublished novel and asked someone to keep it safe when it seems she’s given up on writing. Celia’s nonprofit and the characters it served seemed two-dimensional, holding up the plot well enough but not doing much else. In the final chapters, Dayle jumps on theory after theory with little evidence, trusting people with secrets and then regretting it as soon as she hears a different theory. Not surprisingly, this leaves Dayle, and others, vulnerable to manipulation and harm. I like my heroines a little more savvy, especially because at that point Dayle is deep in her investigation and knows some of the dangers she may be facing.

Limitations aside, Searching for Celia sucks you in. It’s a great read for mystery fans. It digs into deeper questions about what it means to know someone while keeping you guessing about the story. If you’re intrigued by the premise, give it a try.

4 out of 5 stars.