The Secret Year

The Secret Year by Jennifer R. Hubbard Take Romeo and Juliet. Add The Outsiders. Mix thoroughly. Colt and Julia were secretly together for an entire year and no one, not even Julia's boyfriend knew. They had nothing in common, with Julia in her country club world on Black Mountain and Colt from down on the flats, but it never mattered. Until Julia dies in a car accident, and Colt learns the price of secrecy. He can't mourn Julia openly, and he's tormented that he might have played a part in her death. When Julia's journal ends up in his hands, Colt relives their year together at the same time that he's desperately trying to forget her. But how do you get over someone who was never yours in the first place?

***SPOILERS ABOUND***

I cannot remember the last time a book pissed me off as much as this book did. And I don't mean it in the sense that it annoyed me, but that it actually made me angry.



Let me start from the beginning: poor Colt (boring, unlikable) has been "seeing" (aka having all kinds of sex--but don't worry, they use a condom, because even though they're all horrible, selfish people, they don't want to have a baby) this rich girl named Julia (less boring, more unlikable) for a year when she dies in a car accident. Colt can't mourn her because he's scum and she had a hot boyfriend. Julia's brother gives Colt a journal of her really corny poetry and prose about them having sex. 



That's it. That's the story.



Honestly, though? Nothing happens in this book. Nothing. There was absolutely no tension, nothing propelling me forward in this novel except for the desire to be able to finish the book and have the basis to write my review off of. Like, the whole tagline of Romeo & Juliet meets the Outsiders? Yeah, not so. The entire novel is basically Colt feeling guilty over something really stupid and having sex with a lot of girls. Oh, and there are some lame, pointless fights between the rich and the poor that were kind of West Side Story-ish, but worse. 



The characters in this novel were unbelievable in that I didn't believe one single character for a second. They were all selfish and annoying in their own way, and their motivations made no sense. Like, here's a bunch of hick boys who decide to beat up a rich kid because he's so awful, but it honestly felt like it was thrown in there for the hell of it. It was so, so pointless, and the characters all seemed like cutouts. There's the manipulative rich girl (Julia), the perfect girl who won't love him back (Kirby), the girl best friend who's loved him all along (Syd), the white trash friends (Nick, Paul), the waitress mother, the alcoholic father, the gay brother--I mean, seriously. 



Oh, right. The gay brother. Here's the part of the review that might turn into a rant. Tom's big coming out on 
Thanksgiving was probably the most cliche, overwrought, unrealistic coming out I've ever read. Period. The entire scene completely demeaned the coming out process because there was no emotion in it whatsoever. Like, hey, here's Tom who's cocky and arrogant and also gay, and here's his parents literally disowning him because they're closed-minded hicks, but they'll get over it, and at least it's a Thanksgiving to Remember! But don't worry, because Colt is okay with it, even though he "didn't see how he could want to have sex with another guy, but hey, it was his life." No, you're right, Ms. Hubbard. Being gay is only about having sex with other guys (or girls), and God forbid a character have an intelligent reasoning behind why he supports it. Oh, did I also mention his brother was into theater? Yeah. Because everyone who's gay is automatically flamboyant and artsy.



Can you tell I'm honestly fuming about this?



I also found the book to be slightly ridiculous in its views of female sexuality, as Colt is frequently referred to as having "been" with Julia--since the only thing they did was have sex, well. How lucky he was to have "been" with her. Let's not mention how at three points during the novel, one of the girls Colt's just slept with gets all emotional and leaves when he just wants to rest, because sex is hard work, and he's tired. Ah, yes, let the guy lay back while the girl overanalyzes their sexual encounter. That doesn't sound cliche at all. 



Besides the story, I wasn't even into the writing. I thought it was unnecessarily flowery, I couldn't tell one narration from another (Julia's letters are interspersed), and some basic facts of the novel are just so stupid. Like, Colt and his mother work at a family restaurant. His mom works the 4 to midnight shift. What kind of a family restaurant stays open till midnight? 



In case it isn't clear, I really couldn't stand this book. Nothing happens in the plot, the characters are unlikable, and the "big" moments are ultimately disappointing. There was so much promise, but it fell very short. (Oh, and one last thing: Colt's reason for feeling guilty makes no sense to me. It's completely convoluted, and it gives him way more credit than he deserves.)





Final Grade: F

The Problem With Purity in YA

Let me clarify: There's nothing wrong with purity. Absolutely nothing. Your character a virgin? Awesome. Is this something that's important to her, and something that she wants to honor? That's awesome, too.

But what is NOT awesome is when a character's purity is used as a ploy to prove how much better he/she is than another character. Another character who does not hold purity in the same regard. Another character who is, by all stereotypes, a slut.

There are a lot of words I despise ("moist" is a real highlight, although "discharge" and "latch" are also gag-worthy), but "slut" is one of the words I absolutely cannot stand. The connotation it has--that a girl who has sex, maybe even a lot of sex, is automatically a bad person--is just incredible, and I mean that in the worst way possible. Because guess what? 1. It's no one's business who a girl has sex with, how much sex she has, etc., and 2. It. Doesn't. Make. Her. A. Bad. Person.

Which is why I've been having such a hard time wrapping my head around this new device I'm seeing YA Lit. One that says that pure MCs > well, any other MC.

Because that isn't true. It isn't true in real life, and it isn't true in books.

You see, I could really care less whether or not a character in a book has sex. It doesn't, not even for a second, change my view of them. That is, of course, unless they use their virginity (or lack of it) to prove how much better they are. But, if I'm being honest, I can't name one book off the top of my head where a main character is not a virgin and uses that against someone. I can think of secondary characters who might pick on their perfect, pure friend in a drunken stupor about being a virgin, but this girl is usually characterized as a foil for the MC. This character is also frequently slut-shamed to no end. Most books I can think of involving a non-virgin MC treat it as if it doesn't matter. And it doesn't. It is not a definer of character, and it does not prove anything about that person. But when the main character is pure, I kind of feel like I need to be learning a lesson.

In Kiera Cass's novel, The Selection, the potential contestants vying for the prince's heart are asked point-blank if their virgins. If this was not important in proving the goodness of these characters, then it wouldn't have been mentioned. What's more is that, following this question, the girls are advised to do whatever the prince tells them to do!!! No. Just... just no.

You see, contrary to popular beliefs, YA books don't--I repeat, do not--cause people to have sex, do drugs, get drunk, etc. just because a main character does. It's the ideals surrounding those "bad" things that stick with readers. So, can a book have a pure girl MC and still be meaningful? Yes. Can a book have a non-virgin MC and still be meaningful? Yes. It's when one type of person (in this case, virgin or not) is advocated over another that the real problems start. Because there is no type of person who is the best, and I cannot WAIT until this device wears itself thin and I get something new to complain about.

What do you think? Have you read any books where the virginity or non-virginity of a character is used against someone else?

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer 
by Michelle Hodkin

Mara Dyer doesn't think life can get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.

It can.

She believes there must be more to the accident she can't remember that killed her friends and left her mysteriously unharmed.

There is.

She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love.

She's wrong.

------------------

So. The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer. Where do I begin?

First let me say that I had a lot of hope for this book. The premise is intriguing (how did Mara survive a building collapse that killed her three friends, and why can't she remember it?), Mara is snarky (girl after my own heart), the cover is stunning (albeit completely irrelevant to the story), and there's a hot British bad-boy love interest (obligatory swooooon). That has some serious makings for a great story, right?

Well, with just these factors, it is a great story. I absolutely loved the first two-thirds of this book, and was tearing through it. But then, of course, like every trendy YA book, Mara Dyer throws in a paranormal twist. And that's where the book loses it.

Look, I'm a huge fan of paranormal. I think, when done right, it's genius. But the paranormal in this book is so choppy and abrupt that it feels like one big gimmick. Not just that, but some supernatural happenings are alluded to in the beginning of the book with a Ouija board, but then is completely dropped until the last one-third of the novel, when the paranormal comes back full force. But here's the thing... It feels like such a cop-out. I'm going to leave it at that, because I don't want to spoil anything, but I found myself sighing and groaning the last third of the book because it was so ridiculous.

Then there's Noah, Mara's sexy, slutty love interest. He's a player, he's British, he's loaded, he's the epitome of every single bad boy cliche there is. This isn't necessarily a negative... No, I found Noah to be one of the bright spots in the novel. He's funny and charming, but there's nothing very original about him, and, honestly, the 350+ pages of "I hate you!" and "No, you love me!" got so. Effing. Old. So much of the banter between Noah and Mara, while amusing, was so repetitive and totally gratuitous. Like, really, does Noah need to pretend to be a nude model? No. It's a silly, pointless scene meant to emphasize how oh-so hot Noah is, and how lucky Mara is that he's interested in her.

The secondary characters all fell short as well. Even Mara's brothers, Daniel and Joseph, are complete stock characters -- the quintessential perfect first-born and the super mature twelve year old, respectively. Then there's the evil blonde bitch at school, her gay buddy, the token minority best friend (who is, in this case, black, Jewish, and bi), the overprotective mother, the emotionally absent father. The biggest issue with the secondary characters, though, was that Rachel, Mara's supposed absolute best friend who died in the building collapse that Mara survived, isn't characterized. At all. You know how in Twin Peaks, Laura Palmer herself is barely onscreen except for, like, two flashbacks, and a few dream sequences, but the watcher still develops this huge connection to her based on the attitudes toward her from the other residents? Well, Rachel is seldom shown "in action" in this book, and Mara primarily just talks about how much she loved her, and how great she was, and blah, blah, blah. Uh, yeah, that's great Mara, but why should I care that she's dead? I couldn't care less that Rachel is dead because I failed to see what was so great about her.

In retrospect, I guess I liked this book a lot less than I originally thought I did. The plot is convoluted and the character interactions are gratuitous, but you know what? It was the kind of book that angered me to the point where I know I'll end up reading the next book just to see what, if any, resolution there is. Which is annoying, but at the same time, it's what a book series is supposed to do -- you either love it and keep buying books, or you dislike it and keep buying books to frustrate yourself even further.

Final Grade: C+

A Brief Introduction

Hey, y’all.

My name is Meredith, and I am not southern. Not even close. And, until I’m hit with a horrible, crushing sense of self-doubt, I’m going to call myself a writer.

I’ve always felt that the word is used too liberally. Writer. I mean, basically anyone who forms sentences on a piece of paper is a writer. It doesn’t necessarily say anything about story-telling or skill or talent. If I had a dollar for every thirteen year old writing fanfic in their basement, claiming to anyone who’ll listen that they’re a writer, I’d have enough dollars to repair the damage caused by repeatedly slamming my head into my desk.

It’s not just that I question the specialness of the word that makes me resistant to call myself a writer. No, it’s more of a finality thing.

You see, I’m in a bit of an identity crisis.

I’ve been writing my entire life. I know people (writers) say that all the time, but in my case, it’s actually true. When I was in second grade, I wrote what I was sure would be my first bestseller. (Note that I say “first” because, at eight, astronauts and authors and mermaids still seem like viable career options. I’d yet to have that crushing realization that I wasn’t the only girl dreaming of being a writer, or that I’d never grow gills.) The story, titled “The Haunted Toy Shop,” centers on sassy and fearless Dawn. It’s Halloween night, and a little girl on a scooter triple-dog dares Dawn to enter—what else?—a haunted toy shop. Dawn is never seen again. The end.

I’ll admit, the logistics behind the story are shaky. My explanation of the haunting doesn’t exceed “just because” territory, although there is brief mention of a deadly fire. A deadly fire that occurred when the shop was empty. And, okay, maybe Dawn’s stream-of-consciousness upon her death (“There were bright green lights, and I think I saw a witch”) was a little far-fetched. But surely there was still symbolism in the piece, still material to analyze. Maybe the nameless girl on the scooter is a representation of something far greater, or maybe Dawn’s plight is really a social critique. Or maybe I had a vivid imagination, and this is all I knew.        

Diction, characterization, even plot—I wasn’t aware these things existed. I don’t mean to say that “A Haunted Toy Shop” really could’ve turned into some massive success if I had been some sort of literary prodigy, but I barely knew my way around a sentence. Also, I’m pretty sure I stole my storyline from an old episode of Arthur. But I could barely practice piano without having a fit—wasting my precious time on learning how to write when I could be beading friendship bracelets was out of the question.      
Enter School of the Arts. From seventh grade until senior year, I attended SOTA, a performing arts school where every student was required to declare a “major” — mine was creative writing. Every single day for those six years, I was forced to write in every genre there is, forced to “hone my craft” in the most pretentious way possible. Still, I wasn’t a writer. Not even close.

I mean, sure, I like writing. But I hate it more than I like it. It’s frustrating and irritating and makes me cry a lot, but I know I couldn’t live without it. There is no better way to verbalize the things I need to say than through writing.

And I think I’ve always had that idea in the back of my mind, “Well, maybe I can be a writer.” But I was never committed. It seemed too naive, too beyond the realm of any reality I could possibly encounter. After much deliberation, I decided to attend college for English and rhetorical writing, two majors I figured would lend themselves to a career in publishing, preferably as an editor. That way, I’d still be involved with writing, but wouldn’t actually be a writer.

I was happy with this at first. Totally fine with it. But now I’m not so sure.

Recently, I was asked to participate in a creative nonfiction reading at my school. I read a piece I wrote about my grandmother’s Alzheimer’s and ended up sobbing my way through the entire essay. I could barely compose myself—something about reading my work out loud, knowing that these words, this story, belonged to me, was one of the single most emotional moments of my life. And when I looked up, bleary-eyed, after I finished the last sentence, everyone else in the room was crying, too.
This moment sparked something inside of me, something I didn’t even know was there. Suddenly, I don’t want to be an editor. I’m not sure I ever did. Suddenly, it seems like a cop out, and I’ve been asking myself endlessly, “What if I really was a writer?”

So, today, that’s what I am. A writer.

That may change tomorrow, or next week, or months from now.

But if I don’t at least try now, how will I ever know?

A Little Site Called "Inkpop"

I first joined inkpop in July of 2010, back when it was still green. Admittedly, it was at first a joke. My friend and I stumbled upon it (I’m still not totally sure how), and we were basically like, hey, this site seems kind of ridiculous, let’s join! About a year and a half later, I cannot even begin to express my sadness over losing inkpop.

My first account went kaput pretty quickly. I was a crappy writer, gave one-liners, and couldn’t navigate the forums to save my life. I was never really into it, and I’m not exactly sure what compelled me to make a new account February of last year. I didn’t have a story I was working on, and I certainly didn’t need the distraction. But I did. I made an account.

And I have to be corny for a second and say how much it changed me. As a writer, and a person.
For about the first six months of my new account, I somehow became known as a free reader. I went from giving one-line comments to 2,000 word critiques. My grammar improved, my idea of what makes a story succeed grew, and I realized that writing is a million times more important to me than I ever realized.

I posted a short story on inkpop that peaked in the 70s, but I never really did much with it. I resigned myself to the position of reader, critic, and perpetually annoyed writer who never shared her work.
But that changed on Thanksgiving, when I started writing a story I called The Disillusionment of Winter. I posted it on the first of December, and almost instantly it was critiqued and picked by one of the nicest people I’ve encountered on the site. Good confidence boost, especially since it was only twelve pages and especially rough. March 1st, exactly three months since I posted it, TDoW made the Top 5. It was a bittersweet moment—a spot in the Top 5 means a review from Harper Collins, but it was that same day that inkpop ceased to exist. It merged with Figment, another writing site I’ve never gotten into, and suddenly a year and a half of my writing growth was gone.

Honestly, I’m grateful to inkpop for so many things. For the people I’ve met , for the feedback I’ve gotten, and the incredible support I’ve gotten. I’m pissed at HC for tearing down the site on such short notice, but I have to believe that things can only get better, be it on Wattpad, Figment, with querying, etc. There is so much talent in inkpop that I cannot even handle it, and I look forward to buying every single one of your books and quietly thinking to myself, “I remember you by your inkpop username.”
Inkpop was a huge part of my life, which is sad about a website, but still. It was capital-L Life-changing, and I have no doubt believing that the amazing members of that community will be just as life-changing, too.

On Censorship

John Green’s Looking for Alaska has been banned in Sumner County in Tennessee, making it the second county in Tennessee to do so this year. As the article sums up, the banning was due to a two page oral sex scene.

I’ve read LfA. I’ve read it more times than I can count. As a result, I’ve also read the two page sex scene in question more times than I can count. And guess what? I was in absolutely no way turned on by it. Not at all. I didn’t get all hot and bothered; I wasn’t suddenly crazy horny; I didn’t read the scene and think, “Whoa, I need to go give a really awkward guy a really awkward blow job right this second.”

Because that’s not the point. That’s not the point of the scene at all, and I always thought that was fairly clear, which is I guess why I’m so baffled as to why this book is challenged so frequently. John addresses the controversy in this Vlogbrothers video from 2008 in a far more eloquent way than I could even attempt. Basically, the scene is meant to emphasize the distinction between emotional and physical intimacy. Not so damaging, right?

Looking for Alaska was the capital-B Book That Changed My Life. If I have to pinpoint the biggest influence in my decision to pursue writing, it’d be this book. Depriving teenagers from this novel in a classroom setting because of a TWO FRICKIN’ PAGE ORAL SEX SCENE is devastating, especially since it reinforces the notion that teen sexuality = bad. (Which, spoiler alert, it’s not.) I could spend hours railing on those parents who give one-star reviews on Amazon because of profanity, sexuality, drinking, drug usage, etc. in young adult novels, and that it’s detrimental and damaging and blah, blah, blah, but I won’t. I can’t. I can’t argue that I can relate to profanity and sexuality and drinking and drug usage in books, or that even if I couldn’t, that wouldn’t change the content of what I read. I can’t say that it isn’t anyone’s business what I read except my own. I can’t, because I’m a teenager, and so I clearly don’t have the capacity to defend the merit of a particular novel against an adult.

The reason so many of John’s books have resonated with me (LfA was just the beginning of my burgeoning inner-nerdfighter—I’m still not over TFiOS to speak of it without crying) is because he doesn’t talk down to his audience. He’s in no way insulting to the intelligence or capabilities of teenagers merely because they’re teenagers. Just last weekend, I wrote an autobiographical argument for my writing class worth 25% of my final grade on the integration of young adult novels in the high school classroom. I devoted an entire segment of the paper to Looking for Alaska, and what it has to offer teenagers. I got an A on the assignment.

I have a bumper sticker on my car that says “Everything I Learned About Life I Learned By Reading Banned Books.” In Looking for Alaska, I learned about grief, first love, heartbreak, friendship, even religion. It forced me to rethink my own views on the afterlife, if one even exists. It helped me to realize it’s okay to be angry that someone has died. It made me unafraid of the labyrinth.

Thanks to Looking for Alaska and a slew of other banned young adult novels, I will keep reading.

And I will keep learning.

Where Things Come Back

In the remarkable, bizarre, and heart-wrenching summer before Cullen Witter’s senior year of high school, he is forced to examine everything he thinks he understands about his small and painfully dull Arkansas town. His cousin overdoses; his town becomes absurdly obsessed with the alleged reappearance of an extinct woodpecker; and most troubling of all, his sensitive, gifted fifteen-year-old brother, Gabriel, suddenly and inexplicably disappears.

     

Meanwhile, the crisis of faith spawned by a young missionary’s disillusion in Africa prompts a frantic search for meaning that has far-reaching consequences. As distant as the two stories initially seem, they are woven together through masterful plotting and merge in a surprising and harrowing climax.

I'd never heard of this book until the books for the Printz Award were announced this year, and what do ya know? This book claimed the top spot. So, I did a little snooping, thought the premise seemed kind of weird, and bought a copy for my Kindle. I mean, a book whose synopsis promises a mysterious disappearance, a crisis of faith, and woodpeckers is bound to be interesting, if nothing else, right?

Little did I know the impact that this book would have on me. Weeks later, and I still can't stop thinking about it. The plot is so completely unique, that it's almost inexplainable, but I'll give it a shot: A boy, Cullen, lives in a podunk little town in Arkansas with his genius younger brother, Gabriel, who everyone adores. A man comes to town and claims to have seen a woodpecker that was thought to be extinct, instantly creating a whirlwind within the town. Suddenly, they're news. Suddenly, they matter. In the thick of it all, Gabriel disappears.

Interspersed with this storyline is that of Benton Sage, a missionary who becomes more and more disillusioned during a missionary trip in Africa, and his college roommate. This is where the promised "crisis of faith" enters the novels, and boy does it make an entrance. Ever since Looking for Alaska, I've been intrigued by books with religious elements in them--I believe it adds much more depth, and it forces me to look at characters through certain lenses considering I'm not a religious person myself. But the religion found within this book concerning Christianity and the "lost" Book of Enoch was so fascinating, that I felt like I was also receiving a history lesson. And not in the dreadful Moby Dick sort of way.

At first, the two story lines seemed completely unrelated, but once the pieces began to fall into place, my stomach dropped. There was a lot of flipping (though I guess in my case, clicking) back to previous pages and, oh my God, there are the clues. The moment when the stories intertwine was the best of the novel, and maybe the redeeming factor.

Perhaps the biggest flaw in the novel is that it reads very, very slowly. And for a book that's only 228 pages, that's saying something. I found myself slogging through certain chapters, waiting for the REAL story to start. The story about faith and Gabriel and the woodpecker. This does not happen until around page 50. Whaley has a unique way of writing, for sure, and he intersperses titles of books that Cullen may use if he becomes a writer and fantasies about zombies into the story, giving the reader a break from the monotonous, sometimes flat narration. The characters were solid, but not wholly memorable. In fact, Gabriel and Cullen are the only characters I remember by name. (I had to search around to find Benton's name.) But that doesn't mean they didn't serve their purpose. They pushed the story forward, and I had no choice but to solve the mystery looming throughout the novel because of them.

This strikes me as a novel that will read better the second, third, however many more times I read it. It will allow more focus than I may have given it the first go around, and I think that when I do reread it, it'll be in hardcopy. It's probably just me, but I can't focus very well with my Kindle, and this story seems better suited to a hardcopy. It'd make the constant page flipping much easier.

So, is it slow? Yes. But is it worth it? Definitely.

Final Grade: B+