Bookcase Bizarro: MG/YA Book Reviews, November 2023

MG/YA Book Reviews by a MG/YA Writer

Table of Contents

Middle Grade Review

The Doug and Sheila Browne Book Review

Welcome to the November edition of Bookcase Bizarro!

The month has zipped by at warp speed.

I participated in my second NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), putting my own spin on things because I don’t believe in stressing myself out with unrealistic goals. I decided to write a short novella that’s set in the same world as my upcoming book, SHADOW APPRENTICE to use as a reader magnet. I am pleased to say that I finished a first draft (which is every bit as awful as you’d expect). Revisions and edits are forthcoming and once complete, I will send out this story to subscribers as a heartfelt thanks for supporting this blog. No sleep was sacrificed on the NaNoWriMo altar, and I still kept up with my exercise routine, healthy eating and plenty of rest and fun. THAT’S how I like to do NaNoWriMo!

I also got my Mac back from the shop (thank you, Simmply Macs), so formatting SHADOW APPRENTICE into both ebook and print form and tackling metadata are my next tasks. I am going to have to write TWO new book descriptions, one short and one long (double yuck). The only thing I hate more than writing book descriptions, is writing short book descriptions, AKA log lines. In fact, most log lines dissuade me from reading the actual book, which is why I turn to book bloggers for their reviews. I shall overcome…and get back to work.

This month, I also backed a kickstarter from writer Orna Ross, who’s also the founder of ALLi: The Alliance of Independent Authors. I’m very intrigued by her creative planning principles for independent authors. I currently use a bullet journal to plan out my projects and use Rocketbook to organize the fruits of my free-ranging research into retrievable files, but I’m missing a timeline to keep me on track and hold me accountable in a way that also respects creative flow and process. Also, a way to break down the many business and marketing tasks I must do as a publisher, quite apart from writing. Like designing a book launch on Wattpad!

Onto the reviews…

This month, we sneak inside a seriously unbalanced haunted house with two teen ghost hunters, and unearth sexual harassment at a prestigious middle school with an eighth grade podcaster, who plans to submit her expose to a summer podcasting camp taught by a famous investigative reporter.

So put down your rake and join us! We’ve got this month’s picks in the bag.

A quick note to new readers: books that are available from the Toronto Public Library will be marked #TPL, because books don’t have to be new or owned in order to be loved.

Middle Grade Review

What Happened to Rachel Riley? by Claire Swinarksi. (Quill Tree Books, 2023)

Anna Hunt has a hard enough time being a new student at East Middle School without complicating matters but as a budding investigative reporter, she knows when something is off and something is definitely off at East Middle School. For instance, Rachel Riley, formerly one of the school’s most popular students, is now being treated as a social pariah. Nobody seems to want to talk about what happened to Rachel, not even Rachel Riley herself, and Anna is determined to find out why.

When she learns about a summer podcasting summit, led by her favorite investigative reporter, Anna decides to apply for one of the coveted spots. She’ll need to submit a 40 minute podcast sample along with her application, so she immediately begins investigating what happened to Rachel. As Anna begins to assemble clues, she must also learn to cut through her classmates’ and the school’s avoidance and handle the inevitable fallout that accompanies her tough questions. The truth of what happened to Rachel Riley is far more complicated than it seems, adults and kids alike at East Middle School seem intent on burying the past, but when the details of a mysterious ‘game’ played by the boys start coming to light, Anna knows she must expose the truth, even if it means becoming a Social Outcast of the First Degree herself.

Let me start out by saying that once I started reading this book, I couldn’t put it down. In fact, I put aside writing for an entire day, just so I could finish reading it. (This wasn’t as much of a sacrifice as I’m making it sound, since I’d just finished a story on the preceding day.) It’s not often when you find the perfect balance between plot, pacing, character voice and development, and theme, but What Happened to Rachel Riley? is absolutely one of those books.

It succeeds because it explores tween girl culture so intimately, and with such empathy, particularly the question of why so many tween girls are afraid to speak up and stand up for themselves. (Something that many adult women will also be able to relate to.) Protagonist Anna Hunt is an outsider and a new girl. She’s all too aware of the intense social pressures that exist at the school, and is in an excellent position to explore the effects of social pressure on tween girls.

Chapters are broken up by text messages, letters and news reports, which create a climate of urgency, especially as the heat turns up on Anna’s investigation. Swinarski is a keen observer of the dynamics of activism, and lets Anna come to such realizations as:

‘This is the part they leave out, in focused attempts at justice: that you will occasionally want to push it all aside and curl up for one big nap instead.’

Another thing that Anna realizes, is that even when you do the right thing, all the wrong things can still keep on happening because of a lack of accountability and enforcement. East Middle School prides itself on being both progressive and enlightened, and that pride leads to a wilful blindness on the part of the school’s administration to bullying and harassment. PrinciPAL Lila Howe* goes as far as to threaten students into silence to protect East Middle School’s reputation rather than deal with the actual problems unearthed by Anna’s investigation.

Swinarksi fearlessly shows how badly the adults in charge can act when kids start asking hard questions, something that 13-14-year old readers will keenly recognize and empathize with. Savvy readers may well remain skeptical of the East Middle School administration, choosing to place their faith in the students instead.

While common wisdom tells us that kids always read up, that’s not true of this tween #MeToo title. Set in eighth grade, this book will resonate strongly with 13-14-year old girls. The subject matter gives it a distinctly YA feel, but Anna Hunt and her friends are still firmly planted in the drama-filled chaos of middle school. Highly recommended. (#TPL)

*Yes, Lila Howe really calls herself that, which pretty tells you everything you need to know about her priorities.

The Doug and Sheila Browne Book Review

Each month, I pick an upper MG or YA book to review in honour of my parents, Doug and Sheila Browne, who always made sure that I had challenging books to reach for on my shelf. Thanks, Mom and Dad! This month’s DSB pick is:

Delicious Monsters, by Liselle Sambury. (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2023)

Daisy never wanted to see the ghosts of dead people. The only thing worse than seeing dead people, is worrying about what they might do.

Ordinary ghosts are bad enough, but corporeal ghosts grow strong enough to maim and kill the living. It’s Daisy’s destiny to obliterate them before they can do any harm, but that’s not her only job. Containing the harm caused by her manic and depressed mother, and keeping their lives on track is almost a full-time occupation. Dealing with ghosts, parental management and school, leaves no time for an ordinary teenage life.

When her mother inherits a mansion in northern Ontario, Daisy (whose relationship with an abusive boyfriend has caused her life to descend into further chaos) jumps at the chance to escape. Rather than being the refuge she hopes for, the house threatens to reveals some very ugly secrets and shows Daisy just how deadly family ghosts can be.

Ten years later, Brittany is trying to make a living with her hit podcast, Haunted, and is desperate to get out from under the thumb of her abusive mother, whose bestselling book has convinced the world that she’s changed her ways. Brittany knows the book is a scam but if she doesn’t support the story, her mother will yank the co-loans on Brittany’s apartment, forcing Brittany to move back into the dysfunctional family home.

When she gets the opportunity to investigate the ‘miracle mansion’ that her mother credits with turning her life around, Brittany can’t resist the chance to use her podcast to expose the truth about who her mother really is. To do that, she’ll need to use Daisy’s story as a parallel to her own. But when the pieces don’t neatly dovetail, Brittany is forced to choose between revenge against her mother and her own journalistic integrity.

Both Daisy and Brittany must confront the literal and figurative ghosts of the past that haunt them before they can free themselves from the controlling influences of their families, but the ghosts are hungry and won’t let them go so easily.

Sambury skillfully illuminates the ways that inter generational trauma shapes the life choices of both Daisy and Brittany. It keeps them trapped in a cycle of distrust and poor decisions, corrosive and vengeful anger (Brittany,) and apathy (Daisy). Sambury accomplishes all of this by telling a very compelling story about a haunted house that re-positions the theme of possession. Her renditions of Toronto and northern Ontario are so evocative of time and place, I felt literally transported.

Brittany’s story is much shorter than Daisy’s, so I’m still on the fence about whether it works to split the story into two POVs. I think it does, partly. Brittany’s story is not superfluous, and it shows a much starker facet of mother-daughter trauma, a major theme that the book explores. It doesn’t go into much past detail, staying focused in the present, while Daisy’s story explores what happened in the past. Because of it’s sparser nature, I felt that Brittany’s story functioned more as a plot device, building momentum towards a present-day reveal that Daisy’s story couldn’t encompass. As a result, Brittany’s story didn’t have the same emotional impact or depth as Daisy’s, though it does ask the question: what do you do when your mother is a seriously bad person? A question that Brittany herself answers.

The dual ending, narrated by both Daisy and Brittany, does a good job of tying their stories together, holds their traumatized parents accountable for their actions in very different ways, and allows both girls to move through sometimes stark and always uneasy realizations into an acceptance of themselves and their mothers. And can I just say how convincingly haunting Neil Young’s Helpless is as a musical soundtrack to this book?

For all those who love atmospheric, supernatural thrillers, and are open to a refreshing re-weaving of haunted house dynamics. Recommended. YA and up. (#TPL)

Thanks for being a Bookcase Bizarro reader! I’ll be back next month with more author news, and more MG and YA book reviews. See you then!

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