Keep Holding On by Susane Colasanti

Title: Keep Holding On
Author: Susane Colasanti
Publisher: Viking Juvenile
Release Date: May 31, 2012
Pages: 224 pages (hardcover)
How I Got the Book: Won it in a Goodreads giveaway
Purchase/Pre-order: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository
Promotional Materials and More: author website

Lunch is the worst, but there's no safe place at school for Noelle. Keeping her mortifying home life a secret and trying to ignore the kids who make her life miserable are Noelle's survival strategies. Her emotionally distant boyfriend, Matt, isn't the one she really wants to be with. But she's sure there's no way she could ever be with Julian Porter.

When Julian starts talking to her, Noelle is terrified. It seems safer to stay with Matt than to risk a broken heart. But when the bullying of a friend goes too far, Noelle realizes it's time to stand up for herself--and for everything that makes her keep holding on.

Review:

Books like Keep Holding On are the kind of books no one really wants to criticize. It delivers a strong anti-bullying message with its stark portrayal of the torment Noelle goes through and anyone who has been bullied--no, anyone with a heart--will realize how worthwhile the novel is. After the recent attention on suicides due to bullying and bullying itself, this kind of novel was begging to be written. Colasanti's novel begins strongly, but a lack of strong characterization throughout the cast and lacking coverage of other subjects brought into the novel weaken its overall impact.

Noelle's characterization is fantastic. The self-loathing, the way she felt helpless to change her fate until late in the novel, her feelings of isolation--they all ring so true because I've felt the same way. From kindergarten to twelfth grade, there wasn't a year I wasn't bullied by my classmates, and I was more than happy to graduate a few weeks ago after a rough senior year that saw me having panic attacks and suicidal thoughts. Like Noelle, I considered suicide, but I decided to keep holding on because I knew it would get better eventually. I found something I loved doing and clung to it for dear life, and Noelle reflects so many aspects of me in her personality that it's almost uncomfortable.

What I wanted to see was stronger characterization across the board. Noelle's love interest Julian is never really a character. He functions more as a goal or ideal to Noelle. With him in that role, their romance becomes very underwhelming and he is robbed of becoming the full character he deserves to be. Noelle's bullies and her own mother get taps of characterization, but they deserved more depth too. Two-hundred pages is relatively short for a novel and when major topics like suicide, child neglect, and rape are introduced, they don't get the full attention they deserve and need because of the length and concentration on bullying.

So while I feel Keep Holding On itself is only worth three stars because of its weaknesses, I will give it a fourth star for the resources listed at the back of the book. The links to organizations like A Thin Line, To Write Love On Her Arms, and Love Is Respect are perfectly placed so any reader the story resonated with can reach out to the right people and groups. Short and poignant, Keep Holding On is the kind of novel I can see making a difference in the right person's life.

4 stars!

What am I reading next?: Waking Storms by Sarah Porter

Slide by Jill Hathaway

Title: Slide
Author: Jill Hathaway
Publisher: HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray
Release Date: March 27, 2012
Pages: 256 pages (hardcover)
How I Got the Book: Found an ARC

Vee Bell is certain of one irrefutable truth—her sister’s friend Sophie didn’t kill herself. She was murdered.

Vee knows this because she was there. Everyone believes Vee is narcoleptic, but she doesn’t actually fall asleep during these episodes: When she passes out, she slides into somebody else’s mind and experiences the world through that person’s eyes. She’s slid into her sister as she cheated on a math test, into a teacher sneaking a drink before class. She learned the worst about a supposed “friend” when she slid into her during a school dance. But nothing could have prepared Vee for what happens one October night when she slides into the mind of someone holding a bloody knife, standing over Sophie’s slashed body.

Vee desperately wishes she could share her secret, but who would believe her? It sounds so crazy that she can’t bring herself to tell her best friend, Rollins, let alone the police. Even if she could confide in Rollins, he has been acting off lately, more distant, especially now that she’s been spending more time with Zane.

Enmeshed in a terrifying web of secrets, lies, and danger and with no one to turn to, Vee must find a way to unmask the killer before he or she strikes again.

Review:

Everyone thinks Sylvia "Vee" Bell's fainting spells are just instances of her narcolepsy acting up, but they don't know the truth. In reality, she ends up in other people's heads when she passes out and sees like through their eyes for a few minutes. She rarely sees anything good, but she ends up in a killer's head one night as they hold a knife over the dead body of her sister's best friend. Vee races against time to find the murderer as she struggles with her own issues, the body count increases, and her sister appears to be the killer's next target.

Vee's story is a sympathetic one considering what she goes through every day as a result of her power and what happened to her that made her go from being a blonde cheerleader to a quiet pink-haired girl. At first, I thought I thought I was going to love her; when a character comes up with quotes like "If she's the pink glitter on your valentine, I'm the black Sharpie you use to draw mustaches on the teachers in your yearbook (Slide, ARC p. 5)," I'm easily won over as long as the rest of their personality isn't particularly offensive.

Unfortunately, some parts of her personality were pretty bad and I couldn't ignore it. Her choices in detail and description when describing other girls did not endear her to me. She reviled the cheerleaders for being judgmental of other girls and mean to them? I often found Vee to be only mildly better than those girls. Almost as bad, she couldn't make up her mind about whether or not she wanted to get close to Rollins again. She kept saying she missed him, but she never tried very hard to strengthen her friendship with him to its former strength.

The only other remarkable characters were Vee's younger sister Mattie and her father. Rollins had potential, but little was done with him and it seems like he will be more thoroughly explored as a character in another book. I want to give Slide credit for trying to give the minor characters depth, but the attempts largely failed and get no credit at all, especially for forcing me to deal with more negative female stereotypes gathered into one book than I can feel comfortable with. The badly done love triangle and cliches do an especially good job weakening what is a fairly decent, if not good, novel.

The mystery element of the novel was a mixed bag. I perceived a few of the more important twists well ahead of their reveals, but I was caught off-guard and surprised by the twists more often. The tight writing, liberal use of red herrings, and perfect narrative choice (first-person present usually annoys me, so that is true praise right there) kept me reading despite my annoyance.

I think the strongest element of the novel is the way it takes time to touch on a few different issues. Bullying, suicide, date rape, the death of someone close to you--for such a short novel, Slide makes rooms for a lot of issues and does it well. Anyone looking for a lot of concentration on them will be disappointed; Slide is mainly focused on the mystery with a slight detour of "oh my God, this guy's so hot I forgot I'm investigating a murder." Still, the time it does dedicate to them is well-spent.

Slide sets up a brand-new series well, answering all the necessary questions for it to feel complete as a book yet leaving a few questions unanswered and allowing for expansion into new territory. Its sequel Impostor will be out in March 2013(!), but I'm not sure I will put it on my to-read list for 2013 just yet. The blurb is tempting, but I will wait to hear more about it.

3 stars!

What am I reading next?: The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson 

The Sharp Time by Mary O'Connell

Title: The Sharp Time
Author: Mary O'Connell
Publisher: Random House/Delacorte Press
Release Date: November 8, 2011
Pages: 228 pages (hardback)
How I Got the Book: Christmas gift.

Sandinista Jones is a high school senior with a punk rock name and a broken heart. The death of her mother has left Sandinista alone in the world, isolated and vulnerable, When the school system lets her down, her grief and instability intensify, and she ponders a violent act of revenge against a teacher.

Still, in the midst of her crisis, she gets a job at the Pale Circus, a funky vintage clothing shop, and finds a kindred spirit in her coworker, Bradley, a boy struggling with his own secrets.

Even as Sandinista is losing heart, confronted repeatedly by the failures of those in authority, she is offered a chance to believe in the redemptive power of friendship. Now she must choose faith--and forgiveness--or despair and vengeance.

Readers will cheer Sandinista on as she navigates an often brutal but unexpectedly beautiful world.

Review:

Since the death of her mother a few months before, Sandinista has been on a slow downward spiral and a haunting incident involving her, Alecia Hardaway, and their teacher Catherine Bennett has pushed her closer to the edge. Getting a job at the Pale Circus, a vintage clothing store, with Bradley and the store's owner Henry helps her and getting to know other business owners on the same street does too, but that might not be enough. If she can't conquer her anger, Sandinista may end up taking her pretty pink gun and doing something she will regret.

I may not like most of the characters (especially Erika; what happened to her is terrible, but what she is doing is wrong and not at all anything that should be construed as "girl power" or feminism, something I'm glad Sandinista realizes), but I understand why they are the way they are and sympathize with them. That's an accomplishment in itself because if I dislike a character, it's often because I find them unsympathetic. Sandinista, our school-skipping and orphaned heroine, is a little difficult to understand, fairly sympathetic, and very, very angry. I can't recall if I've ever read about such an angry heroine.

One of the novel's main subjects, the abuse of students by teachers and faculty and how the school system can so badly fail the students, was unexpected, but I found it to be a powerful event to focus on. No parent wants to think their child is being abused not just by their peers but by the teachers that are supposed to be helping them. As I've seen while watching the news, this still happens all too often to be comfortable. I wish I could find more YA novels dealing with that subject. Recommendations, anyone?

I did struggle with the novel at some parts. Multiple times, I stopped and thought that this was less of a young adult book and more of an adult literary novel. I wouldn't be able to come up with proof to support why I feel that way, but that's what kept coming to mind. I do have an appreciation for adult litfic, but one reason I don't seek it out as regular reading material is because it reads so monotonously to me. It's nothing to do with the content, just the way it's written. That same problem happened to me while reading The Sharp Time.

Not to say the entire novel reads in such a dull way (or as dull as this review, if you ask me, but I guess I expended so much of my energy and enthusiasm on a recent glowing review that I'm having trouble being my usual bouncy self while reviewing). Some of the scenes in the novel are undeniably tense, like when Sandinista drives to Catherine Bennett's house with her gun and ends up throwing Toad at her window. I just about bit another hole in my lip when I was reading that scene.

Strangely enough, my brother shares a name with the character Bradley. I love my brother (I call him Bubba), but he says things that make me want to castrate him. Book Bradley said this on page 37: "How fun to work with a girl; it's like having my very own Barbie doll." If Bubba were less of the foul-mouthed-gamer type and more free-spirited, I could see him being like Book Bradley just because of that one line. The problem? Bubba is a misogynistic shitwaffle. Book Bradley reminding me of Bubba in such a way was not good for him at all.

I've been debating with myself back and forth about whether or not I would recommend this for anyone, but I think I'll go with yes. It may help to approach it as adult litfic instead of young adult, though. Maybe if I'd known ahead of time and approached it differently, this short book wouldn't have felt like it was five times longer.

3 stars!

What am I reading next?: The Ghosts of Ashbury High by Jaclyn Moriarty

Dear Bully by Megan Kelley Hall and Carrie Jones

Title: Dear Bully: Seventy Authors Tell Their Stories
Authors: Megan Kelley Hall and Carie Jones (anthology editors)
Publisher: HarperCollins/HarperTeen
Release Date: September 1, 2011
Pages: 352 pages (paperback)
How I Got the Book: Bought it.

You are not alone.

 

Discover how Lauren Kate transformed the feeling of that one mean girl getting under her skin into her first novel, how Lauren Oliver learned to celebrate ambiguity in her classmates and in herself, and how R.L. Stine turned being the “funny guy” into the best defense against the bullies in his class.

 

Today’s top authors for teens come together to share their stories about bullying—as silent observers on the sidelines of high school, as victims, and as perpetrators—in a collection at turns moving and self-effacing, but always deeply personal.

Review:

Bullying has always been a serious issue, but it has become even more serious in the past few years. The suicides of gay teens that led to the It Gets Better campaign gained an unearthly amount of publicity, and teen suicide cases gain attention anyway because of the tragedy. In the Dear Bully anthology, seventy authors--some readers will know, be familiar with the same with, or may not know at all--tell their own stories of being bullied.

As the book points out, seventy-five percent of students are subjected to various types of harassment by others, be physical, emotional, online, or one of many other ways. Each story has great emotional resonance, especially to someone like me--I've been  bully, been bullied, and stood by while someone else was bullied. No one story is greater than the others, but Michelle Zink's story of frenemies and Sophie Jordan's "The Eulogy of Ivy O'Conner" are very familiar to me and have stuck with me. It's been only a few days since I finished the novel, but I'm sure they will continue to stick with me, as will many others.

My main problem with the book is that it is perhaps too ambitious. The message that bullying needs to stop rings true, but it loses its potency because of how many stories there are in the book that hammer this message in. Methinks seventy was a few too many stories for one book. There was one particular story in the anthology that bothered me for reasons it shouldn't have. One story in particular felt almost... fake, and I feel terrible for admitting I feel that way about it.

Dear Bully was a truly affecting anthology. The pages of resources in the back point the curious to anti-bullying programs, programs such as the Trevor Project and Reach Out, and numbers teens can call if they are feeling suicidal or are overwhelmed with problems. The novel itself is a great resource for anyone wondering just how badly bullying can affect a person, and I'm certain this novel will help someone out there.

4 stars!

What am I reading next?: Seraphina by Rachel Hartman