I Hunt Killers – Barry Lyga

People matter. People are real.

This is the mantra Jasper “Jazz” Francis Dent runs through his head whenever his darker urges get the best of him. A sentiment that completely goes  against what he’s been raised to believe by his dad, Billy Dent, who just-so-happens to be the notorious serial killer known as “The Artist,” “Green Jack,” “Gentle Killer,” and “Hand-in-Glove.” Daddy Dent has so many nicknames because he spent years switching up his M.O. to avoid getting caught by the police as he murdered no less than 123 people…possibly more. As soon as Jazz was old enough to talk, Dent began sharing his killings in great detail with his son – the who’s, the how’s and, with special delight, the why’s - the power of watching a human take his last breath before the light goes out in his eyes. This is all Jazz hears and knows until, at the age of 14, his father is finally caught and subsequently sentenced to life in prison. His arrest leaves Jazz in the custody of his ailing grandmother and alone to face the accusing stares of the people in his small town. Like father, like son…right?

Fast forward two years later when the body of a woman shows up in a field near town – three of her fingers cut off with only the middle finger left behind. Jazz can’t help but feel the mutilated hand is the work of a serial killer, and warns the police chief as much. After he’s politely but firmly told to ‘mind his own business,’ Jazz enlists his best and only friend, Howie, to help do some investigating of their own. After all, who better to profile a potential serial killer than someone like Jazz who studied for years under one of the best? When within days another body shows up and then another – all with missing fingers – the police are forced to acknowledge Jazz might be right. Worse, the pattern of the killings are quite familiar since they appear to be mimicking those of his father’s murders…in their order and style. As the bodies continue to pile up, can Jazz do what it takes to stop this new Impressionist killer…or will he be enticed to join him? A Hannibal Lecter-style visit to dear old dad in prison only heightens the suspense.

If you’re familiar with the book and Showtime series, Dexter, then you know Dexter Morgan is a serial killer who acts on his sociopathic impulses by sticking to a code where he only kills people who actually deserve it – murderers, rapists, and other hardened criminals. Like Dexter, Jazz struggles with the urge to act on what his father has taught him – the urge to kill. With the exception his girlfriend, Connie, and Howie, Jazz doesn’t feel emotionally attached to any humans, and sometimes when people make him angry – like, say, the social worker who believes his grandmother needs full-time medical care which would mean foster care for Jazz – he even imagines killing them…as in taking his fingers, wrapping them around the person’s neck, and watching as the life is slowly squeezed out of them.

This book is dark stuff, y’all. Lyga doesn’t spare the reader the cruelty of Dent’s killings, mostly women and even the family pet(!), and keeps you guessing as to which way Jazz might go. In fact, Jazz has a recurring nightmare about taking a knife and cutting through skin and bone with it himself, which he believes may be his brain’s way of burying a murder he’s already committed...possibly that of his own mother. In other words, put this in the hands of Stephen King, Dexter and/or murder mystery fans with strong stomachs and a taste for truly terrifying horror. I’m one of those freaks, so I dug it.

Like Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter series, I Hunt Killers has been snapped up by Warner Brothers to be made into a tv series. I can certainly see lots of plot possibilities. The book itself ends with a HUGE cliffhanger, and its sequel is projected to come out April 2013. To learn more about Lyga and his other books (Fanboy and Goth Girl, the Archvillian series) visit his website at http://barrylyga.com/ .

The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life – Tara Altebrando

Reading Tara Altebrando’s The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life, I couldn’t help but think…aren’t we long overdue for another resurgence of teen movies? The 80s – the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of teen movies - gave us everything from  ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High’ to ‘Sixteen Candles’  to my blog’s namesake, ‘Heathers,’  and then ‘Clueless’ kicked off a new slew of teen movie love in the mid- to late 90s including ‘Never Been Kissed,’ ‘Can’t Hardly Wait,’ and ’10 Things I Hate About You.’ Were those not THE BEST?! If you’re not familiar, there’s always Netflix…just sayin’. Some of you may be thinking, “But what about the ‘Twilight’ series? And ‘Hunger Games’?” Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I’m thinking more along the lines of those old school movies that explored everyday high school life with its cliques, crushes, cool clothes, and ALWAYS killer soundtracks.

The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life certainly reads like one of those teen flicks. Every year during Oyster Point High School’s Senior Week, seniors have the opportunity to participate in an ‘unofficial’ (ie. parents and teachers don’t need to know about it) Scavenger Hunt. The winners of the previous year’s tournament make up the list of items, each worth various points, for teams of students to find – ie. bar of soap from a hotel (10), Ouija board (45), a piggy bank that’s not actually a piggy (50), play ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’ on a toy piano and email the video (75), any comic book featuring Superman and dated before 2000 (50), put your name in lights (150), a picture of everyone on your team skinny-dipping (200), etc. Because nearly every kid has a smartphone these days, there are bonus searches sent via text throughout the competition like finding and taking a bubble bath in a local water fountain (200). Grand prize? A four foot Yeti statue, $300 and, best of all, bragging rights!

For Mary, this competition means much more than fun and prizes. It means breaking out of her four years of being a supposed nobody at OPHS and finally making a name for herself – well, that and getting back at OPHS golden boy, Jake Bardone, the popular jock who’s made a high school career of working Mary’s nerves and harassing her gay bestie, Dez. Everything always seems to go Bardone’s way, including getting accepted into Mary’s dream college, Georgetown, which turned her down. Determined to win one for the underdogs of the world, Mary and Dez, along with their Harvard-bound nerd friend, Patrick, and laidback gal-pal, Winter, deem their team the ‘Also-Rans’ and hit the hunt hard!

While the hunt propels the story, the real action happens with the participants as they navigate their feelings for each other. Y’see, Patrick is secretly in love with Mary, who has spent the past two years of her life crushing on Carson, who’s on another team with his girlfriend, Jill. Only, unbeknownst to Mary, Carson is cheating on Jill with Mary’s bff and teammate, Winter. Got all that? And then there’s Dez, who’s been Bardone’s punching bag since Dez dressed up as Daphne from ‘Scooby Doo’ for Halloween when they were in kindergarten - not the kind of thing future jerks of the world forget, y’know? Things only escalate and get more awkward for them all as the day and the hunt goes on – which is what makes it such a fun read…and great premise for a movie!

What I personally like best about The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life is that while nothing overtly dramatic happens, the characters are as at-once obnoxious and self-involved yet likeable and funny as real teens. Mary’s stubborn and always wants things her way; Patrick’s clueless as to why girls don’t go for nerds like him (psst, Patrick, some of us do!); and Dez insightfully points out that his friends treat him more as a cause than a friend – they’ll stand up for him to brutes like Barbone, but then they don’t actually talk to him about everyday things like his own boy crushes.

This is Altebrando’s fourth Y.A. book, and one of her besties is Sara Zarr, the author of one of my favorite books from the past year, How to Save a Life. In fact, the two are now writing a book together called Roomies, which is set for a 2013 release. To learn more about Altebrando and her books, visit her website at http://www.taraaltebrando.com/ .

Unbreak My Heart – Melissa Walker

Every girl should know Rule #1 of the Girl Code: Don’t EVER date your best friend’s crush, boyfriend or ex-boyfriend. Ever. Under any circumstances. These things never end well, and really, who should be more important in your life – your bestie or your lustie? Exactly.

Unfortunately, Unbreak My Heart’s Clementine skipped that page in the Girl Code Rule Book…or tore it out. Y’see, when the book opens, we find Clem in exile on a boat with her family for the summer. Her parents love sailing, especially taking six weeks off in the summer to do a circuit up the eastern coast. After the disastrous past few months of her life, Clem begrudgingly agrees to go with her parents and younger sister, Olive, on the trip to escape the mess she’s made of her life at home. It’s not like she has any friends left there anyway…

Friendship rewind. Amanda is Clem’s girl soulmate. They’ve been friends for forever, each family’s adopted daughter, and neither can imagine ever doing anything to hurt the other one’s feelings in any way…that is, until Amanda starts dating Ethan their sophomore year of high school. Like a good friend, Clem is genuinely happy that her BFF has found such a cool guy to have for a boyfriend, but as Clem and Ethan start to spend more time together through her friendship with Amanda, they also become drawn to each other. Clem and Ethan discover they share the same tastes in indie movies and music, and Clem even goes so far as to make a mix CD for Ethan. Girrrs, you know a mix CD is just a ‘Press Play’ away from a hookup. When Amanda discovers the unlabeled CD and quizzes Clem as to who the lucky guy is, Clem lies and realizes she’s driving down a dangerous road. Destination? Cheatersville. But does she stop and turn that car around? Oh no.

Over the course of her travels at sea, we get to know Clem and the story behind her break-up with her best friend. Walker does an excellent job, without being preachy, of exploring the fracturing of a friendship between two girls when one convinces herself it’s okay to go for her own happiness over that of her friend’s…because isn’t that how these things get started? What’s more, no one is harder on Clem in the aftermath of the break-up of the friendship than Clem herself. Losing her best friend is like a death to her. As hard as her family tries, they can’t seem to cheer her. Even the cute redhead she meets at sea named James, who’s doing the same sailing route but with his dad, does his best to charm her with Mitch Hedburg jokes and Elliott Smith songs, but seemingly to no avail until Clem can learn to forgive herself and seek forgiveness from her friend.

This kind of drama goes on ALL THE TIME with girls, which is what makes it such an awesome read – especially for girls who have been hurt by their supposed best friends OR girls who were the ones who did the hurting. In addition to five other Y.A. books, Walker has written articles for both Seventeen and ELLEgirl magazines, so chick knows her girl dramaz. To learn more about Walker and her other books, visit http://www.melissacwalker.com/ .

Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone – Kat Rosenfield

Earlier this year, John Corley Whaley’s Where Things Come Back won both the William C. Morris debut book award and the Michael Printz Award for Excellence in Y.A. Literature. Not too shabby for a first time novelist, eh? Part of what made the book stand out was the way Whaley told two seemingly different stories – one involving the disappearance of a fifteen year old boy, the other the suicide of a once God-fearing college student who’s lost his faith - that later intersect into a ‘oh, wow’ climax. In Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone, Rosenfield pulls off a similar feat…only, I think, better.

Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone starts off with a bang – well, actually, it starts with two recent high school graduates banging in the back of a pick-up truck. No sooner are they finished, the sweat still on Becca’s body, when James informs Becca, ‘By the way, we’re done. Over.’ Oooo, burn. That same night across town, a college-age girl is bludgeoned and left for dead by the side of an old country road. Her body isn’t discovered until the next morning when a local townsperson comes up on her dead form, actually driving over and crushing a few of her fingers. As you can now see…this isn’t light reading, kiddos.

As in Where Things Come Back, AAiDaG takes place in a small town, and as Rosenfield writes, “In a small town, murder is three-dimensional…[Amelia’s death] blew alongside the flecks of bloodstained dirt, down Country Road 128, and reached town as a howling gale. The chatter was fevered. Frenzied. People came home from the grocery store, from bridge club, from a walk in the park, and massaged jaw joints that were exhausted from gossiping. They stood over fences and talked about the dead girl, the girl with no name, no face, no identification. “

The thing is, this dead girl has a name for the reader – Amelia. After first meeting her in death, Rosenfield takes us back to meet Amelia as she’s finishing her last semester of college. It’s during that last term that she takes part in a school stage production and discovers she really likes acting – even the director agrees, she has true talent. Her boyfriend, Luke, finds it all silly that she would seriously consider abandoning her business degree to try and pursue a career in acting. Besides, he already has plans for them – plans for them to marry and settle down.

Meanwhile, Rosenfield also lets us get to know the story of Becca and James and how they arrived at their messy breakup. The two first get together the summer before their junior year of high school. What starts out as a small hook-up, nothing serious, soon blossoms though Becca and James are on different paths. Most townies are happy enough to graduate, maybe go to the local community college, but for the most part people settle in town where they live out the rest of their days. Becca plans for more. She plans to go away to college, never come back…but then she falls for James. Poor James is dealing with tragedy of his own – the death of his mother to cancer, a death so crippling to him, that he drops out of school and almost out of life except for his ties to Becca. When he breaks up with Becca the night of Amelia’s murder, he thinks he is finally cutting ties with her.

The death of the strange girl quickly consumes the town and even Becca, who wants James back and reconsiders going away to college. But then facts about the girl’s death start to come out, and Becca starts to suspect someone close to her and James. Even James is acting all weirded about the girl’s death, like he might know something. As the accusations and finger-pointing in town start to fly, Rosenfield slowly reveals what really happened the night Amelia met death – and it’s as ugly, gruesome and sad as any death of a promising young person could be.

Rosenfield is an amazing writer who totally gets the nuances of life in a small town right. Morever, she knows how to build suspense to the point you’ll have to remind yourself to breathe. There’s another side story, about the death several years back of a young fifteen –year-old boy visiting town named Brendan, that tore me up about as bad as Amelia’s story. I could see where she was going with his impending death and found myself wanting to just skip to the next chapter to avoid reading such sadness. She is THAT good of a writer.

This book first came on my radar when author John Green (The Fault in Our Stars, Looking for Alaska, Paper Towns) tweeted about its awesomeness. Obviously, the dark themes in this book mean it’s not for everyone. Also, while it is a young adult book, the high school librarian in me sees it more as an adult than young book. There are a couple of explicit (for Y.A.) sex scenes and rough language, but it befits the story. Just sayin’ – consider yourself informed.

Kat Rosenfield not only writes Y.A. books, but she also freelances for MTV’s Hollywood Crush blog. In other words, she’s got what would be one of my dream jobs. ;-)  You can learn more about Rosenfield and read her blogs both at http://hollywoodcrush.mtv.com/author/katrosenfield/  and http://katrosenfield.com/ .

Supergirl Mixtapes – Meagan Brothers
Waiting – Carol Lynch Williams

Sometimes we librarians read books that we know won’t have mass appeal but may be just the right book for just the right reader at a particular time. Meagan Brothers’ Supergirl Mixtapes and Carol Lynch Williams’ Waiting are two such books.

I was personally pumped for Supergirl Mixtapes because it’s set in the 90s, obviously has a music theme and involves a girl originally from South Carolina – the Gaffney peach even gets a shout-out! After some mysterious traumatic event, Maria Costello leaves her dad in the small town of Millville, SC to go live with her wild-child mom in New York City. Maria’s mom, an artist, left her and her dad several years back to move to NYC to pursue her art career…or so she intended. When Maria arrives, she finds her mom shacking up with a 22-year-old musician boyfriend, staying out all night at rock shows and clubs, and attending the occasional AA meeting. Not exactly what Maria was expecting. Worse, the kids at her new school are a bunch of stuck-up jerks who decide Maria’s the perfect punching bag, so she quickly starts skipping school every day to avoid the hassle. Maria’s escape is in the old school records her mother shares with her – Patti Smith, The Ramones, David Bowie – and the mixtapes her best friend Dory mails her from home – so-called ‘Supergirl Mixtapes’ because they feature the strong music babes of that era, like Sleater-Kinney, The Breeders, Liz Phair, Sonic Youth, PJ Harvey, Courtney Love, REM, Nirvana and Jeff Buckley (hey, Michael Stipe, Kurt Cobain and Jeff Buckley were in touch with their feminine sides!).

Supergirl Mixtapes should be awesome, but…it’s just too manufactured angst-y for me. There’s a suicide attempt, drug overdose, mental breakdown…ugh, so very rock ‘n’ roll cliché. I do know at least two students who will like the book because of all the music references, but other than that, the story itself doesn’t offer anything new or unusual. Meh.

Lynch’s book The Chosen One, about a thirteen-year-old girl trapped in a polygamist cult, was one of my favorite reads from last year’s SCYABA list. Waiting is told in free verse, which makes for a quick read, and like The Chosen One – it will tear you up! London’s brother Zach kills himself at age sixteen, leaving his family devastated and destroyed. London’s dad is in total avoidance mode, while her mom is in total blame mode – and guess who catches most of the blame? Yep, London was the first one to get to Zach, so her mom dumps his death on her. As London walks in a daze through school and her home life, pushing away her old friends as well as potential new ones, Lynch gradually reveals what pushed Zach to the point that he would take his own life. The scene where she describes in minute detail exactly how Zach dies and London fails to save him is about as gut-wrenching a scene as I’ve ever read in a Y.A. lit. Lynch spares no horror, and your heart breaks for London and anyone who would have to witness a loved one die like that. While London eventually finds some measure of solace and acceptance, her family is far from healed. This is the kind of book you put in the hands of someone who has been through a tough loss themselves, and like Supergirl Mixtapes, I can think of one or two students who would be drawn to the story because of circumstances they’ve suffered in their own lives.

Cool factoid – both Meagan Brothers and Carol Lynch Williams are originally from South Carolina. Home state pride, boos!  You can read more about Brothers at http://us.macmillan.com/author/meaganbrothers  and Lynch at http://www.carollynchwilliams.com/ .

Gilt (The Royal Circle #1) – Katherine Longshore

In British history, nobody brought the drama quite like the Tudors, and in all of history, no royal went through wives quite like Henry VIII. Many are familiar with wifey #2, Anne Boleyn, the ill-fated vixen and mother of future queen, Elizabeth I, but Henry later had another wife who met with the same headless end – that would be wifey #5, Catherine Howard. (As good a story as Anne Boleyn’s rise and fall was in season two of Showtime’s ‘The Tudors,’ season four featuring Catherine Howard’s story arc was the most haunting and my personal favorite.)

Gilt is told from the viewpoint of Catherine’s best friend, Kitty. The girls grow up as wards together in the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk’s house, where teenaged Cat acts as mistress of ceremonies entertaining the other girls and sneaking boys in for visits. Francis Dereham is one of the boys Cat takes special interest in – so much so that she brings him into the bed she shares with Kitty. Awwwkward for Kitty! The girls dream of escape, and nothing would be more glamorous than for them to one day serve in the royal court of the king. After some machinations on the part Cat’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, Cat gets her wish to go live at the court and serve as a lady-in-waiting for Henry’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, but not before promising Kitty she will one day send for her to join her there.

Sure enough, once at court Cat works her feminine wiles on Henry - only thirty years her senior and no longer the svelte, hot ginge he was in years past. Cat makes the king feel young and desirable again, unlike the fuddy-dud he foolishly took as his fourth wife, so Henry quickly gets his marriage to Anne of Cleves annulled and takes Catherine as his *gulp* fifth wife. True to her word, Cat sends for Kitty and her other besties, Joan and Alice, to serve as her chamber maids.

Kitty always dreamed life in the royal court would be exciting; unfortunately, the kind of exciting Cat attracts is dangerous. A huge flirt, Cat takes up with the dashing Thomas Culpepper, who happens to be one of the king’s favorite courtiers and close associates, as he’s responsible for dressing the king. Kitty remembers Thomas from her days at the Duchess of Norfolk’s house, though, when she accidentally stumbled upon him raping a woman. Nice guy, eh? Worse, Cat keeps pushing one of Thomas’s closest friends, Edmund, on her. Edmund is a babe for sure, but he was with Thomas the day he raped the girl and did nothing to stop him...not that she did either, as Edmund pointedly reminds her when she confronts him on the matter. Kitty’s not even sure if Edmund really likes her…or likes the idea of the chase more. Then there’s the boy she really likes, William, who may only be a lowly secretary for the Duke of Norfolk, but sincerely seems to have Kitty’s best interests at heart. When word reaches the king that his young wife isn’t as virginal as she originally claimed and may even be an adulteress, a crime punishable by death, all hell breaks loose in the court as those closest to the king and queen scramble to get their stories straight and save their own necks.

You don’t have to be a history buff or fan of historical fiction to get caught up in this royal intrigue. The characters, including Kitty, are all based on actual people and events, and Longshore does her best to stay true to history with a few imaginative embellishments along the way. We know how things end for Catherine, but it’s Kitty who the reader ultimately sympathizes with and worries for her fate.

Longshore plans to write other novels centered around the court of Henry VIII, though not necessarily in sequential order. There’s certainly a goldmine of people and plotlines there to choose from! To learn more about the author and Gilt, visit Longshore’s website at http://katherinelongshore.com/ .

The List – Siobhan Vivian

As is tradition at Mount Washington High School, the Monday before Homecoming every year “The List” is posted all over the school – but this list doesn’t have anything to do with homecoming court or the football team’s MVPs. Created by an anonymous entity, this list identifies both the prettiest and the ugliest girl in each grade level at MWHS. As if everyday high school life isn’t a struggle enough, for these eight girls, finding your name on “The List” means harsh public scrutiny AND lots of self-examination...

The Freshmen
Ugliest:  Danielle DeMarco (“Also known as “Dan the Man”) is enjoying her best school year ever – a new boyfriend she met at camp over summer and news that she’s made the Varsity Swim Team as a freshman - until “The List” changes Andrew’s behavior towards her, and she starts to feel shame about her athletic ability.
Prettiest:  Academically average Abby Warner (“Bonus points for overcoming family genetics”) has spent years in her smart sister Fern’s shadow, until “The List” puts her on the popularity radar…but at her sister’s expense.

The Sophomores
Ugliest – Candace Kincaid (“Beauty isn’t just skin-deep, btw”) has always been pretty and popular, until “The List” calls her out for her mean girl attitude, and her ‘supposed’ friends start to turn on her.
Prettiest – Lauren Finn (“Everyone’s hot for the new girl”) is enjoying her first year in public high school after years of being home-schooled by her single mom. While getting named ‘prettiest’ widens her new circle of friends, mommy’s not so sure she put her daughter in public education for this kind of drama…

The Juniors
Ugliest – Sarah Singer (“It’s like she’s trying to be as ugly as possible”) could give a rip what people think of her – well, except for her only friend and possible bf, Milo - but after making “The List,” Sarah decides to give the people what they want, writes ‘Ugly’ in black marker across her forehead, and refuses to the bathe or change clothes for the entire week leading up to Homecoming. If they want ugly, she’ll give ‘em UGLY!!
Prettiest - Bridget Honeycutt (“What a difference a summer can make”) is easily considered to be the prettiest and most perfect girl in the Junior class by guys and girls, but when she looks in the mirror she only sees the fat on her upper arms, excess skin on her thighs and the way her stomach pooches out.  Diets, cleanses, purges – if only she can keep this weight off until after the Homecoming Dance, she’ll go back to eating normal...something she’s been telling herself for months now.

The Seniors
Ugliest – Jennifer Brigges (“The only four-peat in Mount Washington history! Congrats, Jennifer!”) made “The List” as Ugliest for the first time her freshman year and has made it on every year since. This year, some popular senior girls finally take pity on her and attempt a make-over, including a drive to get her elected as Homecoming Queen. But can this transformation of a long-time awkward ugly duckling take?
Prettiest – Margo Gable (“All hail this year’s Homecoming Queen”) is secretly relieved to make “The List.” She was named ‘Prettiest’ her freshman year, her older sister Maureen was “Prettiest” last year, and everyone knows the girl who is named ‘Prettiest’ her senior year is a shoo-in for Homecoming Queen. Only the groundswell of support for Jennifer is growing and forcing her to come to terms with her own treatment of Jennifer, when Margo dropped her as her BFF after 8^th grade year…

The List is totally addictive. If you’re like me, you’ll be reading late into the night to see how things work out for each girl…expect your jaw to drop when you find out who is behind this list! Vivian is no sell-out either  – don’t expect everyone to rise above, join hands and sing ‘Kumbaya’ before speaking out on what an unjust and cruel tradition this is, because guess what – as unjust and cruel as it is, it’s soooooo very high school!! Seriously, this should be required reading for girls. I plan to make it a book club selection at my school and look forward to addressing the many issues about beauty and self-worth brought out in the book with other readers.

Siobhan Vivian is another author who will be at this November’s YallFest (yes, I will be tracking her down for an auto and some fangirl gushing!). You can learn more about her, The List, and her other fab books at http://www.siobhanvivian.com/Hello/Home.html .