NY: HarperCollins, 1995.
McDermid is one of the best writers of crime fiction around, and she’s about as far from Agatha Christie as one can get. Her settings are often gray and working-class and her plots are gritty and generally assume the worst about human nature. She’s a realist, in other words.
NY: Scholastic, 2016.
NY: Scholastic, 2017.
Many YA novelists seem to feel an obligation to teach a lesson, either in how to deal with the ordinary trials of growing up or in coming to grips with major tragedy. Which is fine, and some of the books I’ve read of that sort are very good indeed. But Strohm’s intent is mostly to entertain, to make her readers laugh, and she accomplishes that goal very successfully. These two books focus on events in two successive years at San Anselmo Prep, a small but high-powered private school in Marin County, California, and there’s some overlap in characters, so I’ll review them together.
Continue reading “Strohm, Stephanie Kate. It’s Not Me, It’s You & The Date to Save.”
NY: HarperCollins, 2003.
In retrospect, this very good police procedural became the first in the author’s series featuring Scottish DI Karen Pirie (now up to five books), but she has only a relatively small (but crucial) role here. It’s a “cold case” story, revolving around the murder of nineteen-year-old Rosie Duff, a pub worker in St. Andrew’s in the frigid winter of 1978.
NY: Houghton Mifflin, 2017.
This was Hopper’s debut novel and it’s a lovely piece of work, a sort of updated homage to Judy Blume’s Forever in its realistic, sympathetic, and frequently humorous approach to teen sexuality. Janey King is a junior, a good student, and a track star at La Jolla High School, but she thinks of herself as plain, physically undeveloped, and nothing at all special.
Y: Viking, 2017.
At every reading-junkie website I’ve visited recently, people have been raving about this debut novel, so I moved it up my “To Read” list. Now I wish I hadn’t waited so long because it’s one of the best and most deeply affecting novels I’ve read in the past couple of years. And very funny, too, though often in a wince-producing fashion.
Continue reading “Honeyman, Gail. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.”
NY: HarperCollins, 2017.
The author brings a much different style to her work than you will find in most young adult novels, and it works really well. The setting is the tiny community of Otter Holt in Marshall County, out in western Kentucky, a couple hours from Nashville. The narrator is Billie McCaffrey, a seventeen-year-old high school junior, the only child of Brother Scott, pastor of Community Church, and a frequent trial to her parents.
Continue reading “Stevens, Courtney C. Dress Codes for Small Towns.”
NY: Simon & Schuster, 2019.
The only other one of Bennett’s books I’ve read is Alex, Approximately (which I really liked), and this one is very different, but also very good. The protagonist is Birdie Lindberg, now eighteen but very inexperienced about the world, having been raised on little Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound by very strict grandparents.
Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2013.
This is the original graphic novel that was subsequently made into a Palm-d’Or-winning film at Cannes, and it tells a moving and tragic love story by means of some truly beautiful artwork. Clementine is a typical secondary school student in France, trying to figure out guys, hanging out with her girlfriends and also her best guy friend, who is gay, and just generally living her life.
NY: Putnam, 2004.
I hate to admit that I had never heard of this author until she was recommended to me by a friend, even though I discovered it was a Newberry Honors book and a bestseller as well. And it’s really quite good. The narrator is twelve-year-old Matthew “Moose” Flanagan (he’s already nearly six feet tall), one of the two dozen or so kids who are full-time residents of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.
Continue reading “Choldenko, Gennifer. Al Capone Does My Shirts.”
NY: Celadon, 2019.
There seems to be more than the usual number of high-quality first novels being published recently, and this is one of the best I’ve come across. It’s a highly suspenseful crime novel, psychological thriller, and “gotcha” story all in one.
BookSmith