THE MYSTERY OF HOLLOW PLACES BY REBECCA PODOS {review}

Hardcover, 304 pages

Published January 26th 2016 by Balzer & Bray
Rating: ★★★★

The Mystery of Hollow Places is a deft little emotional mystery, featuring a likable teenage protagonist unraveling the mysterious disappearance of both her parents, one in her past and one in her present. It's about love, loss, mental illness, and the slippery illusion of self.

[W]ith enough time and the right conditions, precious stones could grow in hollow places.

Imogene Scott is seventeen and doesn't remember her mother, who left when Imogene was very young. All she really has of her is the fairytale-esque story her father told her every night as a child about how they met and fell in love. The centerpiece of this story is a stone heart, purportedly from the chest of Imogene's maternal grandmother, a representation of the illness that closed her off to the world. Imogene and her father are very close, and even the relatively recent addition of Lindy, their former therapist and her father's new wife.

The book starts with Imogene's father disappearing, leaving no note or explanation to his whereabouts except half of her grandmother's stone heart. Both Lindy and Imogene are distraught, but it is Imogene who decides to start with the clue the stone heart provides: she is sure that her father is looking for her mother. With her beautiful best friend Jessa in tow, Imogene starts piecing together parts of her mother's past from vague clues.

Imogene is a likable character. She's an introverted bookworm, content to spend time with her father or alone reading, particularly if the books were written by her father. Her mother's disappearance has left her with insecurity and fear related to abandonment. Imogene thinks her best friend spends time with her perhaps out of misguided childhood loyalty rather than simply because Jessa loves her. Imogene is mature and clever, but self-aware enough to recognize that she is still a child, especially when she allows herself to daydream that she will locate her mother and her father together and they will all be a family again, happy in their new roles.

I could forgive my mother for being cursed, and lonely and troubled waters. All of that made sense. But I don't think I'll be able to forgive her if she's happy.

Imogene is flawed but earnest, and I liked that. She doesn't serve as a symbol of resistance like the heroines of The Hunger Games or Red Queen, she doesn't have the highly sexed dark, pseudo-wit of teen murder mystery protagonists, she's anxious and self-conscious but smart and driven. She draws heavily on her father's books for inspiration in tracking down her mother, I thought that was a really nice character point as it really showed the closeness of Imogene and her father.

The Mystery of Hollow Places uses such strong metaphors for depression, weaving them in carefully in many places like the stories Imogene's father tells and the ways Imogene relates to everyone. Podos shies away from painting depression as any one thing; the suffering isn't beautiful, it's painful and consuming with each sufferer having to find their own path out.

I get closing up your heart because you're afraid to look inside and find out it's hollow. I get choosing to be alone because you're afraid that if the choice is out of your hands, you'll simply be lonely, and alone is okay, it's almost cool, in a way.

THE LITTLE MEN BY MEGAN ABBOTT {review}

ebook, 63 pages

Published September 1st 2015 by Head of Zeus
Rating: ★★★★

The Little Men is short. Very short. So short that it's probably better considered a short story than a novella. As such, this will probably be a very short review to match. The Mysterious Bookshop has published a series of short fiction from popular mystery authors that they're calling "Bibliomysteries". I'm definitely going to check a few more out, though I'll probably skip Anne Perry's because I may like murder in fiction but I'm not a fan of real-life murderers.

This story takes place in 1953 Hollywood, where failed actress Penny now works as a make-up artist on set. She's just been ditched by a Hollywood bigwig that uses and discards beautiful young women hoping that sleeping with him will grant them their big break on the silver screen. She rents a quaint little bungalow in Canyon Arms and befriends the elderly gay men living next door. They inform her of the bungalow's previous tenants, particularly a bookseller named Larry who committed suicide twelve years before, using the gas stove.

The furniture is still the same as it was when Larry lived and died there twelve years earlier, including all his books, and Mrs. Stahl, the landlord, admonishes Penny when she moves the bed a small distance from the wall. That's when things start to get weird. Penny is awakened every night at 2am by lights and noises. She begins to unravel, and we, the readers, become increasingly unsure of what is real and what is not, as she becomes sure that she is being tortured by little men and is being watched by Mrs. Stahl. The books and their former owner seem to awaken something in Penny, influencing her increasingly bizarre dreams and filtering into her everyday life, increasing her paranoia regarding the landlord.

Megan Abbott is great at creating a setting, her use of language and grimy descriptions of Hollywood transporting you there. It's easy to imagine. She deftly manages Penny's confusion and paranoia, cleverly weaving a possible murder mystery with a ghost story. The Little Men is fast and incredibly absorbing, a fun mesh of genres that you can read in a very short amount of time.

MY SUMMER OF LOVE BY HELEN CROSS {review}

Paperback, 248 pages

Published May 1st 2005 by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Rating: ★★★

You could meet a crazy girl and truly believe her to be your saviour.

My Summer of Love is a bit of a bizarre read, a precursor to decadent novels of bored, awakening teenage girls like Dare Me and bares more than a few passing similarities to the real life crimes of Juliet Hulme (now crime novelist Anne Perry) and Pauline Parker. There's an almost surreal dissonance they exemplify: the obsessive, sexualized friendship between two girls, pushing the boundaries of every relationship, dispersing pseudo witticisms about men and sex in that under-experienced but over-aware teenage way, and the seemingly inevitable slide into violence and criminality.

Mona is a fifteen year old girl living above her father's pub with her stepbrother Porkchop in a small Yorkshire town. She's awkward, immature, ostensibly addicted to alcohol and fruit machine gambling, and vacillates between bold confidence and startling naivete. Though Mona is not particularly likeable, she's easy to fall into as even her internal monologue contains a strong Yorkshire dialect, allowing me to easily hear her voice in my head.

She meets Tamsin Fakenham a posh girl with a dead sister. She's beautiful, condescending, manipulative and controlling. Mona is instantly entranced by her and they become fast, if unsteady, friends. Together, they're explosive. In their absence, Tamsin's parents believe that she has gone to stay with an old aunt while she studies for her exam, but is instead living in a strange fantasy world with Mona where they are awake all night, starve themselves and have sex constantly. But their manic lifestyle is far from idyllic, their friendship unstable and volatile, each trying to gain the upper hand in an unending game of oneupmanship. Mona often comes up short.

Helen Cross's writing works wonderfully in developing atmosphere; you feel a sticky, cloying quality as you read, matching the heatwave that invades the setting. The entire novel takes place over a single month, so this works particularly well to generate the frenzied obsession the girls have with each other and their increasingly daring acts of criminality.

While Mona's chubby, sensitive stepbrother Porkchop is the only remotely likable character in the entire novel, it didn't detract from my enjoyment at all. It may even have enhanced it as the near-mania that overcomes Mona and Tamsin will inevitably end badly and I was at the edge of my seat waiting for it. Ultimately, My Summer of Love is a taut, if sometimes confusing, coming of age story teetering on the knife edge of thriller.

Look what arrived today! A hardcover, autographed copy of The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon. It also came with a beautiful print of the cover art and four buttons!

Review coming soon!

KING'S CAGE BY VICTORIA AVEYARD {review}

Hardcover, 528 pages

Published February 7th 2017 by HarperTeen
Rating: ★★★

The Red Queen series is a pretty standard dichotomous dystopia and King's Cage is more of the same. North America has been divided into various smaller countries, most with two separate peoples: the Silver ruling class, who have silver blood and various superpowers, and the Red slave class, who have no powers, no money and no hope. Mare Barrow is discovered to have red blood and silver powers - the power to control electricity and lightning, and what resulted was a fairly standard YA novel. She was forcibly engaged to the second son of the silver king, Maven, while falling in love with his older brother and heir to the throne, Cal.

The second book improved upon that, spending more time on characterization and relationships, with a twist at the end. Mare trades herself to her tyrant ex-fiance, Maven, for the safety of her friends. Maven snapped a collar around her neck and led her about on a leash in front of Silver and Red crowds.

Mare comes across as a stronger character here. Red Queen was about hiding who she was from everyone; Glass Sword was her coming to terms with being the rebellion's figurehead (their very own Mockingjay) and the deconstruction of self; and in turn, much of King's Cage is Mare piecing herself back together and finding her strength even as she fades into a ghost. After his mother's death in the previous book, the reader is given the opportunity to see who Maven is without his cruel mother whispering in his mind, controlling him. What's left is not pretty. Maven himself is clever, cruel, and thoroughly obsessed with Mare. He's an interesting, if despicable character. I expect he gets romanticized a lot if these books have a prolific fandom.

THE RAVEN AND THE REINDEER BY T. KINGFISHER {review}

Hardcover, 191 pages

Published February 7th 2016 by Red Wombat Tea Co.
Rating: ★★★★★

There are not many stories about this sort of thing. There ought to be more. Perhaps if there were, the Gertas of the world would learn to recognize it.

What a delightful book. Quick and fun, The Raven and the Reindeer is filled with magic and wonder. A retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen, it is clever, modern yet wholly reminiscent of the fairytale I read as a child.

Kay and Gerta are born only days apart, their grandmothers the best of friends. Kay is born with frost in his eyes, blue like a husky's, and it leaves him cold, cold, cold. To Gerta, Kay is her best friend, the one person she loves most in the world. To Kay, she's the neighbour girl and is alright. Then one night Gerta wakes to see an ethereally beautiful woman in a sleigh pulled by giant otters, watches while Kay get into sleigh of the Snow Queen and is driven away.

Thus starts Gerta's adventure, as she loves Kay too much, she cannot leave him to the machinations of the Snow Queen and starts off north. She runs into a witch who enchants her, a talking raven, a clan of bandits, and a whole plethora of fantastical things and people. Among the bandits she endears herself to a beautiful girl with dark skin and a soft heart, who kisses Gerta and puts doubt in her heart about her love for Kay.

I adored the cadence of Kingfisher's writing. It's plain but very, very fairytale, in turns innocent and sweet, at times dark and bloody. Gerta is adorable; she's not the smartest or the prettiest but she's kind, hardworking, and determined, and that's endearing. Janna is a bright spark, brave and bold, changing Gerta's mindset.

The magic in the story is so interesting, mixing Finnish folktales and Sami culture, fitting naturally into the world, as natural as the trees. The idea of the snow queen and changing into animals is more fantasy, but the way it was weaved into the story felt more like magical realism. I liked that Gerta dreams of such interesting things, particularly when she dreams of the feelings of her surroundings.

"Words are like fish and you catch them and you get to keep them forever."