Bad Impressions

When I was a kid I was rather creepily obsessed with serial killers. Some girls' fave movie involves a princess in a fluffy dress; mine involved Hannibal Lector and Jodi Foster. Interestingly enough, I've never been able to take the gruesomeness of those kinds of books so my reading in it has been limited so I moved on to slightly less creepy reading. This has been helped by the fact that not many teen books revolve around serial killers... until now. I discoverd Barry Lyga's "I Hunt Killers" on an award list and had to check out the serial killer book for teens. It's like Dexter when he was in high school.

Seventeen-year-old Jazz's childhood was filled with lots bonding time with dad, bed time stories, and toys. Except, his bonding time was cleaning up after his dad's kills, bed time stories of the murders, and his father's "toys" -- trophies stolen from the victims. When his father was finally caught, Jazz had spent his childhood being groomed to become a special kind of serial killer. He's spent the last four years trying forget, to have a normal life: he goes to public school, has a girlfriend, and spends his time hanging out with his best friend. Then the murders start. Now he has to accept the horrible gift his father gave him to track down the murderer: the ability to think like a serial killer. But what will that do to a boy raised to think of humans as prey? And now his memory is slowly bringing back horrible images, images that could lead to a terrible revelation....

There's always another side to the story

SPOILER ALERT

A book written in first person can be tricky—if I don’t trust what the narrator says happens then the story never really sucks me in.  Despite all the rave reviews, that’s how I felt about Gayle Forman’s If I Stay .  The narrator is Mia, a 17-year-old very talented cellist, whose life is ripped apart after a horrific accident. Her family's car is struck, and her mother, father, and only sibling, her younger brother, are killed. She finds herself standing outside of her body trying desperately to comprehend what happened. She is in a coma, suspended between life and death. As her body lies mangled in the hospital and her extended family and friends rally to her side, she reviews her life and comes to realize that it's up to her to choose whether to stay or leave.

In Where She Went, Forman decides to do what I often wish authors would do—she tells the rest of the story (overlapping with the first) and this time, we have Mia’s boyfriend Adam as narrator.  His story picks up three years later and Adam’s life has both hit the big time and fallen completely to ruins. After the car accident that nearly killed Mia and the choices she made upon recovery (life=yes, Adam=no), he has poured all his heartbreak into songwriting, gotten the fame he always wanted, and become a pill-popping, angst-ridden shadow of his former self. The emotion in his story seems so much more genuine, rawer and angry, yet he still can look at himself and laugh. Ironically enough, from his perspective I learned to like and understand Mia more as well. He is in New York, waiting for his band’s first big tour or Europe, when he sees an advertisement for Mia's recital and decides to go, just so he can see her one more time.  I think I’ve given you enough spoilers for one post, so you will just have to read what Adam and Mia go through in the next twenty four hours yourself!

Project Costume Designer

Now that zombie season has officially ended I can actually start reading books that don't give me dreams involving being trapped in libraries & eating brains. Interestingly enough, I suddenly discovered I had started reading the girliest books possible: ones where fashion is practically it's own seperate character. I'm chalking this up to some sort of mild post-zombie apocalypse shock. The cool thing about these three books -- "Freak Show," "Lola and the Boy Next Door," and "Hollywood Nobody" -- is that the fashion isn't some magazine's idea of what'll be cool next year. Instead, it's all about declaring yourself awesome and wearing whatever makes you happiest, even if it's a mermaid outfit complete with Cheerio suction cups on your face.

Life on the Refrigerator Door

Imagine this. You're Claire, an only child who's not a child, almost an adult, almost able to take care of yourself. Not that you have a choice about taking care of yourself, anyway. Your dad's not in the picture, and your mom's a big-shot doctor.