Hmm… have I talked about my Game of Thrones kick in awhile? No? Well, let’s rectify that. I’m really into Game of Thrones. It’s true. Jessica, the Girl Who Would Not Read Historical Fiction or Fantasies is really into a historical fantasy series. I’ve spent many hours reading and listening to the first three books in the series, a decent enough time to ponder exactly why Westeros turns my crank. Since I am now an exceptionally mature adult, historical fiction is growing on me, and stories about family heritage passing down through generations, too. I don’t consider myself a particular junkie for political intrigue, but Martin cloaks the political power in various mystery plots, so it’s a pleasure (or, actually, a horror), to discover the characters’ secret motives as I read. I also like that Westeros is populated not by glistening princesses and shining knights – archetypes, roaming the seven kingdoms – but instead by characters with human needs and desires (Yes, that was code for ‘I like the sex and boobs and drinking’). And although Martin does write some fabulously insensitive crap about his female characters, I do enjoy the attention to the female experience in what is otherwise a male dominated time and place.

I liked Susann Cokal’s The Kingdom of Little Wounds for the same reasons, although the two may not seem particularly similar. Game of Thrones is an epic political saga spanning continents – The Kingdom of Little Wounds is hyper up-close look inside the royal castle walls of an imaginary Scandinavian castle, where lower class girls earn their living serving princes and queens… and currying royal secrets on the side. After a love affair ended with a public shaming, Ava Bingen is lucky to serve as a queen’s seamstress. But an accident lands Ava in the palace jail, and the only way to preserve her position is to enter a secret-sharing arrangement with a ruthless Duke, which draws Ava deep into the complex and occasionally gruesome secret lives of the royal court members. Although Ava – misguided, striving, and exploited – is the focus of the plot, Cokal’s multiple perspectives also explore the lives of a mute slave girl, an ill princess, and a queen who may be crazy or may be suffering from being Female in a Man’s World. There are a variety of richly imagined female experiences here, all of which weave together to change the course of political events, quietly undermining decisions made by the men in power.

I should also mention that if you thought Game of Thrones was raunchy, debauched, and otherwise graphic, then The Kingdom of Little Wounds will probably turn your stomach. I am generally a sensitive flower when it comes to literary bodily functions – pretty sure Mr. Martin’s characters soil themselves about 100 times more often than realistic or necessary – but Cokal uses the grotesque realities of medicine, daily hygiene, and sickness to play up the ugliness of royal political schemes and call your attention to the weirdness that is relationships between Royals (the randomly, genetically anointed chosen class) and the Servants (who empty their chamber pots and watch them sleep with one another). It’s almost a little like Downton Abbey in that regard.

So this book is basically Game of Thrones meets Downton Abbey!

Um. That was a joke. I should probably accentuate HOW gruesome this book is. It’s quite graphic. I don’t think it’s anything that teens can’t handle, but be warned.

But, really, I do digress. If I am going to make Game of Thrones comparisons, I should also mention that Cokal writes dizzying circles around Martin. The Kingdom of Little Wounds is like a thick chocolate cake of a book; moist and gooey language, rich imagery, best taken in small portions. This is a beautifully written book to the point that it will likely frighten you. Much more than GoT or Downton, reading this book reminded me of the brilliant and intimidating The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by the inimitable M. T. Anderson. I assure you, this is the very highest of complements. I also assure you that The Kingdom of Little Wounds a gorgeous, dense, unflinching story about how history is written, and this review has done it zero justice.

Introverted Cath isn’t the most well-adjusted, outgoing teen in Nebraska, but she knows where she stands. With her mother gone and her father a little flighty, Cath keeps an eye on things at home. Her twin sister Wren is her best friend. And the rest of her life and livelihood is Simon Snow – specifically, her life is Carry On, Simon the epic, episodic work of fan fiction Cath writes for an audience of thousands of Simon fans around the world.

College upsets everything. Cath worries about her father and his empty nest. Wren has a new roommate and a new weekend partying habit, while Cath’s roommate is older and eyes Cath’s Simon Snow posters suspiciously. Cath’s creative writing class isn’t what she hoped it would be, and she either has time for schoolwork or updating Carry On, Simon, but not both. It’s awful. But she has to deal with it. Or drop out. Or fall in love. Or not.

There are a lot of conversations you could have about Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl.

– You could talk about whether or not Fangirl is YA, or whether or not any book set in college could be considered YA.

– You could talk about if a character’s Internet-Life can be adequately and richly portrayed with prose, and whether or not Rowell did Cath’s fandom any justice.

– Rowell includes excerpts from Cath’s fan fiction as well as from Simon books themselves – you could talk about fiction within fiction… or more accurately, fiction-based-on-other-fiction all within fiction. Yikes.

– You could talk about “slice of life” fiction. Is it boring? Is it realistic? Is it an artistic form or a mark of authorial laziness? I

– If you are an introverted English major who somehow survived college feeling a little beaten and bruised – come on, I know most of you probably are – then you could talk about how Rowell must have been spying on you in your dorm room, subsisting on the cereal bars stashed in your dresser drawers rather than think of stepping into the school cafeteria.

I could write a blog post on any of those topics, but I believe I would need an entire post for each question. Maybe more. I know this blog has taken some strange turns over the years, but I’m not about to start a Rainbow Rowell Literary Analysis Only blog. Or, A Dramatic Retelling of My College Experience blog for that matter.

However, I would like to propose a theory to you, my few and amazing readers: the more discussion a book raises, the better the book. The more questions you have, the better the book. The more different angles you can come at a book, the better the book.

Obviously, this is not a hard and fast rule, but think about it next time you finish a book. Does the ending wrap itself up in a bow? Can you see where the plot is leading you at every turn? Do you understand every narrative decision the author made? Do you agree with every narrative decision the author made?

It’s nice to read a tidy book, but a tidy book is usually a safe book. Rowell’s narration is pitch perfect and yes, there is a fairly traditional romance plot, but I would argue that this is not a safe book. It’s a book you can critique. A book you can dissect. It’s a book you can love, but makes you think about why you love it.

I should also mention: I loved it. Loved it hard. Didn’t want it to end. It’s been years since I’ve added an author to my Must Read List, but welcome aboard, Ms. Rowell.

This is not a proper book review. A collection of random thoughts. But aren’t most of my book reviews really just collections of thoughts with a few sentences of obligatory summary? Aren’t all book reviews just collections of thoughts with a few sentences of summary? Or, more likely, many sentences of summary and maybe one thought? But I’m not here to tell you what I think about book reviews and how nobody knows how to do it. I am here to talk to you about the latest installment of the Sarah Dessen oeuvre: The Moon and More.

Okay, fine, here’s your obligatory summary:

Colby is a beach town, a tourist town, but Emaline is Colby, born and bred. She lives with her mom, her stepdad, her stepsisters, helps run the family beach rental agency, and has a cute long-term boyfriend. Things were getting better with her birth dad – the tourist who knocked up her mom when she was still a teenager – but things get weird when he backs out on helping pay for her Columbia tuition, and weirder when he shows up in Colby with Emaline’s half brother for an extended stay. And things get weird with the boyfriend when an exuberant film student rents a beach house and catches Emaline’s attention.

Ms. Dessen is a writer of contemporary romance, yes. Her stories are hefty enough to make you feel like you’re not reading a romance, but there’s usually at least a bit of a swoon factor.

The Moon and More has a nice love triangle, but I would argue very little swoon. And on purpose. Trying to avoid spoilers, but let’s just say that Emaline is too pragmatic to really fall head over heels and that’s okay. I like that. Not every YA protagonist needs to be susceptible to romance – especially female ones.

So if there’s not swoon, is this still a romance? Not technically, but it’s still a book about romance. Personally, I think I like books about romance more than romances. There’s always a bit of a conceit in a teen romance that irks me, the conceit that if only these two Love Interests can get together then they will live Happily Ever After. Forever. It’s not spoken, but isn’t that the conceit of all romances?

Yes, folks do marry their high school sweethearts, but not often. And is that really the only love story worth telling? Is every teen romance a How I Met Your Mother (in high school) story? I like romance, yes, and I will swoon when called upon to swoon, but I’m more interested in other kinds of literary romance, which I think Dessen does well with in The Moon and More.

Related, I really liked Theo as almost an anti-romantic-hero. Again, conceptual spoilers ahoy, but most male love interests in teen romances start out a little flawed (or at least the heroine interprets the boy as flawed) and as their romance progresses, those flaws fade away, or the heroine sees them as strengths, or she comes to love them. Theo starts out perfect but by the end of the summer, Emaline sees the major flaws his perfect facade has been hiding. I’m making this sound like Theo is a murderer or a domestic abuser or something. He’s not. He’s just not so swoon-worthy, as most boyfriends are. Their romance takes a different shape.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the kind of YA I gravitate toward, and I will write more about that soon. The Moon and More could be classified as a Last Summer Before College Where Big Decisions Are Made book. I read a lot of these, intentionally or not. I think it’s a popular choice for YA authors for a lot of reasons. It gets their characters out of school. It lets the author write about an almost-adult while still sticking to YA literary conventions. There’s the count-down to fall to ramp up tension and lots of built-in conflicts. It allows for a lot of Pondering of Big Ideas (another Dessen fave).

Dessen has written other Last Summer Before College books (This Lullaby, Along for the Ride) but this one felt different to me. My hypothesis? Most Last Summer Before College books do not actually rely on the narrator going anywhere in particular; it’s the leaving that’s important, not the destination. College represents a vague adulthood, and before the protagonist can be an adult she best attend to some emotional issues otherwise her adulthood will be spoiled. The romance overlay implies that unless the protagonist learns to be vulnerable/open your heart/give people a chance/learn to love, then her future could very well be lonely and loveless. This is an unspoken proposition that makes me uncomfortable, and also, I don’t find it as interesting.

In The Moon and More, Dessen does the Last Summer Before College a little more justice. Emaline’s destination isn’t just a vague place far away – it’s a big part of the plot and ties in with her fraught relationship with her family and her hometown. The book is largely about the difference between moving far and staying close to home, and what that means to your identity. The focus on What’s Next might take focus away from Emaline’s emotional arc (which I think led some readers to call her boring and unrelatable), and definitely reduces the swoon factor, but I like the way the book feels like it’s leaning forwards instead of holding back. I could say something about nostalgia in teen novels here and how this book explores nostalgia while also escaping its claws, but my thoughts, they ramble.

In rough conclusion, I can see where Dessen is going here. The Moon and More might not have the tightest plot, the most likeable characters, or have that swoon that you were hoping for, but I can see where she’s going with her characters and I hope she keeps it up.