One nice thing about last week’s mood: I got a lot of reading done. Three mini-reviews, commence.

I probably don’t need to tell you what Megan Whalen Turner’s The Thief is about because it was published in 1996. In 1996 I was too busy reading Phyllis Reynolds Naylor and Caroline B. Cooney to read fantasy. Lucky for me, The Thief was still enjoyable 10+ years later, and even luckier, it’s one of those fantasies that barely qualifies. You’re not quite sure it is a fantasy. In fact, you’re not quite sure of when or where the story is even taking place – you’re uncovering the landscape and the social structure and the culture as you read. But that is a lot of fancy-talking for a book that is, fundamentally, an exciting little adventure story starring one of the most endearing protagonists I’ve met in a long time – Gen, a feisty, braggy thief-boy who has landed himself in the King’s jail who ends up on an indentured, cross-kingdom adventure to steal something mythological.

And, hey, hey! One more summer reading book – done! That brings my total to three. Yeah, baby.

I generally like Books for Adults that feature teenage characters, even teen protagonists. However, I have seriously mixed feelings about Books for Adults that are about Teenagers and Teenage Culture. Ever see the movie Thirteen? Books for adults that expose the secret lives of teenagers always seem super sensational, inherently exaggerated. Megan Abbott’s Dare Me is full of naughty Varsity cheerleaders, content to lord over their peers, teachers, and half the world on the virtue of being young and sexy. Their parents are invisible, they cheer while hungover and in between binge & purge sessions, they run rampant and unchecked… until a new coach rolls into town and upsets the social order between Super-Popular Beth and her right-hand-man, protag Addy. The girls battle subtly, psychologically, while a murder mystery reveals itself, and Coach alternates between teaching the girls to become true, athletic, throwing and jumping and flying cheerleaders… and inviting the girls over for wine. Is this attempted reality, or shock value?

And while I will avoid spoilers, let me just say this: in stories about intense, problematic female friendships, there is a certain plotline that shows up again and again and again, and I spent the entire book thinking about Beth and Addy and saying to myself “Man, every other book would explain this by XYZ, but I’m glad that Dare Me doesn’t seem to be going in that direction.” Then, on the last 3 pages, it did. Dammit.

I wanted to read The Future of Us when it was published because A) Carolyn Mackler is on my perpetual Authors-To-Read list and B What a concept! Two teens discover Facebook ten years before it exists and see their future lives – as a child of the 90s,  I was sucked in. However, the book fell off my radar (as books are wont to do when you are in grad school) and if it hadn’t been a book club pick, I likely never would have read it…. and maybe it would have been better that way. This book annoyed the crap out of me. First of all, according to Mackler and Asher, the 90’s was a time and place when life looked identical to the way it does now, except every few minutes you put on a Green Day album, put on scrunchie, or noted how strange this new concept called “Caller ID” seemed to be. Basically, it read like heavy-handed faux historical fiction full of those nostalgic in-jokes we children of the 90’s love, but are probably irrelevant/annoying to all others. This book also suffers from horrible pacing (50-60 pages of the two protags trying to prove to themselves that this Facebook thing is real… the disbelief is timely for teens who can barely comprehend the Internet, of course, but THE READER KNOWS IT IS REAL BECAUSE IT IS A STORY AND WE HAVE TO BELIEVE SO PLEASE CATCH UP THIS IS BORING). Also, Emma is so, so unlikeable, but not even in an interesting way. Book club members had a point – maybe teenage girls are boring, wishy-washy, and yes, unlikeable… maybe I have outgrown the truly authentic teen protagonist? Or maybe Emma was just annoying and her character development kind of crappy.

This might be my last foray with fiction, so from here on out, look forward to nonfiction reviews aplenty. Let me tell you a little bit about tuberculosis….

Every day, for his/her existence, A wakes up in a different body of someone nearby of the same age. For that day, A can access that person’s memories, sleeps in their bed, kisses their girlfriends or boyfriends (or not), and then at midnight, a new life. Each chapter is a day, and each day has more meaning when for the first time, A falls in love and can’t help but use each subsequent day-in-the-life to reach out to Rhiannon.

I have two things to say about David Levithan’s Every Day.

1. I am super-duper excited that this book is Levithan’s long deserved day in the sun, what with full-page Entertainment Weekly reviews and the attention of the mainstream reading community. He has been writing excellent YA for years and is deserving of praise.

I enjoyed Every Day a great deal, especially how effortlessly Levithan creates the worlds of so many varied teenagers in so few pages. However, I think that some of Levithan’s other books explore the nuances of young relationships and love with a bit more subtlety. If you are new to Levithan and looking for more, might I recommend Are We There Yet?, Marly’s Ghost, or my absolute favorite, The Realm of Possibility.

2. So, about that Day 6025.

The short of it (not news for most of you), on Day 6025, A wakes up in the body of an obese teenager. A has never been obese before, never existed in a body of that size, and he reacts with immediate negative, offensive language. This is not a flattering or sensitive portrayal of life that is reality for many, many Americans and young people.

However, I can see the literary purpose of Levithan’s choice to set A against his body – this is a point in the novel when A wants to make a relationship work with Rhiannon, but in this less attractive body, Rhiannon finds it harder to see A inside, to see why it’s worth the effort to date a non-bodied entity. A is scared of this potential hurdle from the get-go – he/she is always A, but he has no control over any given corporeal appearance. And the feeling of being in a body that doesn’t feel the way your body should feel is uncomfortable. I get that.

But I don’t think this excuses the level of vitriol in Levithan’s language. It really was jarring even for me – a generally sympathetic, easy-going reader. I don’t know if it’s the author’s responsibility to make artistic changes in order to please every subset of people, but it seems that this chapter could have been written to the same effect with maybe half of the negative language, without the stereotypical perceptions of overweight people. It sucks that this one chapter has ruined the reading experience for so many.

Earlier this year, I had a short conversation about my YA reading preferences with a children’s-literature-professional-someone. After a few “yes, I loved that”s and “no, that’s not really my thing”s, she had me pegged. “So you like gritty, huh?”

I think I probably said, “ehh sure i dunno ah i guess” or something similarly professional. I like fluffy, girly romances. I like smart books with a sense of humor. I do not like YA books about murders or child abuse or domestic violence or regular violence or divorce. I do not like gritty.

Except for when I love books about drug addicts and eating disorders and prostitution and whups, I guess I like gritty.

Kat Rosenfeld’s Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone is a gritty murder book after my own heart. It begins with one of those ominous beginnings – I don’t have the book handy, but something like “A girl (whose body would be found on the side of the road by small town cops) died not too far away from me while I was doing XYZ, can you believe that?” Spooky, creepy etc. But the XYZ, for Becca, is having uninspired sex with her boyfriend in the back of his pickup truck the night of her high school graduation, and then getting dumped before what was to be their last summer. Now you got me.

Rosenfeld’s debut novel is equally split between Amelia and Becca. Becca is a smart girl in a small town in rural Massachusetts, counting down the days until she can escape to college. But yes, she’s in love, with James – one of those boys who has a sad story to tell, who needs a little fixing. But when Amelia’s body is found and James changes his tune on their relationship, Becca’s grip is rattled – she drinks too much, gets sucked into the small-town Whodunnit drama, and starts to second-guess her decision to leave town.

Many reviews have called Rosenfeld’s language “lush” and “vibrant,” and I would have to agree – this is a book that takes language seriously. The evocative descriptions of Becca’s hometown capture both the visceral details of the setting and the stories that create small-town mythology so essential to understanding the town’s inhabitants. With language and form, Rosenfeld allows Bridgeton to become a character.

That being said, after 200 pages of “lush” and “vibrant,” I, personally, begin to skim sentences, and adjectives such as “flowery” and “overwritten” come to mind. However, this could just have been my body fighting with my brain, wanting to read faster to more quickly reveal secrets and see where this is all leading, to see if Becca will leave or stay, if she will stay with James,  if anyone will figure out what really happened the night Amelia died. If your reading has been feeling a little too fluffy lately, then this might just what you ned.