Tag: YA

book review

Exciting YA Debut Novel

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Review of The Coming Storm by Regina M. Hansen

I started The Coming Storm by Regina M. Hansen not knowing what to expect. I had read only a brief, enigmatic description of the plot and seen an image of the gorgeous cover art. Reading the opening scene soon assured me of Hansen’s talent. She accomplishes a great deal quickly without making the prose or plot too caught up in exposition. She introduces her protagonist and one of many narrators, Beet MacNeill, as well as some of her family while executing major plot points that will reverberate throughout the book. Hansen clearly knew her story intimately and had planned its opening with exceptional care.

            This attention to detail and elegant construction of plot remains consistent throughout the novel. The story progresses along two timelines, one moving forward in time in 1950 and one moving ever further back in time, even to pre-historic human history. While in the 1950 timeline Hansen switches between established character narrators, in the past timeline many of the narrators are tangentially connected to her primary characters or even one-off characters we never encounter again after their narration concludes. Hansen handles these techniques admirably, keeping the focus of the past timeline more on plot events and establishing a pattern of supernatural occurrences than on the narrators themselves. Hansen clearly trusts the intelligence of her readers in order to be able to connect the dots between the pattern established in the past and ongoing events in the 1950 timeline. My one complaint about these timelines was that were one or two too many repetitions in the past timeline that did not contribute much to the supernatural mythology with which Hansen was working because the events had already been depicted several times.

            In addition to the well-planned structure, I loved Hansen’s ability to blend her historical setting of Prince Edward Island with the mythology of the sea and the Scotch heritage of some of the island’s inhabitants. So many YA novels are either realism or fantasy that The Coming Storm’s use of both genres felt fresh and innovative.

Prince Edward Island | The Canadian Encyclopedia
Photo courtesy The Canadian Encyclopedia

            Finally, Hansen’s writing style and characters offer ample reading incentive of their own. The characters of Beet’s world are a delight. They range from her supernatural-story loving best friend (how convenient for a posse attempting to fight demonic influences 😊), the town’s otherworldly librarian, and a boy visiting from Boston for the summer. What’s more, Beet’s love of music and the sea are expressed through gorgeous prose describing these passions.

            If your last literary visit to Prince Edward Island was reading Anne of Green Gables or one of its sequels, it’s time to return and see it afresh through The Coming Storm.

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Dear Readers

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Review of Dear Sweet Pea by Julie Murphy

I remember standing in Target’s book section several years ago and picking up a book titled Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy about a fat girl who loves Dolly Parton and enrolls in her local beauty pageant. Enchanted, I picked up a copy but didn’t get around to reading it right away (although its cover of a blonde woman in a red evening dress standing in thrall to a tiara never failed to elicit a chuckle when I walked past). Fast forward to December 2018 when said book was adapted into a Netflix movie. It’s heartfelt and funny with a great Dolly Parton soundtrack. So, last winter my reading consisted of a binge of all of Murphy’s novels (including Puddin’, a sort-of-sequel that focuses on some of Dumplin’s secondary characters). Then, once I exhausted her canon, I pre-ordered of her new middle grade novel (designated for readers roughly eight to twelve years old), Dear Sweet Pea, which is on bookshelves now.

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com

Dear Sweet Pea is set in a small Texas town where, following a recent and amicable divorce, thirteen-year-old Sweet Pea’s mom and dad live in near-identical houses on the same street. Sweet Pea finds this same-but-not-the-sameness frustrating as she splits time between the two houses. School is equally challenging as well since a former best friend, now frenemy, creates new drama. In the middle of all these changes in Sweet Pea’s life, her eccentric neighbor and newspaper advice columnist, Miss Flora Mae, asks Sweet Pea to water the plants and forward the advice column correspondence while Flora Mae’s out of town. Sweet Pea intercepts a few letters and gives some advice of her own.

Despite transitioning to a middle grade book after her earlier YA novels, Murphy’s writing is confident in both its style and storytelling. The vocabulary and sentence structure are streamlined for younger readers (but also kept this big kid reader very entertained). Murphy creates a beautiful array of characters from Sweet Pea and her classmates to assorted teachers and parents. My favorite might just be the deliciously eccentric Miss Flora Mae who keeps her most important documents in the oven and who the local kids suspect may be a vampire. Murphy perfectly captures the feeling of being caught halfway between childhood and teenagedom as well as the uncertainty of not knowing how to move from one stage to the next. Dear Sweet Pea is ideal for fifth to seventh grade readers (and anyone who remembers what those in-between years were like).

For fans craving the next movie adapted from Julie Murphy’s work, Disney Channel has your back as they are developing a movie version of Dear Sweet Pea!

Read if you like: Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh as well as Dumplin’ and Puddin’ by Julie Murphy.

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Pumpkin Spice Confessional

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Review of Pumpkinheads by Rainbow Rowell and Faith Erin Hicks with color by Sarah Stern

I write to you, dear readers, from inside my pumpkin spice confessional. Today is the first official day of fall, but for me once Labor Day passes all I can think about are cooler fall temperatures and all the seasonal trappings that are soon to follow from mums on front porches to cider in the stores and then, later, the smoky smell of fire pits at twilight and stories of supernatural beings as Halloween approaches. Needless to say, I’ve already tasted my first Reese’s pumpkin of the season and have a pumpkin decorating plan locked in (spoiler alert: my pumpkin’s going to look like a unicorn!).

Photo by James Wheeler on Pexels.com

For the autumnally inclined among us, then, the young adult graphic novel Pumpkinheads, written by Rainbow Rowell, illustrated by Faith Erin Hicks, and with color by Sarah Stern, could not come at a better time. This may well be the ideal read for a fall night. What’s more, you can easily devour it in one sitting if you choose. Set at what Rowell describes in an interview as “the Disneyland of pumpkin patches,” Pumpkinheads follows two patch employees, Deja and Josiah, on their last night working at the patch in their senior year of high school. What follows is a delightful blend of friendship, romance, and bursts of adventure.

First, the patch itself will make you want to launch yourself headfirst into a fall festival as it sports a pumpkin slingshot and haunted hacienda in addition to the more traditional haystack ride and corn maize (this book has puns galore and I find them adorable). The inside cover of the book features a map of the über-deluxe patch to help readers orient themselves during Deja and Josiah’s journey to various attractions. In addition, Hicks’ renderings of converted barns and families in costume coupled with Stern’s warm colors create a cozy canvas for the characters to ramble through on their last night.

Second, have your snacks ready when you read this because each of the patch’s many food stands outdoes the one before it from the Kettle Corn Kettle to the Chili Fries Stand to— my favorite— the Pumpkin Bomb Stand. (I wish I could add sound effects here to give this last one the flourish it deserves.) The Pumpkin Bomb is a mythical concoction of vanilla ice cream sandwiched between two slices of pumpkin pie, covered with chocolate, and mounted on a stick. In other words, it’s pumpkin spice heaven.

Of course, all this delightful scene setting wouldn’t add up to a story without characters and conflict. Luckily, Rowell delivers on both fronts. Although we only spend one night with Deja and Josiah, Rowell capably demonstrates their personalities as they interact with each other and patch employees and visitors. Here, again, Hicks’ panels provide beautiful facial reactions during conversations and a sense of movement in the action sequences. The protagonists’ quick-witted dialogue made me laugh more than once but they also talk about ideas like fate and free will without those conversations seeming pretentious or out of context for their situation. As It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown demonstrates, the pumpkin patch has long been a site for existential contemplation and this remains true for Deja and Josiah.

I would happily read many more stories with Rowell’s lovable characters in or outside of the patch. The graphic novel hints that they may apply to be Christmas elves for a mall Santa, and I can only hope this leads to more holiday sequels! For now, though, I’m off to try and recreate the Pumpkin Bomb in my kitchen. Happy Fall everybody!