DCL Teen Reviews

Meet Sherlock Holmes.  No, not the skinny, arrogant and brilliant man from the famous Arthur Conan Doyle series, but the young and naive 14 year-old Sherlock of 1868.  He’s the quiet son of an army officer. Since his father is in India for summer and his mother  is ill, Sherlock has to live with distant and reclusive relatives out in the Hampshire countryside.  Away from boarding school and home, Sherlock is faced with a long and boring summer.

Of course, it doesn’t turn out that way.  Sherlock’s American tutor (yes he has to study during the summer!) Amyus Crowe, helps Sherlock with more than just math and literature; he coaxes Sherlock to hone his keen powers of observation and deduction.  Which come in handy when Sherlock is pulled into a mystery involving the evil albino Baron Maupertuis, his crew of brutal minions and their sinister plot to undermine the entire British Army.

The story includes plenty of action, friendship and mild romance, and even hints at Sherlock’s later-life addictions.  Along the way we get several interesting story puzzles to ponder and some tidbits of history, presented in such an interesting way that the reader hardly realizes they’ve learned something new!  Lane captures the restrictions and the grit of England during the 1800’s and is incredibly loyal to the essence of Doyle’s original Sherlock Holmes.  Death Cloud is a great start to this new Young Sherlock Holmes series by Andrew Lane.

~Laura J.

May 2011

To see the entire, updated Hunger Games read-alike list, use the Read-Alikes tab at the top of this page, or click :    http://blogs.douglascountylibraries.org/dcteeny/read-alikes/

Let the dystopian craze continue!

~djc

“For the record, I wasn’t around the day they decided to become Dumb.  If I’d been their manager back then I’d have pointed out that the name, while accurate, was not exactly smart.  It just encouraged people to question the band’s intelligence, maybe even their sanity.  And the way I saw it, Dumb didn’t have much of either.”

18-year-old Piper has gotten herself into a mess.  She has one month to get a paying gig for Dumb, the band she’s managing.  The dysfunctional band that includes: one egomaniacal pretty boy, one silent rocker, one talentless piece of eye candy, one angry girl, and one nerdy drummer, which makes it a band with five really distinct flavors.  A band that’s ready to self-destruct at any moment, despite the fact that they just won Seattle’s annual Teen Battle of the Bands.  A band that may or may not have the talent it takes to really make it big.  It’s kind of hard for Piper to tell, being that she’s deaf.

But sometimes it turns out you don’t have to hear the music in order to sell it, you just have to understand what makes the band members rock.  And maybe just find out a little bit about yourself in the process.

In The Five Flavors of Dumb, a fast-paced novel by Antony John that’s full of rock history, you’ll learn what it takes to really feel the music.

~Laura

Left destitute after her parents’ death, Jane Moore is forced to quit college and find employment as a nanny.  Her practical, no-nonsense nature lands her a plum position: looking after the daughter of rock idol Nico Rathburn.  Despite the wide gulf in their temperaments and situations, Nico and Jane find themselves falling in love.  But Nico’s hard-partying, troubled past isn’t as buried as he’d like to believe, and a dark secret threatens to tear the two apart.  What will Jane do when she discovers the truth?

I’m a big fan of retellings of classic stories, and Lindner’s modern update of Jane Eyre is an excellent one, retaining all the passion and Gothic drama of the original while still in touch with 21^st century sensibilities.  If you can’t get enough forbidden romance, Jane by April Lindner is definitely one to check out!

~Christi

Most of the continents have fallen into the ocean.  People are living crammed into the remaining space.  Whole families are squeezed into one room.  Food is scarce. Except for the one place on earth where a family can own a hundred acres and have all the space they desire – under the ocean. This is the setting for Dark Life, by Kat Falls.

14-year-old Ty has spent his whole life under the ocean.  He was the first baby born undersea and has spent his days tending the family’s underwater fish farm, swimming, exploring and piloting his wrayboard through this dark undersea life.  His skin even glows from a lifetime of eating phosphorescent fish.

Gemma has spent her whole life topside, mostly in an orphanage that she’s dying to leave.  If she could just find her brother Richard, her only living relative, and get her emancipation papers signed, she could gain her freedom.  Richard was last seen working for an undersea crew and has gone missing.

A band of marauding pirates, led by the mysterious Shade, has been terrorizing the undersea homesteads, putting everyone’s food supply in peril.  The commonwealth government above has mandated that the dark life pioneers must find and stop the pirates, or they’ll be forced to give up their hard won homesteads.  Ty has been planning for his own homestead his whole life.  Can he use his dark gift to capture Shade and save his beloved dark life?  Or is he just putting himself, Gemma, and his whole undersea community in peril?

~Laura

 Twenty years ago, Phileas Fogg made a bet that he could circle the world in 80 days—and won.  Now it’s 1891, and his son Harry has made a reckless wager of his own: that his steam-powered motorcar, the Flash, can make the round-the-world trip in 100 days all by itself (excluding bodies of water, obviously).  He’s determined to prove the motorcar is the transportation of the future, a claim that London’s railroad magnates view with skepticism.  If Harry loses, his father is out £6,000—and Harry has to give up tinkering with motorcars for good!  With his mechanic, a stuffed-shirt minder, and a lady journalist in tow, Harry braves bad roads, trains, bandits, and suspicions of sabotage in his attempt to win the wager and prove his worth.

This sequel to Around the World in Eighty Days follows the spirit of the Jules Verne original with adventure, technological innovation, and a slight steampunk edge.  If you’re looking for something to tide you over until the next segment of the Leviathan series, Around the World in 100 Days, by Gary Blackwood, is definitely one to check out!

~Christi

Considering there is a seemingly endless stream of problem-ridden teen love stories out there, I would welcome more like Pete Hautman’s The Big Crunch.  This is just a story of the relationship between two smart high school kids, but it’s done so well that somehow it reads like something more than that. June and Wes have families like the ones you might actually know.  June’s family moves around a lot, while Wes has friends that he’s known for years. Sure, they live in the suburbs, but the unremarkable setting keeps the focus firmly fixed on June and Wes and their interactions, and thankfully no one is trying too hard to be hip and edgy. The strength of this story, told in alternating points of view by June and Wes, is the honest characters and refreshingly witty dialogue. For me that meant I really wanted to know what was going to happen to them.

This author has a keen eye for what teens do to navigate their world. Basically, they are hoping to survive –with their hearts and maybe their integrity intact. The Big Crunch also explores the truth that, while many people will pass in and out of our lives, a few will be truly unforgettable.

Pete Hautman is the author of several YA books, including Godless, which won him the 2004 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.

~DJC

Thirteen-year-old Lucy Sexton’s life is turned upside down when she opens the door to find a strange woman wearing tattered clothes—and her mother’s face.  Helen Smythe is the long-lost twin of Lucy’s mother, Aliese.  Separated from Aliese at birth, Helen was sent to live in a workhouse. Meanwhile, Aliese was raised in wealth and privilege.

The Sexton family takes “Aunt Helen” into their home and grooms her for high society, and Lucy soon grows fond of her newfound relation.  But trouble follows in Helen’s wake, dark secrets that a young girl like Lucy can barely guess at.  Then one day she comes home to find the twin sisters tied up in the parlor—one alive, one with her throat slashed.  Who has survived?  Surely Lucy should recognize her own mother…shouldn’t she?

The Twin’s Daughter by Lauren Baratz-Logsted, is a wonderful Victorian mystery and coming-of-age story and a real page turner.  As Lucy grows from a girl to a woman, she learns to re-evaluate her perceptions of her parents, her family, and her handsome neighbor, Kit.  Baratz-Logsted’s writing is filled with deception, betrayal, and dark passions, and keeps you guessing until the very end.

~ Christi

Todd Hewitt is a man.  Well, he’s almost a man according to the rules of Prentisstown.  In just thirty days Todd will turn 13 and be the last child in a city with no women or girls.  A place where everyone can hear everyone else’s thoughts – even the thoughts of the farm animals and pets.  You might think it would be cool to communicate with your pet, but Todd’s faithful dog Manchee is not the brightest canine on the block and his thoughts provide for most of the book’s comical moments.  But survival, not hilarity, is the essence of The Knife of Never Letting Go, the first book in the Chaos Walking Trilogy by Patrick Ness.

When Todd notices a spot of silence amid the constant “noise” of everyone’s thoughts, he suddenly becomes the center of attention in town, and not in a good way.  It seems there are many secrets in Prentisstown. Cast out of town to find a distant city, Todd must rely on his wits, and Manchee’s nose, in order to survive.  When the source of that silence, Viola, the first girl Todd has ever seen, teams up with Todd, they just might have a chance to get away from the zealots and maniacs who are fast on their trail.  This exciting futuristic adventure puts a great twist on the ideas of constant communication, privacy, and extremists, and it has a cliffhanger ending that will leave you reaching for the next book the instant you finish this one.

~ Laura

Other books in the Chaos Walking Trilogy include:

*For more dystopian tales, click the Read-alikes tab above, and see Hunger Games Readalikes.

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

In Ship Breaker, near a drowned New Orleans ravaged by hurricanes and global warming, Nailer and his young crew eke out a meager existence by scavenging materials on the ship-littered coast.

“This taut, suspenseful novel is a relentless adventure story featuring nuanced characters in thought-provoking conflicts. Bacigalupi artfully intertwines themes of loyalty, family, friendship, trust and love,” said Printz Award Committee Chair Erin Downey Howerton.

The committee also named four Printz Honor Books:

Stolen by Lucy Christopher

The rugged Australian outback becomes Gemma’s prison after she is drugged and abducted by a handsome, obsessed stranger in a first novel filled with searing imagery and archetypal characters.

Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King

Vera Dietz wants to be ignored, but the ghost of her ex-best friend won’t leave her alone in this dark comedy that examines relationships, identity, grief and flowcharts.

Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick

In Sedgwick’s grim, chilling story set in the Arctic Circle, Sig finds his father’s frozen corpse as human predator Wolff arrives seeking retribution and a hidden Gold Rush treasure.

Nothing by Janne Teller

Pierre Anthon’s nihilism causes his classmates to begin a search for life’s meaning in this bold, unsettling parable translated from Danish.