Tilt by Ellen Hopkins review

Love—good and bad—forces three teens’ worlds to tilt in a riveting novel from New York Times bestselling author Ellen Hopkins.

Three teens, three stories—all interconnected through their parents’ family relationships. As the adults pull away, caught up in their own dilemmas, the lives of the teens begin to tilt….

Mikayla, almost eighteen, is over-the-top in love with Dylan, who loves her back jealously. But what happens to that love when Mikayla gets pregnant the summer before their senior year—and decides to keep the baby?

Shane turns sixteen that same summer and falls hard in love with his first boyfriend, Alex, who happens to be HIV positive. Shane has lived for four years with his little sister’s impending death. Can he accept Alex’s love, knowing that his life, too, will be shortened?

Harley is fourteen—a good girl searching for new experiences, especially love from an older boy. She never expects to hurdle toward self-destructive extremes in order to define who she is and who she wants to be.

Love, in all its forms, has crucial consequences in this standalone novel.

From Goodreads

Tilt follows the teenagers introduced in her adult novel Triangles. Each of the three teens are facing their own struggles with demons. None of them ever expected to end up in the situations in which they find themselves, but who does? 

Mikayla can't imagine a world without Dylan, so why would he expect her to hurt their baby? Shane has used "light recreational drugs" to help him cope with a dying little sister & the fact that his homosexuality has caused him to be a blight on the family. But how far will he falls when he falls for a doomed lover? Harley is a newly minted high schooler trying to find her own path in a sea of confusion. With no real guiding reference as to what a relationship or proper personal responsibility should look like, she risks losing everything she never knew she'd miss.

As far as the story is concerned, this is a very traditional Ellen Hopkins novel. Told in verse, you're pulled into very hectic situations and tossed in all sorts of directions. Each character has some serious demons to face that they couldn't have really planned for no matter how hard they may have tried. While none of them have perfect parents, I really think their parents' issues cause more damage than the teens are able to cope with at such a fragile time in their lives. 

I'm sure every reader will be able to identify with at least one of the main characters, but I really enjoyed the vignettes from other characters. Between each section of a main character's story is one page from a minor character's point of view. I think this gives the book a different feel than we usually get when reading from just the main characters' views. In a way it breaks down the barrier between how the main characters' perceive events & the reality of the situation.

Unfortunately, this book does not provide the type of closure that I have come to expect from Ellen's books. While her previous books may not have answered every question, I think they still left the reader with some sort of closure or satisfactory ending. The final sections of each character felt very abrupt to me. It's almost as if I was missing a few pages. When I checked, my book was in fact complete. So just a heads up, this one ends messily and in no real way gives the reader or the characters any sort of completion. While that may have been her intention, it didn't really sit that well with me.

Overall though I enjoyed the book, as much as one can say they "enjoyed" such a book. What were your thoughts?

Saving Maddie by Varian Johnson review

Joshua Wynn is a preacher’s son and a “good boy” who always does the right thing. Until Maddie comes back to town. Maddie is the daughter of the former associate pastor of Joshua’s church, and his childhood crush. Now Maddie is all grown up, gorgeous—and troubled. She wears provocative clothes to church, cusses, drinks, and fools around with older men. Joshua’s ears burn just listening to the things she did to get kicked out of boarding school, and her own home.

As time goes on, Josh goes against his parents and his own better instincts to keep Maddie from completely capsizing. Along the way, he begins to question his own rigid understanding of God and whether, as his mother says, a girl like Maddie is beyond redemption. Maddie leads Josh further astray than any girl ever has . . . but is there a way to reconcile his love for her and his love for his life in the church?


From Goodreads

Joshua & Maddie are not star-crossed lovers. Rather, these two are the best & truest of friends. They share a different kind of love that goes beyond what anyone thinks about them. As children they spent all their time together in and out of church while their fathers were the ministers preaching the gospel. But when Maddie's father is transferred to another parish, Maddie & Joshua vow to write each other every day to keep in touch. For a while that works until Maddie stops writing back.


Eventually Joshua gives up writing her & begins to move on with his faith by being the pinnacle preacher's son. He leads the youth group, he volunteers at the nursing home & he even abstains from all morally compromising situations. While it makes him an outcast at parties (who really wants to drink alcohol & get frisky with their date with the preacher's kid?) Joshua has settled into a comfortable existence. And just like that Maddie shows up all dark & jaded.


Now Joshua has to decide who he's living his life for & why. There are so many questions & so little time. Events are escalating all over town with pressure from every imaginable direction baring down on Joshua. The only thing he can do is choose, but who & what?


I really enjoyed this book. It was exactly what I was expecting it to be in all the right ways. As a teen I spent a week each summer at a church camp in the mountains of North Carolina. While we were all feeling our way around our faith, there were several campers who were preacher's kids (pk's) that we all looked to for example & spiritual guidance. The second day of my sophomore year one of them said it wasn't easy to be a pk & that they were just as lost as we were. While they had a duty to uphold & represent their parent's ministry, they were really just putting on a brave face because it's what was expected of them.


Joshua is in the exact same predicament. He's been following the predetermined path thinking he had free will all along until free will actually showed up & said 'hi.' Now he's kind of floating along trying to wrestle not only with his faith, but his family, his friends, his emotions & definitely his hormones. Maddie is the typical rebel, except she's deeply spiritual leading the reader to become endeared to her. Able to quote chapter & verse on command, Maddie is also lost. Unlike Joshua though, she claims she doesn't want to find the right path.


There is so much going on in this book that I felt consumed by it. Again, in a good way. It has been a long time since I have really been able to soak up the feeling of a book & completely relate to all characters involved. No one in this book is anywhere near perfect, but they all blend together to make you understand that that's okay.


Truly, I don't have enough words to adequately explain my love for this book. While there are many "controversial" topics (sex, alcohol, promiscuity, etc) they are needed in the context of the book & the main characters' struggles. I think I'd feel comfortable with a 7th or 8th grader reading this, as long as they could question anything & everything they read. :)

Bright Young Things by Anna Godbersen review

It's 1929, do you know who you're getting your liquor from? It's probably from one of the dapper men & their socialite wives/girlfriends that you dream about one day being. For Cordelia & Letty, that is exactly the case.

The two girls are enchanted by the big lights they've heard about in New York City & decide to head out of their Midwestern home to search out what each is looking for in life. For Cordelia, she is searching for the father she has always missed, but never known. She has his name & her love-struck, deceased mother's memories to help her. Little does she know, the man she is seeking is none other than one of the most influential men in the bootlegging business. It turns out he's missed the daughter he never knew about just as much as the son he raised himself. Cordelia finds herself settling into this luxurious life, but is worried about the danger and the cost.

Letty is destined for stardom or she hopes at least. The girl is determined to see her name in flashing lights on Broadway. What she settles for, just to get started she thinks, is living with three other cigarette girls who work in a local club. On a lark one night she decides to get on stage & really show the crowd what she's got. This garners her two admirers, one who is interested in her purely for herself & another who has other ideas. Letty must decide who to trust because depending on her choice, she may lose her chance to be who she's always wanted to become.

These girls are just getting started and have a long way to go before they'll find their own ways, but only time will tell just how far they'll go to get what they want out of life.

Bright Young Things is written much in the same style as Godbersen's wildly-popular Luxe series. We are following two main female characters as they interact & navigate the changing world around them, while a third female manages to become an important person to both female leads all on her own.

I enjoyed the changing perspective as well as the lush setting. Nothing can quite compare to the roaring 1920's with the ambiance, parties, & experiences that are exclusive to the time period. Godbersen continues her incredible ability to weave an alluring setting with exacting detail. The seedy clubs, lavish parties & picturesque homes aren't spared at all. One can truly imagine it all laid out in front.

I found it a little harder to get a handle on the main characters. It's not that they were unsympathetic, but they just seemed so distant. I felt like we were really getting to know them as they were discovering themselves. Normally this kind of thing appeals to me, but in such a historical setting it didn't lend itself quite so well. I thought the girls would feel well0established then get the rug pulled out from under them, but this was just... different.

There were also three very different experiences that kind of overlap one another that caused a bit of confusion for me. While Cordelia was ushered into a lifestyle that Astrid was accustomed to, Letty was living as a starving artist. While they intermingled with some of the same locations, they all had divergent interactions that left me feeling a bit befuddled.

None of this is to say that it is a bad book, it is far from it. Godbersen has done a fine job & I am eagerly awaiting the September 20th release of Bright Days. I think that this book requires an attentive mind frame that I was lacking at the time, but that I fully intend on having engaged when I read the sequel.

Anyone else feel a little off-kilter with this one or was I just reading too much into it?

Nostlagic Friday: A Door Near Here

Welcome back to Nostalgic Friday! Since I love all things historical (culturally, physically, and personally) I do a post on Fridays honoring some awesome book that is a bit older. Many of them are books I enjoyed in my teens and others are books that I discovered as an adult that I think are relevant to YA readers.

I read the 2000 release book A Door Near Here not long after my parents split up, which may have some slight impact on why it means so much to me. A truly compelling story, that has unfortunately been viewed in real life by many children.

Fifteen-year-old Katherine is the oldest of four children. She is also "mother and father" to those three younger than her. With an absent father, who doesn't really care anyway, and a mother who is unable to drag herself out of her vodka bottle, let alone her bed, Katherine thinks it'll be a cinch to pick-up where her mother left off.

All too quickly the fun and games of getting to do whatever they want takes a toll on the food supply and budget. Hiding the truth from everyone so that the family will remain together, also begins to wear on the children's shoulders. So much so that the youngest of them, Alisa, runs away from school in search of a better life for the whole family in Narnia. When a kindly teacher reaches out a helping hand, Katherine lashes out due to strain and puts everything she and the kids worked so hard for in serious jeopardy.

Wow. Katherine was the strong, independent, stubborn girl that I looked up to when I was a child. I felt like she really knew what she wanted and what was best and would stop at nothing to ensure that everything was done to the best possible standard. She fascinated me. Her youngest sister, Alisa, embodied the childlike thought that one can simply slip into a fantasy world and make the real world disappear. Nothing too awful ever goes wrong in those worlds and if it does, the hero/heroine comes along to save the day. It only makes sense that that should also happen in real life.

The tone of voice and plotline were so realistic I felt like I was listening to a friend recount a nightmare. It was so raw and accessible that I truly believe that any child, from youth to teen, can appreciate some aspect of this book. Even adults could discuss how each child exuded certain personality traits that helped and hurt the family's chance for survival.

While obviously not the happiest read ever, the stark reality and frankness was refreshing. Everyone can learn something from this book and I think it ranks on my top list of books that everyone should at least glance at during some point in their lifetime. I reminds me of the 1991 movie "Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead" and the Cynthia Voigt book Homecoming. If this book sounds appealing to you, be sure to check out these other items as well.

Party by Tom Leveen

This was a complicated, interwoven storyline. So that I don't giveaway too much, I'm using the book jacket summary.

It's Saturday night in Santa Barbara and school is done for the year. Everyone is headed to the same party. Or at least it seems that way. The place is packed. The beer is flowing. Simple, right? But for 11 different people the motives are way more complicated. As each character takes a turn and tells his or her story, the eleven individuals intersect, and reconnect, collide, and combine in ways that none of them ever saw coming.

From Goodreads

Whew, that was so much safer than what I originally had written. Party was a fascinating novel. It is told in first person, based on the chapter narrator. There are eleven narrators all giving partial glimpses at this one night. When you piece all their stories together you obtain one cohesive time line of events. Each of these kids represents almost the whole gamut of the teenage years. The parental arguments, the sense of loss, the shyness, the awkwardness, the break-ups, the make-ups, the hook-ups, and everything in between. These eleven kids experience it all in hyperdrive at this one party.

While each character only gets one chapter, I felt like they didn't waste any time getting to the heart of their personalities and issues. You knew from the beginning what was going on in their lives and what their personal focus would be. Even better, are the vignettes we glean from earlier chapters. By the final chapter we have come full circle and see the complete night as a whole.

I think most people can find at least one character they can relate to in this book, whether it's the loner girl with a secret, the uber-responsible friend, the devoutly spiritual, or the conflicted jock. There are attributes in each of them that appeal to the reader in some manner. I personally identified with the responsible friend, although I never attended a party in high school (lame, I know). While not a light, happy read, if you're a fan of no-holds-barred, realistic fiction (along the lines of Going Too Far) then this book is perfectly suited for your tastes.

This book was graciously provided by Around the World Tours.

Love You, Hate You, Miss You by Elizabeth Scott

How would you feel if you killed your best friend? This is the question that plagues Amy, the survivor of a horrible car crash. Freshly released from rehab after a 75 day stint, Amy struggles to redefine her life now that she has to fit in without the one person who understood her and the "crutches" they shared.

Amy's parents' infatuation with one another drives her need for affection and attention. Her drinking, drug-using, and casual sex lifestyle are her coping mechanisms. Her deceased best friend Julia shared these things with her. Amy is now confronted with the loss of her best friend, the overwhelming guilt she feels for causing that loss, and the difficult adjustment of sobriety.

Her shrink asks her to keep a diary of her experience as a way to help examine what she is going through. Her journal becomes letters to Julia where she finally explores and discovers her true "friendship." While following this path Amy will gain an understanding of her parents, confront her long ignored and suppressed demons, and find a new friend in all this turmoil.

While at times this can be a difficult and emotional read, I strongly recommend it. Also, although I don't believe in a rating system for books, this one does have some slightly more mature content that might not be okay for younger, less-advanced teens.