Abby Savage’s life seems like a soap opera.  See if you can keep up with this: Abby’s mother is married to a man, dubbed Guitar Guy, half her age who is also the ex-boyfriend of both of Abby’s older sisters, Shelby and Kait.  Not only has Guitar Guy dated both of Abby’s sisters, he is the father of Kait’s unborn child.  And it gets worse, but you’ll have to read to find out about that.  For obvious reasons, Abby has decided to live by a set of relationship rules, rule #1 being find someone new.  The problem, the boy she loves, Jackson, doesn’t fit the rules.  Abby doesn’t trust her herself and refuses to think with her heart for fear of ending up like the rest of the women in her family, but what will Abby’s rules truly make her happy?

Reaction: Loved It!  My favorite part of the book is not something to turns up in the summary.  It is Abby’s relationship with her closeted best friend Cody. When readers first meet Cody, Abby warns us:

Before you get your hopes up, let me tell you this is not one of those situations where the girl goes out with the empty-headed jock only to realize that her soul mate was living next door to her all along.  Cody is gay.  He hasn’t told me–or anyone–yet, but I know.  When you’ve been friends with a guy your whole life, it’s pretty easy to figure out. (pg 3)

First, this is a great example of Abby’s voice.  Second, this is a huge part of the book, Cody’s sexuality and his coming to terms with it.  Cody is teased at school despite the fact that he isn’t out.  His denial, at least publicly, that he is gay causes horrible tension between him and Abby.  Even after he decides to come out, Cody faces some horrible choices.  I found Cody’s story sad and compelling and very well done.

I also thought that characterization of Abby’s family, her sisters, her mother, and her father, was wonderful.  These were some very flawed people but they weren’t all good and they weren’t all bad.  I think Geerling showed wonderful talent in her handling of these characters.  While they are different from anyone I know, I do believe that there are certainly people who will be able to relate with Abby and her family.

My only gripe is with the main romantic relationship.  I think Jackson’s character is as well-drawn as the rest.  He’s a jock and a bit of an a** when he wants to be but he is also sweet and caring.  Definitely not perfect.  Abby and Jackson’s relationship blossomed before readers enter the story, so the fact that they don’t spend a lot of time together to develop their feelings doesn’t bother me too much.  The two things that bothered me were: 1. Jackson seemed ill concerned with the fact that he could possibly be he father of Kait’s baby.  While it is unlikely, it is not 100% ruled out.  I would want some sort of DNA test just to be sure.  2. Abby’s end decision was a 180 turn around that seemed to come from nowhere.  While I was happy with the end, it just didn’t fit her character.  That was disappointing after what I thought was so much stellar characterization.  Abby and Jackson took a backseat to some of the other storylines–Cody and Abby’s family drama–so I wish I could have had more time for Abby to come to her eventual decision.

Despite that, like I said at the beginning, I loved Fancy White Trash.  It is definitly for older readers–drinking, sex (though not explicit), and even a butt plug (a first for me) showed up in the story.  Still, an awesome depicition of an imperfect family and a wonderfully handled story of a young man struggling with his sexuality.

Jo-Jo’s life is pretty crappy.  He lives in a poor section of Baltimore with his slightly older sister and her baby.  His mom is dead and his dad flip-flops between spending time in jail and spending time passed out after a long night at the bar.  Jo-Jo has no real ambition, sees no point in school or anything like that since he figures he’s just going to end up following the same path as the rest of his family.  The one bright spot in Jo-Jo’s life was his girlfriend Violet.  Jo-Jo got a lot of crap at school for dating Violet because she was black and he’s white.  No one every bothered Violet about their relationship until the day White Knife Johnson murdered her.  With Violet gone, Jo-Jo figures he doesn’t have anything else to live for.  He takes a gun and goes down by the stream near his house.  Things don’t go quite as planned, though.  When he gets to the stream he finds someone has beaten him to the punch; there’s a naked dead girl floating in the water.  Jo-Jo can’t stand the sight of that girl in the water so he wades in to pull her out and gets the shock of his life.  She revives and she’s black and white and she says she’s from the Afterlife.  Turns out her name is Max and she and her band-mates have come back to life for awhile to try out new material since they’re too huge in the Afterlife to get an honest opinion.  Jo-Jo puts off killing himself to help out Max and the rest of the guys from the band the Fiendish Lot but it seems it’s Jo-Jo’s time.  After an altercation, Jo-Jo finds himself in the Afterlife, following the Fiendish Lot as they go on tour.  In Jo-Jo’s death he has a second chance to live but he must learn who he is, what’s important, and his true purpose if he’s going to survive his death.

Reaction: Truly unique.  In that respect it reminded me of The Order of Odd-Fish.  I loved the concept of the Afterlife.  The idea was detailed and well thought-out.  In the Afterlife, there is no color, energy comes from burning items brought over from life as people cross over, you never need to eat or sleep or drink, but you have a sol.  Your sol burns brightly if you are fulfilling it and dims leaving you ghostly translucent if you aren’t.  People who have fulfilled their sols in the Afterlife burn so brightly until they burn up, not in a hurting kind of burn but in an awe-inspiring kind of burn, onto the next stage of death.  People who are unfulfilled fade into the mists that surround the edges of the Afterlife until they are nothing.  I really liked the thought that you have a second chance if you left your life unfulfilled and I liked the concept that your fulfillment was something that was measured in a tangible way but the light your sol emits.  One of my other favorite parts of the book were the footnotes of how people Jo-Jo encountered in the Afterlife died.  For example: John Gray, 1980-2004: crushed by falling church bells during freak blizzard (149) or Elvira Custer, 1966-1996: murdered by distant relatives after winning the lottery.

Despite how much I enjoyed Jo-Jo and the Fiendish Lot, it has some flaws.  First of all, it’s really long.  Second, I didn’t necessarily buy Jo-Jo’s transformation even after 473 pages.  Jo-Jo spends most of his Afterlife determined to find Violet.  Every time I think he’s having a breakthrough about what he’s really supposed to be doing with his Afterlife he takes two steps back and returns to his old ways.  He waffles like this through most of the book so his ability to let go in the end seems abrupt to me.  In the end, the good far outweighs the flaws.  I enjoyed Auseon’s sense of humor and creative mind.

Jas is back (Bad Kitty) and trying not to be up to her same old tricks.  She has vowed to be the model daughter so her father (Dadzilla) will allow her to leave her Venice prison and go back to California to be with her super-awesome friends, Polly, Roxy, and Tom, and her super-kissable boyfriend, Jack.  But when all her efforts at being a model daughter don’t get her a trip to California but instead brings the Evil Hench Twins, Jas’ cousin Alyson and her best friend Veronique, to Venice, Jas decides to bag the good girl persona and instead try to be BadJas.  Now that BadJas is in charge, Jas decides to help her one and only friend in Venice, Arabella, figure out who’s following her.  Jas is not sure that Arabella isn’t making up her stalker, but then Arabella is found dead in an apparent suicide.  Jas knows Arabella would not have killed herself and vows to find out who murdered her.  And so Jas once again embarks on a dangerous and exciting adventure trying to solve not one but two murders, both Arabella’s and Arabella’s father’s, with the help of her super-awesome friends, who of course show up for moral support, the Evil Hench Twins (now known by their faerie names — Sapphyre with a “y” and Tiger’s*Eye, the star is silent), a charming gondolier, but not her super-kissable boyfriend who isn’t calling or emailing nearly enough to satisfy Jas.

Reaction: I love Jas.  At times she is a bit much (for example, I can’t stand when she says things like “ASA and P” for ASAP) but most of the time she and her friends and her enemies are simply hilarious.  Here are some examples:

She waved a business card in my face and said, “I’m a reporter.  You are going to be famous.  Tell me how to spell your name.  Is it Jane?”

“Yes,” I agreed, practically running now.  Model Daughters are allergic to fame.  “It’s Jane.”

“Jane what?”

I said, “Jane Doe.”  And then the monkeys in my head who always like to help me out added, “–nut.”

“Jane Doughnut?” the blond reporter lady repeated, giving me a look filled with pity and scorn … “What is your name, really?”

“Jane Doughnut,” the monkeys affirmed. (pg 45-6)

And, when Arabella is running for her life and pulling Jas along behind her, Jas observes:

What was pleasant about this was it allowed me to experience several of the rules of physics firsthand.  For example, the faster you are going when you bash into a man with a hard-sided briefcase, the more it will hurt.  (Force = Mass x Acceleration).  And that being pulled between two women chatting and carrying shopping bags will result in them screaming not-very-nice things at you.  (For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.)  And my favorite: A Jas in motion — such as one who sidesteps to avoid running into a stroller and instead finds herself tripping over a small dog and launching into the air as though she’s a trouble-seeking missile — will stay in motion unless acted upon by an equal but opposite force. (pg 36-7)

Kitty Kitty is just plain fun.  The characters and the mystery are not exactly realistic but this does not detract from the greatness that is Kitty Kitty.  The book is just hilarious (the only word that can truly describe this book) and I cannot wait for more from Jas and her crew, even the faerie Evil Hench Twins.

Plus, as an aside, I think that the teen lit genre needs more mysteries.

Previously: Bad Kitty

Read-a-like: The over-the-topness reminds me of the sarcasm of Maggie Quinn in Prom Dates from Hell and Hell Week.

…

I can’t believe I forgot to write about this.  Jas, when trying to channel her badness, came up with a saying to help her follow the bad path — WWMrTD or what would Mr. T do.  I LOVED Mr. T and the A-Team when I was growing up.  Now, whenever I can’t figure out what to do I am going to ask myself WWMrTD.  Love It!

Flamboyant, aging actress Lily Larouche returns from a 40-year absence to her ruby palace in the desert with no idea where she has been for the last 40 years and finds a baby in her washing machine with a note that says: “This is Jo.  Please take care of her.  But Beware.  This is a DANGEROUS baby.”  Thirteen years later, Jo and her Aunt Lily are still living in the ruby palace and Jo finds herself disappointed that she is not dangerous at all.  Though she is bored with her lonely life out in the desert, Jo is unprepared for what takes place the night of her aunt’s annual Christmas party.  First Jo notices a Russian colonel, Colonel Korsakov, following her about the house.  Then a package containing an odd black box falls out of the sky addressed to Jo from the Order of Odd-Fish.  The next morning a three-foot-tall cockroach named Sefino, who is dressed in a suit, is found tied to the ceiling of the basement lamenting what the tabloids have written about him.  And to top it all of, the villain-wannabe Ken Kiang chases Jo, Aunt Lily, Colonel Korsakov, and Sefino and tries to kill them by shooting down their plane.  The plane is shot down but quickly gobbled by a huge fish and they find themselves safe, if a little mystified, in the belly of the fish.  The fish swims them to shore and pukes them out on the beach of Eldritch City.  It turns out that Aunt Lily and Colonel Korsakov are knights of the Order of Odd-Fish and Sefino is Colonel Korsakov’s butler.  All three had been striped of their memories and exiled from Edritch City, home of the Order of Odd-Fish, thirteen years ago.  While they are happy to be back in Eldritch City, all is not well because there was a reason they were exiled and it has to do with Jo’s birth.  Aunt Lily tells Jo the story of her birth, and it’s not pretty.  For the sake of Jo’s life and for the sake of the entire city, Jo must never tell anyone who she really is.  As far as anyone is concerned, Jo is Aunt Lily’s niece and now her squire, simple as that.  Jo begins to make friends, go on quests, learn to ride an ostrich, adventure into strange parts of Eldritch City, and much more than she ever imagined.  But Jo’s past hangs over her head and her past is about to catch up with her, as pasts often do.  Will Jo be able to conquer her fate and save Eldritch City?

Reaction: Crazy. Zany. Wacky.  Any other synonym of these words.  I was drawn to this book by the cover, which is a very accurate representation of the story, then intrigued by the front flap summary.  This book is so very hard to explain because it is just that weird.  I’ll give you a couple of examples.  First, Colonel Korsakov: “My digestion…It whispers secrets and instructions to me.  And this very moment, Miss Larouch, my digestions advises us to be on guard” (5).  Ken Kiang on becoming evil: “He devoured books about evil; he interviewed terrorists, serial murderers, and dictators; he dabbled in strange and wild diabolisms, slit the throats of shrieking beasts on stone altars in far-off lands, drank kitten blood, and sold his soul no fewer than twenty-three times to any supernatural being who cared to bid on it” (51).  And the traditional knight’s garb of the Great Feast of the Odd-Fish: “All the knights, including Aunt Lily and Colonel Korsakov, had changed into ceremonial feast robes of gold, scarlet, and blazing purple, festooned with epaulettes, sashes, shining spurs, an ornamental sword, a bejeweled bib, and a trailing cape that looked like a doily gone berserk for seven feet.  Crowning all was a towering turban clasped with a ruby in the shape of a fish” (83).  Everything was elaborately explained — location, food, clothing, weapons, everything.  Sometimes it lead to the hilarity of the novel, sometimes I felt it dragged the book down.  For example, during the description of the dueling, one of the dueling traditions is hurling insults before the duel begins.  The insults are funny but long, and I thought there was maybe one or two paragraph-long insults too many.

Overall, I really enjoyed The Order of Odd-Fish.  I liked the main story-line: a young girl learning about her past, finding herself, proving herself, overcoming adversity, and saving the city.  I liked Jo.  She had guts and tried her hardest to do what she thought was right even if that meant not always following the rules.  She also has an adventurous side that I envy.  I would not have had the guts to do some of the things or go some of the places Jo did.  The book was just really fun because of the zany hilarity in Kennedy’s writing style.  Besides the sometimes excessive description my only other complaint would be with the length.  The novel was a bit long and I thought there were some things that could have been cut or cut-back to keep the momentum going.  It is very hard to do The Order of Odd-Fish justice, so just check it out for yourself.  I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Read-a-like: I don’t think there is anything that can compare to this book! :)