Reese is in a juvie jail called the Progress Center.  Busted after money woes caused him to steal prescription sheets from a local doctor’s office, he’s almost to the end of his 2.5 year sentence.  Reese is overall a good kid, he’s even scored a spot in a new work release program where he gets out of jail for 10 days a month to work with elderly patients at a place called Evergreen, but Reese has a problem keeping his hands to himself.  If another inmate challenges him, Reese can’t help but defend himself with his fists, and if someone picks on one of his friends, Reese can’t stand by and watch his friends get hurt.  Reese’s heart may be in the right place but that won’t help him if his hands and his tempter keep getting him in trouble.  Will Reese be able to get his act together so he can be released from juvie and get his life on track once he’s back outside?

Reaction: I have only read one other Walter Dean Myers book — I know, for shame! — and it was Monster.  I loved Monster.  I loved the format.  I loved the flawed main character who was a product of both his environment and his own choices.  I loved that I felt for the main character despite not being entirely certain of his innocence.  I loved not really knowing whether he was guilty or innocent, and I love the fact of his guilt or innocence did not really matter to the message of the book.  Monster is obviously a classic.  Though very similar in many respects, Lockdown did not have the same sparkle as Monster.  Lockdown seems to have to try harder and tell more to accomplish a similar goal.  That being said, I read Lockdown pretty much all in one sitting and was invested in Reese and his outcome.

I found Reese to be a very accessible character.  He’s a good kid who loves his sisters, has crappy parents, and has made some bad choices.  He continues to make bad choices while in juvie, especially when it comes to fighting, but, I have to say, I couldn’t help but hope he stepped up and fought in some of the situations.  I can’t imagine how hard it would be to have to decide whether to join a fight when you know you could face severe consequences or not join a fight and watch a friend, someone who is younger, weaker, and more helpless than the person wailing on him, get beat to a pulp.  Because of his actions, because he is in jail, these are the kinds of choices that Reese has to make to survive, to get out, to get on with his life.  I enjoyed Reese’s time at Evergreen and his interactions with Mr. Hooft, a cantankerous old gentleman who lived through a work camp run by the Japanese during World War II only to be left to die pretty much alone, without visitors, in a retirement community.  I also really enjoyed Reese’s sister Isis, called Icy.  She has big dreams — to become President or to be a movie star and win an Oscar.  She is positive and hopeful, dreaming of college when she is only 9 years old.  She gives Reese hope and a reason to stay clean.  He wants to make sure Icy gets everything she wants and needs, and it able to reach her lofty goals.

While I do wish WDM had taken some more risks with the formatting, I can’t deny that Lockdown is compelling and will draw in readers who loved Monster and love Walter Dean Myers.

When Ally was a freshman, her father’s bad business decision cost her family their fortune, as well as the fortunes of most of her closest friends.  Ally and her parents fled in shame and haven’t been back to their hometown, Orchard Hill, since.  Now it is just Ally and her mother, her father’s whereabouts unknown, and they are moving back to Orchard Hill where Ally’s mother has taken a job at the high school.  Orchard Hill will never be the same for Ally.  Her old friends have shunned her, not forgiving her for her father’s mistakes, her quick exit with no goodbye, or the fact that she is no longer a member of the elite rich and famous of Orchard Hill but instead lives in — gasp — a condo!  Not only that but a new family has moved into her old house, the one with the personalized basketball court her father built just for her, and her former best friend, Shannen, is now best friends with the new occupant of her old bedroom.  Ally tries to move on when it’s clear that she can no longer go back to her old life.  She makes new friends, forges her own path, but she can’t seem to let go of the past or the hope to regain some of her former friendships.  Making it even harder to let go is her growing attraction to Jake, the occupant of her old bedroom and newest member of her former crowd.  Is there any way she can be with Jake when all of her old friends, his friends, shun her?  Will they ever forgive her for the sins of her father?

Reaction: Not my typical kind of read, this book arrived on my doorstep at the right time, just when I was looking for something light and fun to read.  I have never read a Gossip Girls or Private or It Girls or any of those other series but, from what I know, I believe this book will definitely appeal to the same audience.  Despite my reservations that it would be filled with too much drama, backstabbing, and brand name dropping, I read with an open mind and really enjoyed this novel.  I was pleasantly surprised that the brand names and pop culture references were kept to a minimum and flowed naturally in the story.

As for the story itself, I liked Ally.  She’s been through a lot but she has tried to make the best of it.  I didn’t always agree with her decisions and I don’t know why she would possibly want to be friends again with those girls, who are mostly evil and vindictive, but generally Ally was a likeable character.  She certainly had her flaws, one big lapse in judgement in particular that comes back to haunt her, but she is a very realistic character.  Jake, on the other hand, is not as likeable, at least not for me.  The story alternates between Ally and Jake, so we get to see his perspective on things.  I can see his appeal and the reason Ally is attracted to him, mostly because he is a hot boy, but he isn’t always the nicest guy.  He is quite the player and I fear even if he becomes serious about Ally he won’t be able to stay faithful.  He lives too much for his group of friends and does things against his better judgement to please them, though he gets a bit better at that as the story progresses.  Despite my dislike of Jake, I found him to be a pretty believable teenage rich boy and, though I usually avoid alternating narrators, I enjoyed reading Jake’s parts almost as much as Ally’s.

I have to say I really liked the format of the novel as well.  The story is broken down by months and takes place across an entire school year.  Each new month page is smattered with a gossipy conversation between unknown people who are not the main characters talking about events happening to the main characters.  Hard to explain, but I loved it.  I do not necessarily love the cover.  Looks a little too plain and the pearls a bit too old.  I did like the font and coloring of the title.

The ending is a cliffhanger and I’m excited to see what happens next but seeing how She’s So Dead to Us doesn’t come out until May, 2010, who knows when the sequel will be out!

Review copy sent by publisher.

Every year Zeeta and her mother, Layla, move to a different country.  Zeeta gets settled in, makes new friends, and Layla gets the itch.  This year Layla has chosen Ecuador.  Besides her one year itch, another of Layla’s other many flaws, according to Zeeta, is her taste in men.  Layla goes for clowns, more specifically wayward philosophers who are balloon-making clowns by day — highly unreliable and highly inappropriate for someone Layla’s age.  Zeeta longs for Layla to put down some roots.  She wants Layla to find a steady man with a steady job and a retirement plan.  She wants Layla to stay in one place for more than a year.  She wants a home in the suburbs not a hut by the beach or a tiny apartment with questionable bathroom facilities.  In Ecuador, Zeeta meets a boy named Wendell who comes from a family that has all that she is longing for but it’s not enough for him.  Wendell is American and only speaks English but he was adopted from Ecuador and looks like the indigenous people from the area of Ecuador where Zeeta is staying.  Wendell loves his adopted parents but longs to find the birth parents who gave him up.  Zeeta agrees to help him as translator and savvy traveler tour guide.  While Zeeta is helping Wendell, Layla has made some changes, including finding a man who fits all of Zeeta’s criteria.  Both Zeeta and Wendell are longing and searching something — the ideal life, the ideal family — but will either of them be happy with what they find?

Reaction: Laura Resau is an amazing writer and really deserves way more recognition than she gets.  I don’t read a ton of realistic fiction and I’m really bad about reading books that take place outside of the Western world but Resau writes both together and I will always read what she has written.  What to say specifically about the book?  It’s great!  Read it!

Ok, more detail…Zeeta is a fairly compelling character.  While she leads a life of which many would be envious, she longs for some normalcy and routine.  Zeeta has had to be the “adult” in the relationship — making sure her mom’s paperwork is filed in each country, dealing with household bills, helping the food stretch when there isn’t any money to buy more — so it isn’t any wonder that she would long for an environment where she can just be a teenager and not have to worry about such things.  I would have to say my major criticisms of the book would be that Zeeta too quickly realizes that normal is not for her and that Layla’s transformation was just a bit too dramatic.  The story kind of shifted focus to Wendell and didn’t leave time to truly develop the “maturing” Layla and Zeeta reactions to her mother’s changes.

On to Wendell.  Trusting Wendell.  Wendell wants his birth parents to be good, kind, caring people so badly that he is willing to overlook almost anything to have it be so.  I loved reading Wendell’s letters to his birth parents that he wrote while growing up.  They show his changing feelings regarding his birth parents as he matured.  He began with not really wanting to have anything to do with them, wanting to be completely American, but as he grew he also grew more curious about his ancestry.  His curiosity grew even stronger when he developed a strange, inherited (he believes) ability that he doesn’t feel he can discuss with anyone.  Zeeta helps support Wendell as he searches for a family that may or may not exist, or may not exist in the way Wendell wants it to exist, but there are some things, some mistakes Wendell needs to make on his own.

Much more than a story about two teenagers, it is a story about the country, its people, traditions, and flaws.  Many secondary characters help add wonderful flavor to the story and to the surroundings.  I am definitely interested to see where Zeeta, Wendell, and Layla will end up next.

The Demon’s Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan

Nick and his brother, Alan, have been on the run from magicians and the demons magicians use for power for as long as they can remember. Magicians killed their father and drove their mother mad, and now the magicians are after their mother’s special charm, the only thing keeping her alive. Having dealt with magicians and demons for so long, the brothers are known as something of experts on the subject, and brother and sister, Jamie and Mae, seek the brothers out for help when Jamie is triple-marked by a demon. In the process of helping Jamie, Alan is also marked by a demon. Now two magicians must be killed to remove the demon marks from Alan and Jamie, and the hunted become the hunters. On top of everything, Nick suspects that his brother is keeping secrets and lying, and he’s determined to find out what Alan is hiding. Nick, Alan, Mae, and Jamie are about to embark on the battle of their lives.

A standout in the saturated fantasy genre. The characters are well drawn and three dimensional, especially Nick, who is very different from the others and lacks the ability to experience typical human emotions. The story will appeal to a wide audience. Boys will appreciate the sword fights and fast-paced action and girls will enjoy the depth of the relationships between the two sets of siblings and the new relationships that are forming. The cover may make the book hard to sell. I’ve had it on display at my library and it just sits there. A simpler, more gender-neutral cover may serve to market it a bit better.

How to Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Standiford

For her senior year, Bea is moving to yet another new school, following as her professor father changes colleges once again. Bea is used to moving a lot and not having any close friends but she was also used to having a fun-loving mother who was more friend than parent, and this is no longer the case. Bea’s mother has taken a crazy turn. She has become emotional, withdrawn, and obsessed with chickens. When Bea starts her new school, she’s not sure what to expect and is just looking forward to making in through the year and onto the freedom of college. Bea is in for an unexpected surprise when she finds a soul mate of sorts in a lonely boy named Jonah, called Ghost Boy. Jonah hasn’t had a friend in years, since the death of his mentally handicapped twin brother and mother. Somehow he and Bea connect over a late night radio talk show, shared beliefs, and good conversation but their relationship is far from easy.

A very well written story about true friendship. I believe almost everyone hopes to click with someone in the way that Bea and Jonah connect but their relationship is also volatile. Jonah has lived so long alone with his pain and, while Bea seems to help bring him back to life, when Jonah has periods of withdrawal from Bea, it is heartbreaking. The characterizations are wonderful, not only of Bea and Jonah but also the many secondary characters. I especially enjoyed the regular callers to the Night Lights radio program and was impressed with how well Standiford was able to make Jonah’s father a sympathetic character despite all of the horrible choices he made. A fairly typical paragraph structure is broken up by short snippets from the radio program, which adds interest to the book’s structure. While this is a truly wonderful novel, I don’t think it will have a broad appeal. Special readers will be enthralled but others just may not understand it.

*Bea and Jonah’s relationship reminded me of Jennifer and Cameron from Sweethearts by Sara Zarr but with more going on much more substance to the story outside of the relationship.

Chasing Boys by Karen Tayleur

El’s dad is gone and now her family has downsized. Her big house, mostly stay-at-home mom, and fancy private school are gone. Now they live in an apartment where El shares a room with her sister, her mother works long hours, and El is enrolled in public school. The fact that this life is temporary, only until all the legalities are worked out, helps El get through the day. El has made two good friends at her new school, Margot and Desi, but she mostly tries to stay detached, until her crush, a new boy, and a new friend cause her to once again alter the view of her reality.

The title and cover seem to suggest that this is a light, fluffy book about girl/boy relationships but it is so much more. El is struggling with the loss of her father and, to some extent, the loss of her identity as her life is turned completely upside down. El’s thoughts and reactions seem spot on for a teenage girl. Some of my favorite passages are when El is talking in her mind to her therapist, Leonard, to whom she refuses to talk to during their sessions. Short chapters make this an accessible read for reluctant readers. Readers who are expecting a romance with a neat, wrapped up ending may be disappointed but those who can get past expectations will be in for a treat. Great read for fans of Dessen and Caletti.

Other books, reviewed by others, that piqued my interest:

• Riding the Universe by Gaby Triana
• Shadow of the Dragon: Kira by Kate O’Hearn
• The Guardian by Joyce Sweeney — read by two high school boys and given high praise by both.  I don’t hear of that happening often!
• Swim the Fly by Don Calame — sounds like a book for readers who enjoyed Carter Finally Gets It by Brent Crawford.
• Gentlemen by Michael Northrop

The next meeting is in January and these are the titles I will be talking about then:

• Goats: Infinite Typewriters by Jonathan Rosenberg (graphic)
• Ninja Girls, volume 1 by Hosana Tanaka (manga)
• Move Over, Rover: What to Name Your New Pup When the Ordinary Just Won’t Do by Kyra Kirkwood
• Girl to the Core by Stacy Goldblatt
• Possessed by Kate Cann

Rainey is excited about her summer away on an educational tour of Western Canada called WESTEX.  She and five other teens will hike, camp, and learn about survival and Canadian history for eight weeks.  Rainy is looking to get away from her father and his new wife for awhile.  Looking to leave the city that is very different from the small town she grew up in, where she has no friends except a goofy gold retriever named Simon.  Looking for answers about what exactly she wants to do with her future.  What she is not looking for is a meeting with the mother who left when Rainey was only six months old, but she might get that too.  Rainey was born without part of one of her legs due to a condition called amniotic band syndrome.  No matter what her father says, Rainey can’t help but think her mother left because she didn’t want to deal with a “crippled” child.  When Rainey learns her mother lives in a town near one of the stops on the WESTEX tour, she has to make a tough decision about whether or not she wants to meet the woman who gave birth to her then abandoned her.

Reaction: First of all, I would like to say that this book had one of the best first paragraphs I’ve read in awhile:

The night before I embark on my “Wild West Summer,” I split up with Carlos Aroca.  Of course, he didn’t know about the breakup anymore than he knew we were once a hot item.  Sad but true, our torrid six-month romance had been just a figment of my imagination.  An optimistic delusion.  A lavish dinner-for-one buffet, satisfying my appetite for adventure and craving for a little affection.

I loved it.  I thought it was a great hook and it is such a wonderful example of Rainey’s voice.  Her humor, her feelings, and her needs in one small opening paragraph.

Moving on, the rest of the novel remained equally compelling and was quite absorbing.  Rainey is a complicated girl with a complicated life.  She obviously has trust issues due to her mother and she’s constantly trying to overcompensate for her leg to prove to everyone that she isn’t “wimpy gimpy girl.”  She has quite a temper and has trouble with “compassionate verbal strategies” her father, whom she calls Greg, is always telling her to use instead of force or angry outbursts.  Also, she’s a passionate artist but her father, despite what a great father he is, doesn’t want her to “paint herself into a corner” by pursuing art as a career, so she’s determined to find something else she can get excited about before applying to colleges in the fall.

All of the other characters are well-drawn and two dimensional.  Each WESTEXer has his or her own issues that add depth to the stereotypes they seem when first introduced.  The setting is gorgeously described and Canadian history is interesting without being overbearing or preachy, though the reader gets subjected to the WESTEX teacher/leader, Dan’s, “Did you know…” factoids just like the students.

A few complaints, though minor.  It seemed a bit unrealistic that everyone on the trip had a problem.  I think the only one that hadn’t had some major life crisis (or two or three) was Dan, and he was just too jolly to let on if he did have one.  Also, I think sometimes the teens were a bit too self-realized.  For example:

The joy of being seventeen was having the vocabulary to make incredibly mature-sounding speeches — even after spending the preceding half hour shouting and whining like a pissed-off preschooler — without having the experience to know what I was getting myself into. (162)

I loved this quote because it was so true but I do not see a seventeen-year-old actually acknowledging or thinking it.

Complaints are minimal and the overall writing and characterization made it an engrossing read.

Frankie looks up to his older brother Steve.  Steve seems to have it all — he’s an excellent soccer player and is more than likely going to get a scholarship to college because of it, he’s smart, he’s cute, and he could get any girl he wants.  Sure, Frankie and Steve’s parents seem to be a bit lax with Steve because he does so well with soccer and school, and sure they don’t make Steve work in the family’s restaurant like they do Frankie, but Frankie doesn’t resent that too much.  Recently, though, Steve has changed some, just little things.  He’s started hanging out with the cholos, a local gang, specifically Flaco, the gang’s leader.  Steve doesn’t come home much anymore, just stops by for food, he sneaks out at night and doesn’t come back until early morning, and he begins dating a girl that you would not take home to meet the parents.  At first, Frankie doesn’t think too much about these changes and even relishes the respect he gets through association with his older brother, but Steve also begins to become harder, quicker to temper, a bit more violent, and has odd ideas about what earns respect.  The more Steve changes, the less Frankie continues to idolize his brother.  Who is this person Steve has turned into and is there anything left in him that Frankie can look up to?

Reaction: I thought this book was really well done.  While the heart of the story is Frankie and Steve’s relationship, most of the book is simply about Frankie trying to survive high school.  It’s Frankie hanging out with his bestfriend, blowing stuff up in his bestfriend’s backyard.  It’s crushing on a girl he’s been friends with forever and trying to get up the nerve to ask her out.  It’s dealing with the fact that he isn’t too fond of working at his parent’s restaurant but also isn’t so pleased when they sell it without consulting him.  It’s teenage Frankie living.  But all the while, Steve is changing and Frankie doesn’t see it at first.  Frankie knows Steve is probably doing things he shouldn’t and at first it’s just a bit aggravating — like the way his parents are always asking Frankie to narc on Steve but then never actually punish Steve — or funny — like when Steve brings home the girlfriend that no one in their right mind would bring home to meet the parents and their parents freak out.  When Steve finally convices Frankie to do something illegal with him for the sake of their family’s honor, Frankie isn’t so sure Steve is really all that great anymore.  The slow build of Frankie’s change in his feelings toward his brother is subtly and wonderfully done.  This is a great teen boy book and a great book about how any teen, no matter how smart or how good the family situation, can get dragged into a bad situation.

Quinn loves her dad.  She knows he’s not perfect but he’s charismatic, outgoing, fun; it’s hard not to love him.  One thing she can’t deny, he’s a womanizer.  Quinn doesn’t even know all of the women he’s ever been with.  She knows he broke her mother’s heart and left her family — mom, Quinn, and baby sister Sprout — to live with another woman when Quinn was very young.  She knows he now lives with Brie, a woman half his age, and her young son.  Quinn, though, sees only the good.  That is until she begins to notice that some of his treasured possessions have the names of the women he’s left behind attached to them.  A large painting, a sculpture, a music box, and more.  Quinn can’t deny the wrongness of her father having these items or his cold reaction when she asks about them.  Quinn takes a daring step and calls the older half-sister she’s only met once, Frances Lee, and asks her what she thinks Quinn should do.  The call is the beginning of a quest for Quinn, Sprout, and Frances Lee to return the possession their father stole to their rightful owners, all of his past wives and girlfriends.

Reaction: I like this one MUCH better than I did The Nature of Jade.  I liked Quinn.  She wanted, needed her father’s love so much she unknowingly overlooked some of his most horrible traits.  Despite the fact that she put her dad on a pedestal, when it came to her own love life she very much sought someone who was decidedly not like her father.  She looked for someone solid, reliable, dependable, pretty much boring.  As much as she loved her father she did not want to date anyone like her father, but despite all of her best efforts to have the “perfect” boyfriend, it didn’t work out.  I liked Sprout.  She was feisty and, in some ways, much smarter than her older sister.  She was protective of Quinn and saw her father for exactly what he was.  Frances Lee was a hoot.  So different from Quinn and Sprout, moody and harder, but she nicely completed the trio of sisters.

There were still some things I didn’t like.  Well, this first one is something I liked but didn’t like.  Interspersed throughout the story were tales from women on past (bad) relationships, what went wrong, and why.  I liked these but they got to be too much.  There were too many of them and I felt they interrupted the flow of the story.  I was so tempted to skip them by the end.  Also, most of them were by minor characters and sometimes I couldn’t remember who it was telling the story.  Again, I liked them I just wish there had been fewer.  While I loved Jake, I thought his relationship with Quinn kind of defeated all of the love lessons the girls were learning on their trip.  Jake and Quinn were instant attraction with little time to build substance to their relationship.  After just a couple of days they were a solid thing.  I wish this would have been a bit slower to build so it could show that Quinn had maybe learned something from all of the women she’d been talking to.  Finally, I was pretty depressed that (I think) only two of the six or seven past girlfriends found stable relationships.  There were so few examples of good, healthy relationships between men and women.  Is this really what the world as come to today?

Overall, I thought The Secret Life of Prince Charming was very well done.  I was hooked.  Despite my enjoyment of Something, Maybe by Elizabeth Scott, which has a similar plot, I think I enjoyed The Secret Life a bit better.  I thought it dove a bit deeper into the absent parent issue, but as hot as Jake was I think I’m still all about Finn. :)

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.

Hannah’s parents are so outlandish and memorable Hannah spends most of her time trying to blend in and become invisible.  Hannah’s mother is Candy Madison, of candymadison.net.  Her two biggest claims to fame are 1. Once being one of Jackson James’ girlfriends and 2. Appearing almost nude holding a pizza box in a pizza commercial.  Now she hosts her own web show where site subscribers pay to talk with her while she is wearing lingerie.  Hannah’s father is none other than Candy’s first claim to fame, Jackson James.  Jackson is a 70-something millionaire (possibly billionaire?) who always has a gaggle of 19 to early-20-something girlfriends around him.  Hannah and Jackson aren’t exactly on speaking terms at the moment.  As part of trying to stay invisible, pretty much all Hannah does is work and school.  Work is the drive-thru call-in center for the fast food chain BurgerTown.  Work has one great plus, though, it has her soul mate Josh.  Josh is a thinker, a do-gooder, a poet, and Hannah thinks he’s perfect.  Hannah aspires to be more like Josh.  And then there’s Finn.  Annoying Finn.  Always goofing off, not a do-gooder, not deep like Josh, so why is it Finn who Hannah feels comfortable talking to, who makes her laugh, who knows what to say and do when she’s upset?  And lately, she’s had a bit to be upset about as her estranged father tries once again to be a part of her life.

Reaction: Wow, I just wrote what felt like a spectacularly long summary for a book that’s only 217 pages long.  Sheesh.  Anyway, on to my feelings.  Something, Maybe is cute.  I liked Hannah’s relationship with her mother, who is supportive and loving despite what people may think about her and her profession.  Botox hasn’t killed those motherly instincts.  I liked watching Hannah and Finn, because y’all know what’s going to happen there, right?  I loved how much Finn blushed.  As a fellow blusher (I swear it happened to me at work today at least 4 times, embarrassing!) I love it when characters are blushers. (BTW, James from Audrey, Wait! is also a blusher and also adorable).  Elizabeth Scott has been compared to Deb Caletti and Sarah Dessen and I can definitely see why.  Readers who like those authors will definitely fall in love with Elizabeth Scott’s writing.  Something, Maybe wasn’t nearly as issue driven as either of those two authors but she still deals with issues — Hannah’s search for personal identity instead of being defined by who her parents are, Candy’s coming to grips with Jose’s death, and Hannah’s relationships with each parent.  I thought the issues were dealt with a little more deftly than the one Caletti I have read but with not as much weight as Dessen.  I will certainly be looking for other Elizabeth Scott’s in the future.  In fact, I think I will move on to this one while I get up the nerve to read this one.

Dooley’s life is lived in a fishbowl.  Everyone — his uncle with whom he lives, his manager at the video store, the vice-principal at his school — is watching him, waiting for him to mess up again.  Dooley has a past with alcohol, drugs, and something even more serious, but he’s done his time and he’s trying his best to stay clean.  One night he gets off work early and decides to go for a walk instead of going straight home.  He doesn’t tell his uncle because he knows his uncle would tell him to get his butt home, but he just needs a little time to himself without the watchful eyes of everyone expecting him to fail.  Little does he know that his innocent walk would set off a chain of events that would threaten to take away everything he’s worked for.  Alone in the ravine, Dooley sees somebody fall off the bridge and land splat on the ground.  The guy is dead.  The problem, it’s a guy Dooley knows and a guy he doesn’t particularly like, so when the police realize who Dooley is, what he did in the past, and his connection to the dead guy, they start to get mighty suspicious about whether the guy’s fall off the bridge was accidental or not.  When another boy with a connection to Dooley ends up dead, the police’s investigation of Dooley heats up.  Will all of Dooley’s hard work at his second chance be for nothing?

Reaction: I really, really, really liked this book.  Mainly, it was because of Dooley.  I loved Dooley.  Dooley has gone through so much already in his 17 years and, what I think is so awesome, is truly trying to do better things with his life.  While he has a great support system, of sorts, in his uncle, all of his uncle’s monitoring wouldn’t do a lick of good if Dooley wasn’t willing to play along.  All Dooley wants is to get through school, maybe go on a date or two with his crush, graduate, and get out of town.  I guess you can’t blame people for being tough on Dooley because of his past but I wanted to yell at them sometimes and tell them to give him a bit of slack, he’s doing the best he can.  Dooley makes some dumb choices but it’s hard to blame him for them and none of them would be all that bad if it wasn’t for the cloud that already hangs over him. I found it fascinating to read about Dooley, figuring out who he is now and seeing glimpses of who he was before.  I liked watching him build tentative relationships with others after being so alone, like with his uncle, Warren, and even Beth.  I figured out the who of the mystery by about half-way through but I had no idea about the why or the how so knowing didn’t ruin the mystery at all.  Plus, the story was more about Dooley and his transformation than the mystery.  The mystery added tests and hurdles for Dooley on his reformation, I guess you would call it.  Did I mention I love Dooley, well, I love Dooley.

What’s Next: Apparently more Dooley books.  Yeah!  Norah McClintock’s website talks about another book soon, I couldn’t find any information on title or exact release (just Spring 2009 and I’m thinking this might be for Canada not US).

Thanks: To Leila from Bookshelves of Doom.  Her review of Dooley Takes the Fall is probably the only reason I chose to pick up this book and I’m very glad that I did.