Girl's Girl

Finished March 25

Girl's Girl by Sonia Feldman.

This coming of age novel follows fifteen-year-old Mina over the summer as she navigates first love and friendship complications. It's a debut novel, and I quite enjoyed it. 

Mina has two best friends. Her first friend was Margaret, whose parents have recently divorced and who often spends time with her slightly older cousin. As the book begins, she is sharing her first sexual encounter with the friends. 

Eleanor is the other friend. She moved to the community later, but the three friends are a cohesive group. 

Mina's mother is an involved parent, and she asks that Mina let her know where she is and who she is with, and Mina is a rule follower. She feels close enough to her mother to confide in her. Mina has suddenly realized that she feels differently about Eleanor than about Margaret. She finds herself attracted to Eleanor, but isn't sure that the feeling is mutual, and doesn't know what to do about it. 

As it is the summer, the girls are spending a lot of time together, including having sleepovers. When Mina breaks one of the rules her mother set and confesses, she is grounded and worries that this will affect her place in the friendship.

This book brings to life so many things that happen around this age. In terms of sexuality there is curiosity, trepidation, and exploration. There are also feelings around so many things that are changing. For her friend Margaret, the divorce of her parents means another change that is having an influence on their situation, one that is outside of their age-related changes. They have more independence, but that independence isn't complete. This story felt very real to me, 

Every Summer After

Finished June 8

Every Summer After by Carley Fortune

Set mostly in Barry's Bay, Ontario, this novel is centered around Percy (Persephone) Fraser. After having some social issues at school, Percy's parents bought a cottage in Barry's Bay, thinking it would do her good to have her away from the city for the summer and many weekends. 

They spent six years going there, and from the start Percy was befriended by the two boys who lived next door, Sam and Charlie Florek. Sam is Percy's age, a quiet, smart, and observant boy. Charlie is a couple years older, always with a group of friends and also popular with the girls, much more social than his brother. They live with their mom, who runs a local popular restaurant. 

Something happened at the end of that six years to the growing relationship between Sam and Percy, and because it was also the year that Percy's parents sold the cottage, she has never been back, and the rift has never been resolved. 

The story begins ten years after that, when Charlie lets Percy know that their mother has died and invites her to the funeral service. Percy must take her guilt and her fear and face Sam again. But what will she say? And will words make a difference? 

While the story starts in the present, it quickly moves back to the beginning of Percy's time at Barry's Bay, and of the beginning of her relationship with the Florek brothers. We see them grow up, with all the teenage angst, the stilted communication when it comes to feelings, and the friendships that grew along with them. 

Fortune brings these characters to life, and you can sense their insecurities and their fears as they take on adulthood. The reunion years later has lots of loaded emotions and years that neither of them shares with each other that they must catch up on. A book full of feeling. 

How To Do It Now Because It's Not Going Away

Finished August 3
How To Do It Now Because It's Not Going Away: An Expert Guide to Getting Stuff Done by Leslie Josel

This book is written for high school and college students to help them with their schoolwork. As the cover indicates, it deals with issues like procrastination, time management and other skills relating to studying and homework. The introduction really lays out the purpose of the book and how to use it. Students can read through it in order, but the author really encourages them to focus on the chapters that deal with the things they struggle with most, and not to try to make too many changes at one time, which can be real issues. I liked the approachability of the language here, how it was directed to the students and the case studies that she used to illustrate particular issues. She notes that every individual is different and the student should think about what works and doesn't work with them to pick new habits that will work most successfully.
The chapter titles are phrases that students often use that relate to each topic.
* I Have Time
* It's Not Due Till Friday
* I Read Over My Notes
* I Don't Need to Write It Down
* I'll Remember
* I Know Where Everything Is
* Five More Minutes
* I'm Not in the Mood
Various options are given to address each circumstance and topic and there are lots of great ideas. Wish something like this existed back when I was a student!

Murder in Pigalle

Finished September 7
Murder in Pigalle by Cara Black

This is part of a mystery series featuring Parisian private investigator Aimee Leduc. Aimee runs her own agency with one full time partner and a hacker on call. Aimee's father was a Paris police officer who died in a bomb blast a few years ago. Her American mother ran away when she was only a child. As the book opens Aimee is well along in an unplanned pregnancy, but has not yet told the man who is the father. Her business partner cares for her, and has been solicitous of her condition. Zazie, the teenage daughter of the cafe owners across the street from her office is waiting for her as she arrives in the office after lunch, asking for her assistance in a case where young teens are being sexually assaulted in their own homes. Zazie has been doing her own sleuthing, based in part of her idolization of Aimee and in part from the female resistance activist that she researched for a school project. Shortly after asking for Aimee's help, Zazie disappears.
Aimee is worried that Zazie's investigation may have caught the attention of the rapist, and she desperately follows the clues she has and tries to get the police to recognize the pattern that Zazie identified and look for Zazie as a potential witness.
Aimee is an interesting character, impulsive, loyal, and determined. She also has issues to do with her parents, and with becoming a mother herself, not to mention relationship challenges. I really enjoyed this novel, the first I've read in the series.

Every Last One

Finished September 2
Every Last One by Anna Quindlen

This novel begins with a typical day in Mary Beth Latham's world. She wakes up before anyone else, has a coffee and some time alone before waking her three children and seeing them and her husband off, then going off to her own landscaping business. Her daughter Ruby is in her junior year of high school, and has a unique sense of style and great self-confidence. She loves to write, and is booked into a summer writing class at a college. Her two sons, fraternal twins, Alex and Max are in their last year of middle school. Alex is a star athlete with decent grades and a small group of friends. Max is a loner, with an interest in music and comics. Both boys are booked into summer camps suited to their interest. Mary Beth's husband Glen is an opthamologist with a quiet manner and a strong sense of order. Their marriage has gotten to a comfortable familiar stage where they each do their own thing, and follow a routine.
Ruby is getting ready for prom, and plans to do it in her own way. But she is also looking at changes in her life and one of them is moving on without her current boyfriend. Kiernan lived next door for a few years when the kids were small, then moved away. When his family moved back to town, they lived on a different street, but Kiernan seemed to latch onto their family, and spent a lot of time at their house. He gradually became Ruby's boyfriend, but he seems to be rubbing her the wrong way lately, and a split-up is due soon.
Ruby had an eating disorder a couple of years ago, and Mary Beth still worries about her a bit, but her main worry now is her son Max, who seems to be too much alone, and not very happy. When Max's stay at camp is cut short, she worries more, and does what she can to help.
But when violence and tragedy come into Mary Beth's life, it is from a direction she wasn't looking, and she must find a way to move forward, rebuilding her life.
This is a book of how someone recovers from an unthinkable event, and we see how various characters struggle with their own role, however small, in what happened. As always, I love how Quindlen puts a story together, and I read this in one sitting.

The Party

Finished December 9
The Party by Robyn Harding

This book takes inside a family faced with a crisis. Jeff and Kim and their two teenage children live in a upscale San Francisco neighborhood. Jeff is a tech executive and Kim has been slowly getting back into the PR career she stepped away from when they had children. Their oldest child Hannah is turning sixteen, and they've given her permission to have a few friends over to celebrate. When things go horribly wrong and one of the girls is badly injured, we begin to learn what's under the perfect facade that others see.
From Jeff's flirtation with microdosing to Kim's flirtation with another man, the relationship between these two parents isn't as good as it seems. And Hannah is facing social choices at school as she tries to be accepted by the more popular crowd.
Everyone has secrets, secrets that are only gradually revealed as the facade unravels.
An interesting look at moral lapses, betrayals small and large, and the negative effects of peer pressure.

The Girls in the Garden

Finished March 26
The Girls in the Garden by Lisa Jewell

This novel follows eleven-year-old Pip as she and her older sister Grace and mother Clare move into a terrace house in a new neighbourhood of London. The family is still in shock after Pip and Grace's dad had a mental health breakdown that resulted in him burning down their home. He is in hospital getting the help he needs, and they must start over with everything gone. Pip is steadfast in missing her father, writing him letters about their lives and new home, and observing the world around her. Grace is angry and scared and at the age where she is looking for her own identity. Clare is fearful of what lies ahead, afraid of what she saw in her husband in his mental breakdown, and worried about managing everything.
Their new home backs onto a large communal park and the girls soon find their way among the other residents. Grace begins hanging out with 5 other kids around the same age: three sisters Catkin, Fern and Willow, another girl Tyler, and a boy Dylan. She hangs out a lot at the sisters' house, liking their parents, Leo and Adele. Adele home schools the girls. As the action begins, the sisters grandfather has come to visit from Africa as his diabetes now requires amputation of one of his feet.
Pip is more of a loner, not feeling comfortable with the other kids, or their parents. Something about Leo doesn't feel right to her. She befriends and older woman with a pet rabbit, and from her learns the history behind the girl memorialized on a nearby bench, Phoebe. Pip is a quiet girl, watchful and sensitive, an important role in this story.
At the annual part party, there is much going on, music, face painting, a barbeque, and as it is also Grace's thirteenth birthday, Clare has let her have more freedom than normal. When the day grows later, Pip searches for her sister, finding her unconscious and bloody in discomforting circumstances. What happened to Grace and who is responsible is the focus of the story.
We see the interaction of both the adults, teens, and preteens here, and how relationships change and develop with the arrival of this new family in the neighbourhood. I liked the way the characters were each so different. None of them perfect.

Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands

Finished April 27
Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands by Chris Bohjalian, read by Grace Blewer

This novel is told by a young woman looking back at her recent past, Emily Shepard is a homeless teenager struggling to survive after her life has fallen apart. A nuclear powerplant in Vermont had a reactor go into meltdown and a large area of the state had to be evacuated, with many people losing their homes, their jobs, and many plant workers dying. Emily tells her story in fits and starts, jumping from the June that the meltdown occurred to the next spring when things completely fall apart for her. Part of Emily's situation is that her father was the chief engineer at the plant, and her mother was the communications representative. She feels that she must hide her identity as people are angry with her when they find out who her parents were.
Long before the meltdown, Emily was fascinated with her poet namesake Emily Dickinson, knowing many of her poems by heart, and writing her own poetry. Emily was a bit of a rebellious teenager, not doing as well in school as she could have, engaging in some risky behaviour and criticizing her parents for their own weaknesses. But she was still not fully an adult and her innocence shows even as she loses it. Among her many losses is that of her beloved dog Maggie, who was left in the house during the sudden evacuation, and whose unknown fate haunts Emily.
When she comes across Cameron, a young boy fleeing from a series of bad foster homes, she takes him under her wing, trying to convince him to get more help than she can offer, but also protecting him as much as she is able. In some ways, his presence also keeps her alive.
Emily struggles with many of the issues homeless teens struggling with self-hatred, depression, and general anxiety struggle with. She engages in far riskier behaviour than she would ever have thought herself capable of, but also finds herself reaching out to others as she tries to survive any way she can.
Emily is strong, but also overwhelmed by her circumstances. As she leads us through her story, referring back to events in her life before the meltdown, we see her loneliness, her dreams, and her regrets.
The interview with the author and narrator included here added another element to the story. Grace is Chris's daughter and the inspiration for some of the characteristics of Emily, as well as the source for some of the language particular to teens.

Ysabel

Finished December 15
Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay

I've had this on my shelf for years, but when I finally picked it up, I couldn't put it down. The book takes place in Provence, France, and the narrator is 15-year-old Ned Marriner, a Canadian whose father, Edward, is a famous photographer. His dad is taking photos for a book, and with Ned's mom, Meghan, working with Doctors without Borders in the Sudan, Ned has been taken out of school to join his dad.
Along with Ned and his father are his father's super-organized assistant Melanie, and two other crew, Greg and Steve. They are renting a house in the hills above Aix-en-Provence, where two local women are working for them cooking and cleaning. Both are named Vera.
On the first day in Aix, when Edward is setting up to take photographs of the cathedral, Ned goes inside. And here, things are set in motion for an experience that will change Ned's life forever. First he meets a girl his age, Kate, who is an exchange student from the U.S. staying with a local family for the year. The two of them encounter a strange man, and they find him both threatening and intriguing.
Ned also finds himself feeling the presence of this man in a strange way, and he begins to realize that something within him has changed. When a family member he has never met appears, drawn by his new feelings, he finds himself happy to accept her assistance in understanding what is going on around him, and what he seems to have become a part of.
When Ned and Kate are drawn to an ancient site, suddenly things get very dangerous and one of Ned's group is transformed into an ancient presence, perhaps never to return.
As Ned shares his understanding of the ancient story that their group has been drawn into, it will take all of them to find a way to change the story and make a new ending to the ancient tale.
I found the whole story fascinating, and really liked the characterization of him. He felt like a real young man in his reactions and thoughts. Definitely a new favourite.

Reconstructing Amelia

Finished January 18
Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight

This is an amazing novel about a subject that is very "in the news" right now, bullying and its effect on teens. Kate is a lawyer and single mother. Her daughter Amelia is 15 and goes to a private school with a good reputation. The two have a pretty good relationship despite Kate's long hours and the time they spend together is very much quality time.
But one day Kate gets a call from the school that Amelia is suspended and she rushes to the school. But by the time she gets there, Amelia is dead, seemingly having jumped from the school's roof. Following her initial grief, Kate struggles for answers and despite the police's initial investigation, doesn't believe Amelia killed herself. It is an anonymous text message that says simply "Amelia didn't jump" that triggers her to step back from her grief and look for what was going on in Amelia's life. Tracking her email, text messages, Facebook interactions and other clues, Kate finds that she missed a lot of what was going on in Amelia's life recently.
This book really shows how the online world and the anonymity that it can create allows bullying in a different form than what existed when I was young. This book is sad and shocking, but reads like something that actually happened. By the end, I was weeping.