Call It What You Want

It’s lonely being an outcast. Brigid Kemmerer explores that feeling of loneliness in her new book, Call It What You Want. Main characters Rob and Maegan both know what it’s like to have everything and lose it – Rob because his father embezzled money from half the town, and Maegan because she cheated on the SAT and caused one hundred of her classmates’ scores to be invalidated.

Kemmerer throws these two together for a paired project in Calculus class, and though they start out on opposite ends of animosity, the plot arc eventually develops their relationship into a sweet, but Romeo-and-Julietesque romance. Maegan’s father is a police officer, and he (and half the town) believes that Rob was in on his father’s crime.

Though Rob is innocent, no one cares, and he not only has to deal with the ostracism of his friends, but also being a caretaker of his father, whose attempt at suicide failed and left him dependent and only half-present in the world.

Maegan is also dealing with an issue not her own – her golden girl older sister has returned home from college pregnant, and Maegan has to suffer through the family fallout.

Kemmerer weaves their story in alternating viewpoints, letting the reader jump into the heads of both main characters. The characters – even the support – are well-rounded and believable.

A worthy summer read.

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Last Bus to Everland

Sophie Cameron’s second novel, Last Bus to Everland, takes a page from J. M. Barrie and C.S. Lewis, in creating a magical place for a group of Scottish misfits.

The main character, Brody Fair, is sixteen. He feels inferior to his genius brother Jake, and his home life consists of a father who suffers from agorophobia, a harried mother trying desperately to support her children and take care of her husband, and another sibling, younger sister Keira. Brody is gay, but closeted, and is often bullied by some of his classmates who live in his same complex.

It is on a day when these female bullies kidnap Brody’s cat when he first meets his own Peter Pan, in the form of a young winged chap named Nico. Nico tells Brody to meet him at a specific location at 11:21 pm SHARP on Thursday evening.

Brody sneaks out, and discovers, to his amazement, a green door admitting him, Nico, and Nico’s friends to a place they call Everland – a magical place where time seems suspended and people from all walks of life meet to hang out, play music, party, read books . . . whatever their hearts desire. Every Thursday, Brody escapes the reality he hates to spend time in Everland, where he feels he truly belongs.

But then the doors start closing – trapping people permanently in Everland or locking them out. Nico decides he will stay in Everland and asks Brody to stay with him. As much as he loves Nico, Brody is torn between the allure of spending forever in Everland with Nico, or losing him forever to stay with his family in his real world. It is a tough, tough choice that Brody must face.

I thought Cameron did a great job with this story – by the end I was in tears for Brody. When an author draws you far enough into the story that you cry for the characters, it’s well done. It takes a bit to acclimate to the fact that it takes place in Scotland and some of the language is “off” for American readers, but it wasn’t long before I was right there with Brody.

A good read for sure.

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Where I End and You Begin

In Preston Norton’s body-swapping book, our main character, Ezra Slevin, is a chronic insomniac, who has a best friend, Holden Durden, who is much more savvy with the opposite sex than Ezra is. But Ezra has a huge crush (since the fourth grade) on their classmate, Imogen Klutz. Sadly, Imogen has a very overprotective bestie, Wynonna Jones, who seems to hate Ezra.

Except on the event of a solar eclipse, something absolutely impossible happens – Ezra and Wynonna switch bodies! They can’t seem to control it, and it happens EVERY DAY. While in Wynonna’s body (and room), Ezra discovers that Wynonna has a huge crush, too – on Holden. So Ezra proposes that since they’ve switched bodies, he’ll help Wynonna with her crush if she will help him with Imogen.

The quartet ends up in detention, in which Principal Durden (yes, Holden’s mother) enlists them in the after-school theater program, which is putting on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. (Appropriate, no?) The story unfolds as Ezra and Wynonna learn to help each other and themselves, getting to know each other as they switch bodies back and forth.

A revelation that Ezra had kept buried surfaces toward the end of the book and explains why these two ended up tied together. Norton uses a lot of pop-culture references – Wynonna’s an 80s junkie and Ezra, under a pseudonymic account, makes YouTube videos playing Johnny Depp characters – but the references flow with the characters. The story is more than just another Freaky Friday-style story, and includes some references to gender-fluidity, bisexuality, and gender questioning, but not in any kind of overbearing way.

Definitely a fun book with a satisfying ending.

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If It Makes You Happy

As a fat girl myself, I love reading books about fat girls who are happy with themselves. Winnie Woodson is one of those. She’s eighteen, enjoying her last summer before heading off to college with her best friend and “ungirlfriend” Kara, and working in her absolute favorite place, her Granny’s restaurant, Goldeen’s, in the small town of Misty Haven.

Misty Haven and its neighboring town Merry Haven have a summer tradition – they name a Misty Summer Queen and take “volunteers” to compete for the Merry Summer King title. Historically, most of the Kings and Queens fall in love, but when Winnie gets named Summer Queen, and a young man named Dallas volunteers to compete against Kara to be Winnie’s consort, Winnie’s summer plans get thrown awry.

Throw into the mix Winnie’s younger brother, Winston, a gifted chef at fourteen, and her cousin/sister Sam, who at sixteen is the babysitting queen of Misty Haven, and there’s a delightful cornucopia of things to go both wrong AND right in the story.

As Winnie grapples with the fact that Dallas and Kara don’t get along, her domineering Granny is pushing her WAY too far this summer, and of all things, Sam wants Winnie to RUN with her, Winnie has a lot to balance on her plate.

Claire Kann brings us Winnie’s story in a truly engaging read. Winnie is a wonderful character, and Kann develops all the supporting cast so well that we fall right into the small town of Misty Haven and have no problem following Winnie through a coming-of-age journey in which she learns to stand up for herself and finds her way through understanding more about her own sexual identity.

A great summer read.

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