"Tangled" by Carolyn Mackler

Carolyn Mackler's Tangled  is one of the most powerful books that  I read in 2011.  The book is broken into four sections, each narrated by a different teen.

Jena: She keeps and notebook full of inspiring quotes and has been known to read any note she comes across.  While at a resort with her mother, her mother's best friend, and the best friend's daughter Skye (who she can't stand), Jena finds two things- a possible summer fling and a suicide note.

 Dakota: Is learning how to live life after the death of his girlfriend and after learning something about her he never knew.  Dakota gets sent to stay with his grandparents and discovers that there is more to his character than he'd ever realized.

Skye: Dreams of stardom and his well on her way between auditions and indie film roles but she is still not happy.  Skye begins to question her past and seeks out to find out about the father she never had the opportunity to meet.

Owen: or The Loser with the Laptop, gets sent to a conference for teens that has difficulty interacting outside of the world of the internet.  But it is a girl he's met online that has the real impact on his life.

The lives of the characters intertwine in unexpected ways (note the fact that the book is titled Tangled) and the actions of one character inadvertently can affect the lives of the others.  The different sections flow well with each other though I usually wasn't ready for the transition from one to another (I would have been happy to spend a little more time with each character to find out where they ended up).  The book ends very open ended so it is very much up to the reader to decide what happens to each character.  However, I felt that this type of ending worked well for the book.

Visit Carolyn's Website, Blog, and Twitter!
And check out some of her other books: The Earth, My Butt, And Other Big Round Things and The Future of Us (with Jay Asher)

Happy Reading!
-Melly

"Breathing Underwater" and "Diva" by Alex Flinn

Breathing Underwater by Alex Flinn tells the story of Nick Andreas, a sixteen-year boy in trouble for hitting his girlfriend, Caitlin.  The novel opens on Alex’s court date where he is sentenced to an anger management class, weekly journal writing and he is no longer allowed to go near Caitlin.  Through his first person accounts of what’s currently happening around him and journal entries that tell the reader how he got to this point, we find out that Nick was abandoned by his mother and is a part of a cycle of violence as been abused by his father while growing up.  Nick’s journal entries are quite blunt and we find out just how controlling he is of Caitlin and how his anger escalates to the breaking point.  We also see how he gets on a path of recovery.  It was interesting to read a book that wasn’t from the victim’s point of view and to get inside Nick’s head.  The picked this book up because the description on the back caught my interest.  I’m very glad I did because it was a great book!

 

Diva wasn’t quite what I expected.  I anticipated a re-write of Breathing Underwater, only this book would be from Caitlin’s point of view.  Instead, the events in this book take place after Breathing Underwater.  The reader follows Caitlin on her journey auditioning for and attending the Miami High School of the Arts where she is studying to become an opera singer.  Like Nick, she keeps a record of what’s going on in her life, but instead of a notebook, she records her thoughts on her blog.  Each blog is started with her mood, the music she’s listening to, and her current weight.  Though this book is not solely about her weight problems, it is certainly a theme throughout.  Caitlin is a very real character.  She has a struggling relationship with her mother (and her mother’s relationship with a married man), has difficulty making new friends but is still working hard to achieve her dreams.  I feel that this is a book that teens can easily identify with and can read even if they haven’t read Breathing Underwater.

Happy Reading!

-Melly