YA Book Club Review: Red Queen

Hello book clubbers, and thanks for joining in on the discussion of Red Queen, which is not The Red Queen, no matter how many times I typed it.

Let’s start with a description, shall we?

Graceling meets The Selection in debut novelist Victoria Aveyard’s sweeping tale of seventeen-year-old Mare, a common girl whose once-latent magical power draws her into the dangerous intrigue of the king's palace. Will her power save her or condemn her? 

Mare Barrow’s world is divided by blood—those with common, Red blood serve the Silver-blooded elite, who are gifted with superhuman abilities. Mare is a Red, scraping by as a thief in a poor, rural village, until a twist of fate throws her in front of the Silver court. Before the king, princes, and all the nobles, she discovers she has an ability of her own. 

To cover up this impossibility, the king forces her to play the role of a lost Silver princess and betroths her to one of his own sons. As Mare is drawn further into the Silver world, she risks everything and uses her new position to help the Scarlet Guard—a growing Red rebellion—even as her heart tugs her in an impossible direction. One wrong move can lead to her death, but in the dangerous game she plays, the only certainty is betrayal.

First off, can we all agree that the cover rocks? It so simply gets at the plot and theme of the novel, and does so in such a striking way. I think what first drew me to Red Queen was the cover.

It also sounded pretty awesome from the blurb. But I think that’s what tripped me up. It’s reads like YA fantasy (and that’s how it’s been pitched elsewhere), so I was a bit turned around at the beginning when I realized the world was really dystopian.

I should also point out that the blurb calls Red Queen a sort of Graceling meets The Selection, which didn’t feel like the most appropriate mashup. Yes, the Silvers have abilities, but they felt more X-Men than Graceling. (Which is fine; I love X-Men.) And while, like The Selection, there’s a contest for the princes’ hands in marriage, it’s a small part of the book.

No, Red Queen felt more like Hunger Games (girl becomes face of a revolution, and both sides want to use her for their own purposes) meets Shatter Me (girl with unheard of power is torn between two boys, one who may be may be her enemy).

I liked Mare as a character. She’s strong without being cold—even second-guesses her role in the revolution when faced with the loss of innocent lives. She hurts for the children she’ll leave fatherless. Some might say that makes her wishy-washy, but I think it’s a realistic reaction for a 17-year-old girl. Hey, I’m an adult and I’m not sure I could sentence people to die.

What I had a hard time with were some plot elements. For instance, I couldn’t quite buy the queen’s plan to hide Mare in plain sight. The king and queen tell their people that Mare has Silver blood, but was raised as Red and only came into her abilities recently. I’ll believe a Silver could grow to 17 without using her powers. But I’m not sure an entire kingdom would believe a 17-year-old girl never got a cut, scrape, bloody nose, or even her period.

There were also a lot of characters who were suspicious of Mare, and I wondered why no one cut her “by accident” to see the color of her blood.

I don’t want to talk too much about the ending and [spoiler], but I will say I liked Mare’s final decision on the romance. Red Queen has a love triangle between two princes—two brothers—and, well … read my Goodreads review, which hides spoilers, for my full thoughts on that.

What's Up Wednesday and the YA Book Club

It’s time for What’s Up Wednesday again. If you’re unfamiliar with the idea, here’s the deal: What’s Up Wednesday is a weekly blog hop created by Jaime Morrow and Erin Funk for like-minded writers to meet and encourage one another. Everything you ever wanted to know about it (now, 50 percent off the retail price!) is right here.

WHAT I’M READING

I’m so excited so many of you are interested in joining the YA Book Club this March. Let this serve as official proclamation that the book club is a go—and our book of the month is Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard. (See, I’m getting in the royal spirit and all.) On Monday, March 30, we’ll post our reviews. Be sure to link to your review here, then hop to everyone else’s blog to see what other book clubbers thought about the novel! (More about how the book club works here.)

WHAT I’M WRITING

I’m still drafting my Island MS, which seems to be going much, much slower than any other book I’ve written. Recently I’ve been having a hard time getting my inner editor to shut up. She’s incredibly rude and only interested in deleting words. I’m hoping this is only a temporary thing.

WHAT WORKS FOR ME

Just about the only way I can get any words on the page is if I tell myself that even ridiculously low word counts make a difference. So I aimed for 1,000 words in a writing session and got 200. That’s better than zero, right?

But really I’d love to hear what works for you when it comes to killing your inner editor.

YA Book Club Review: Allegiant

Welcome to the YA Book Club! Today we’re talking about Veronica Roth’s Allegiant. If you’ve read the book and posted a review of it on your blog, be sure to link to it below. And if you don’t have a blog, get ready to discuss the book in the comments.

There are a lot of things that I could say about Allegiant and the Divergent trilogy as a whole, but I don’t intend to turn this review into a thesis and I’m positive you’ll be thankful for that. So I’m going to focus on the ending. But first:

If you have not yet read Allegiant, please take a detour to some other location on the Internet. THIS REVIEW CONTAINS THE MOST SPOILERY OF SPOILERS.

Do we need another warning?

I assume you’ve been thoroughly warned. Moving on: That ending.

One of the reasons I read is to escape. When my EM is flaring and my feet are engulfed in burning pain, I open a book and slip into someone else’s life. There’s this idea that as readers looking for escape we deserve happy endings. The Man is adamant about this fact and loudly disapproving of movies and books in which a main character dies. I agree—to a point. There have been times I’ve watched a movie that kills main characters for no other reason than shock value, and that’s frustrating. But a main character’s death can also be a powerful thing.

I almost always prefer a happy ending in contemporary romances. That’s not saying the characters must live (see The Fault in Our Stars) but that I prefer the love interests to end up together. 

I don’t feel the same about other genres. The Divergent trilogy never was about the romance, though that became a larger part throughout the novels and especially in this last book. No, the books were about strength and truth and sacrifice and fear and a hundred other things that had nothing to do with girl + boy = love. And I think, looking at the events surrounding the last dozen or so chapters, the ending Veronica Roth chose is the only ending that fits.

Do I wish Tris lived and her and Four had a happily ever after in new Chicago? Of course. But had Tris let Caleb die for her, she wouldn’t be Tris. She’s not the girl who let’s her brother make a sacrifice to end his guilt—even if he betrayed her. Fact is, she’s stronger than Caleb and I would have been disappointed in her had she not stepped up.

It’s one thing to give readers the ending they want. A lot of times that’s enough. But in this case, I think the book and the series as a whole was more powerful because Roth gave readers the ending they deserved—the only story that made sense for these characters.

Consider Tris in Divergent, torn between the selfless girl she was brought up to be and the fearless one she’s trying to become. In this book, in her final sacrifice, I think she found the best possible fusion of the two. What she did was selfless, but brave. And not brave in the Dauntless sense of the word, where bravery is doing daring stunts for a rush or fighting fear to be stronger, more powerful. No, she used her bravery in her selfless act and in that I think she got at what the point of her actions were: to create a world where people aren’t divided by factions or left factionless, but a happy medium. It’s the idea that humans are better with a mix of virtues and vices than stripped down.

It also, I think, show’s Roth’s bravery. It has to be a tough choice, as an author as famous and adored as she is, to kill a character you love and in doing so possibly deliver an ending everyone won’t agree with.

YA Book Club Reads Allegiant

SO THIS CAME IN THE MAIL YESTERDAY. I OPENED THAT
PACKAGE LIKE THE CALM, IN-CONTROL ADULT THAT I AM.

So this teensy, tiny book came out yesterday. You might have heard about it. Allegiant? Ring any bells?

Last May, the YA Book Club read Insurgent. And so, I propose to all of you, dear friends, we join once again to read and talk about Allegiant, the final book in Veronica Roth’s Divergent series.

Who’s with me?

(Don’t leave me standing here alone. I will feel like Tris trying to lead a band of merry Dauntless to battle minus the merry Dauntless.)

This would be our November book club read, so you have plenty of time to read the book. We’d post our thoughts on our blogs (or, if you’re not a blogger, here in the comments) on November 18. It’s a bit earlier than normal, but there’s that whole Thanksgiving thing at the end of the month.

No need to commit this very moment, but just out of curiosity, let’s see a show of virtual hands: Who’s up for reading Allegiant for November’s book club?

Q&A: Second Chance Summer Author Morgan Matson

Thanks everyone who participated in the August YA Book Club. If you missed the get-together, you can still post your review here. And if you haven’t read the book, Second Chance Summer, check out all of the great reviews!

So, like many of you I loved Second Chance Summer, and because she is nice and sweet, author Morgan Matson agreed to my interrogation interview. Here’s what she had to say about her writing process, Second Chance Summer, and her summer favorites:

The book touches on the importance of second chances, with which I couldn’t agree more. (I, for instance, am pretty thankful I gave calamari another go despite the fact that it looks like battered and fried sea monsters.) Is there a time when you took another chance on a person, thing, event, etc. to find you were glad you did?

Oh man, this makes me want to rethink my stance on calamari and give it a shot! I find that I tend to make immediate, snap judgments about people and they are almost ALWAYS wrong. But I know that about myself, so I’m aware that I’m doing it. I’ve had to learn not to trust my first impressions, since I’m apparently really bad at them. But one of the biggest examples was a girl I met in school. I just didn’t like her, no idea why, something about her just bothered me. One day, she e-mailed and asked if we could go to lunch. We had a great time, and she’s now one of my best friends. That revelation was really one of the things that made me rethink a lot of my first impressions. 

I hear you returned to the lake that you vacationed at when you were young before writing this book. Any ex-boyfriends show up? Kidding. Why did you decide to immerse yourself in that real-life setting versus creating the world from memory and research? Is this your typical method?

My friend Jessi Kirby (an amazing writer) calls me a “method writer” and it’s really true. I especially find it hard to write about places I haven’t been to. For my first book, which is a cross-country road trip, I traced the whole path across the country that the characters visited. And I just find it really helpful to go to the place I’m writing about and soak up all those sensory details it’s hard to get otherwise. And even though I’d grown up spending summers in the Pocono Mountains, I needed to go back—to remember how it felt, the visceral sense of it.  (I should note my mother thinks this is just an excuse to take vacations, and she might be right.)

FIND OUT MORE

Did you write the book there, or just visit for research purposes?

I had written the first draft already, mostly in Los Angeles, where I live, in the winter, which wasn’t helpful. I rented a house in the Poconos for two weeks, intending to revise there. But my notes were late, and I only got them the day I left. But it was actually perfect, because it meant I had two weeks to just live up there and soak it all in. I spent a lot of time by the lake and ate a lot of s’mores and ice cream, and I actually think it was more helpful than if I’d been trying to work while I’d been there. 

Obviously family is a huge part of this book. If you could adopt any of the Second Chance Summer characters into your own family, who’d it be and why?

Oh wow, I love this question! It might have to be Murphy the dog, only because I am desperate to get one right now! Puppy fever, big time. But in all seriousness, I had a soft spot for Warren. I could have written a whole book about him. I loved writing the guy who thought he had all the answers realizing he didn’t actually know much after all—but rather than running from that revelation, or shutting down (like his sister) embracing it and being willing to change. 

What was your favorite scene to write?

I loved writing the slumber party scene. It was a later addition—it came in the second revision, I think—but it was a blast to write. I liked being able to write an homage to the years of sleepovers I had growing up.

Which scene was the most difficult to write?

I found the last flashback scene—when you find out what Taylor did, and runs away—really hard. Those flashbacks were also getting tweaked late (originally there had been a whole different thing Taylor did) and by the time I was writing them, Taylor in the present story had grown so much—it was hard to write her making all these terrible mistakes.

Are you the heir to the Kleenex empire?

Ha! No, I swear! But I was talking with my editor about shrink-wrapping a mini pack to each book.  Let people know what they’re in for, right? J

FIND OUT MORE

I love the romances in your books, this as well as Amy & Rodger’s Epic Detour. How do you create believable chemistry?

Thank you so much! I’m glad you think I have! With A&R, it was very helpful to have two strangers trapped together in a confined space. I feel like so much of writing is getting people in rooms together—and with that, half my job was done. With them, I was also consciously thinking about opposites—about who would be the best person to put with Amy in that car. And who would be the best person for Roger, and his ex-girlfriend turmoil.

With SCS, the fact that there was a built-in (and contentious) history made Taylor and Henry really fun to write. It was almost like you could go from zero to 60, because when they first meet on the dock, they’re not meeting for the first time, and neither of them are happy about it. That scene was a lot of fun to write because of that.

What’s your writing process like?

I’ve found that it changes with every book! I used to proudly say I was an author who eschewed outlines, and figured it out as I went, but the book I’m finishing now ended up going through an outline process—so I’m not sure how to answer that any more! I tend to write pretty quickly, and I don’t go back and revise when I’m writing the first draft. I just power through to the end, and then see what I’ve got—and it’s usually a waaaaay too long draft that doesn’t entirely know where it’s going. But I always know at least some of the characters, the vague shape of the story, and one or two scenes I just can’t wait to write. If I have all that, I dive in, because I might just have a book (and sometimes I’m wrong about that).

FIND OUT MORE

What are you working on now?

My new book, Since You’ve Been Gone, is coming out in May 2014. It’s about friends, which was something I hadn’t really written about yet, and wanted to tackle.

What’s your best summer memory?

SO hard to pick! Most of them seemed to make their way into SCS in one form or another—so many of my best summer memories happened in the Poconos (which was probably the reason I wrote about it).

What are your favorite summer reads?

I always like to read Sarah Dessen books in the summer—and if she doesn’t have a new one, I’ll re-read an old favorite. I also love my friend Jenny Han’s books, and I always love reading a funny chick-lit like Sophie Kinsella.

Keep up with Morgan via her website, Tumblr, Facebook, or Twitter. And I promise she didn’t ask me to write this, but if you haven’t read her books yet, go buy them! They’re seriously good.

YA Book Club Chat: Second Chance Summer

There’s a reason I kept avoiding Morgan Matson’s Second Chance Summer: Cancer. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to cancer books. I believe my love for The Fault in Our Stars proves that. But guys, I am a crier. No, that’s not right. When it comes to books, I’m a CRIER. It deserves caps.

I knew this book would be sad, regardless of what happened to her dad in the end. The act of reconciling with a dying parent is SAD. (Also requiring all caps.) But I’m so glad two of you begged for this as our August book because I absolutely loved it.

Yeah, it’s sad. Yeah, it made me cry.

But what I loved so much about the book was this sense of hopefulness I felt. Taylor spends her summer reconnecting with the people in her life: her dying father, the brother and sister she was never close to, the mother she felt never loved her enough, the friend and first boyfriend who hate her. This is a book about family and friendships and the ways those relationships linger even when you think they’re gone. Even when you imagine they don’t exist.

I’m a sucker for romance, and the idea of Taylor rekindling love she experienced at 12 was one of the things I most looked forward to before I began reading. The romance was slow building and sweet and every bit as perfect as it should have been. (There’s a scene with a torrential downpour and a tree house that gave me a giant grin.) Surprisingly, though, romance wasn’t my favorite aspect of the book.

What I most loved were those little moments Taylor shared with the people in her life—the breakfasts with her dad, the dockside moments with Henry, the kids’ sleepover with Lucy. All of these little bits made my heart ache and swell at the same time, and if you don’t know what I mean by that then you really ought to read this book.

(Oh there I go again, tearing up. Do not think about the Q&A breakfasts. Do not remember the afternoon listening to music. And dear Lord, don’t you think about stargazing!)

The plot is engaging, but Second Chance Summer is really about the characters, and I loved each and every one of them. Also, if you’ve read Amy and Rodger’s Epic Detour you know how adept Matson is at world-building. I feel as if I’ve taken a trip to a lakeside house in the Poconos, and at the same time I feel like I just revisited memories of my family’s summer vacations on Cape Cod: the traditions, the unloading of goods into a rental home, the ice cream shops, and the feeling of freedom even when you’re cooped up in a small house with the rest of your family.

It was the perfect bittersweet book to end summer, leaving behind a trace of nostalgia.

Check back Thursday for a fun Q&A with Morgan Matson, when she dishes about her writing methods, Second Chance Summer, and her favorite summertime reads!

UPDATE: Check out my Q&A with Second Chance Summer author Morgan Matson!