Echo's Sister

Echo's Sister. Paul Mosier. 2018. HarperCollins. 240 pages. [Source: Library]
First sentence: Today is the first day of school, and it's gonna be fantastic. I think this as I sit on the toilet in the second-floor bathroom of the Village Arts Academy in New York City, looking at a page in my tiny journal with a list of things to say to all my new classmates.

Premise/plot: "El" is the narrator of Paul Mosier's second novel, Echo's Sister. (She hates her given name, LAUGHTER.) She's twelve and having a bit of a rough time--starting a new school, trying to make new friends, to find her place to fit and belong. But this isn't really that novel. Her perspective changes quite a bit after she learns her younger sister, Echo, has cancer. Talk about a BEFORE and AFTER. Will life ever be the same again? Would she really want it to?

My thoughts: I loved, loved, loved his first book, Train I Ride. I loved this one too. I loved spending time with El's family. I loved the focus on family and friends. I loved how El's new friend was really there for her. I loved the hope. This isn't a happy-happy carefree book. It has substance. But it isn't a sad sob story either. Like life itself--it's balanced.



© 2018 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Rachel Joyce. 2012. Random House. 320 pages. [Source: Library]

The novel opens with Harold Fry receiving a letter in the mail from a former friend, Queenie Hennessy; it is a goodbye letter. Though they haven't seen each other in decades, she wanted to tell him that she was dying of cancer. He's shocked, to put it mildly. Though in all honesty he doesn't think of her all that often, now that her letter is in his hands, he is remembering the woman he once worked with and what she once did for him. He writes a reply and prepares to mail it, but, on his way to the mailbox, it doesn't seem enough, not nearly enough. His reply is so short and inadequate. So after a brief conversation with a stranger about cancer, he decides to have a little faith and embark on a pilgrimage. He will walk to see Queenie in her hospice home. In his mind, logical or not, he's connected the two: walking and healing. He'll do the walking, but will it work?

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is a character-driven, journey-focused read. From start to finish, readers are given a unique opportunity to walk with Harold Fry, to really get inside his head and understand him inside and out. It's a bit of a mystery as well. Since readers learn things about Harold chapter by chapter by chapter. The book is very much about Harold making sense of Harold: that is Harold coming to know himself better, of making peace if you will with the past and present.

I liked the book very much for the chance to get to know Harold and even his wife. (At first, his wife thinks he's CRAZY. Crazy for thinking up the idea, crazier still for acting on it. It just does not make any sense at all to her. WHY WALK OVER 500 MILES TO SEE A FORMER COWORKER YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IN TWO DECADES?!

It was a very pleasant read. Harold meets people every single day of his walk, and the book is a book of conversations.

It is set in England.

© 2015 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

Kepler's Dream (MG)

Kepler's Dream. Juliet Bell. 2012. Penguin.  256 pages.

It was the middle of the night, and that's not a time when you want to be hearing strange noises. I don't care how brave you are. No one wants to be restless and almost-sleep, then rustled awake by a thudding overhead and the feeling that someone is trying to get into the room.

Ella, our heroine, is visiting a grandmother she's never met, her paternal grandmother. Her father, whom she barely knows, does not get along with his mother. But Ella has to spend the summer with someone since her mother will be undergoing treatment for her leukemia. (She'll be receiving a bone marrow transplant, I believe.) And her grandmother is her last option, her only option.
Ella's first impressions of her grandmother, of her grandmother's house, are priceless. But through the course of a summer, the eccentricity and quirks of her grandmother have become familiar and comfortable. And she's made other friends as well.

Kepler's Dream is about a dysfunctional family who has a rather unique opportunity to heal, to mend, to come together. Could Ella  help bring her father and grandmother together again? Perhaps. For Ella who has never really known her grandmother and does not really know her father, it's an unique opportunity, for she'll get a chance to get to know them, to get to love them, to make them a part of her family.

But Kepler's Dream is also a mystery. And Ella's curiosity and determination to solve the mystery, to learn WHO stole her grandmother's precious book, Kepler's Dream, is the beginning of that opportunity. This mystery is the catalyst for a family to come together again.

I liked this one. I definitely liked it. There were places I just loved it. I liked the narrative voice, how Ella's reading influences her as a narrator. I love her grandmother's bookish lifestyle, and how she's always getting book deliveries. I liked how these relationships, friendships, happened naturally--nothing forced, nothing instant, nothing magical. I loved getting to know Ella at a very vulnerable time in her life. The thing I absolutely LOVED about this one were Ella's letters to her mom.

Read Kepler's Dream

• If you like bookish heroines
• If you like children's mysteries
• If you like family books, plenty of drama but heart as well

© 2012 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

Radiate (YA)

Radiate. Marley Gibson. 2012.  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 416 pages.

You know how you always think there's something...more?

Months before her Senior year in high school, our heroine, Hayley Matthews decides to give up marching band and try out for the varsity cheerleading squad. She isn't sure she'll make it, even though she knows how to tumble and is a fast-learner when it comes to dance. She makes the team--to her delight--and then her real struggles begin. But don't worry, these struggles all work together for her good.

ETA: The author thinks there should be a spoiler alert for my review, and I'm happy to comply. There is nothing in my review that the reader wouldn't learn for themselves after the first few chapters, or even after the prologue, but if you want to truly pick this one up knowing nothing about it. Don't read the rest of the review. Just don't. 

I'm not sure I like the prologue to Radiate. I'm not saying I hate it. I don't. It's just that sometimes you don't want to be told on page one that a book is a cancer-book. (Okay, it's not page one, but it is in the first few pages.) Not when there are chapters--quite a handful of chapters--to be read before she even goes to the doctor about a suspicious lump and a pain that just won't go away.

So our heroine Hayley is making new friends in the days and weeks following the announcement that she's now on the squad. And surprise, surprise the boy that she's liked since forever knows who she is now. And he can't stop flirting with her. Fortunately, Hayley is so smitten, so very, very smitten, that she fails to see he has any personality, any depth, any genuineness to him. Unfortunately--at least for this reader--I found little charm or charisma. In fact, I saw right away that he was so not the one for Hayley. That there was no way in the world he could possibly be there for Hayley when things got rough. But the lack of depth in the boyfriend is partially made well by the fact that there's a cute boy next door that has just come back to town. A boy that she grew up with. A boy that seems to genuinely see Hayley as a real person and not an object.

Did I like Radiate? Well. I'm not sure. On the one hand, it's hard not to cheer for a cheerleader who overcomes such harsh obstacles. She shows determination and courage, there is a real genuineness to her, a sincerity that makes her anything but shallow. But at the same time, the book lacks other developed characters. I had a hard time with most of the minor characters--including the boyfriend and the rest of the cheerleaders, for the most part. The family, on the other hand, had a little more depth. I felt there was definite potential there. I could see how this family functioned--or didn't function, as the case may be. For everything I liked about the novel--and there were quite a handful of things I liked about it--I found little things that didn't quite work for me. One thing that bothered me--and it's a thing that may not bother other readers at all--was the fact that this family was displayed as a Christian family, our heroine, so we're told is a Christian. Yet the novel itself uses language I wouldn't feel comfortable recommending to Christian readers. (Though it's miles away from being Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist!)

Read Radiate

• If you're looking for a happy-ending Cancer book
• If you're looking for a YA book with a realistic school setting
• If you love reading about cheerleaders and football games
• If you love stories about how the boy-next-door is a much better catch than that oh-so-secret-crush you've had for years and years

© 2012 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

Under the Mesquite (YA)

 Under the Mesquite. Guadalupe Garcia McCall. 2011. Lee & Low. 225 pages.

I am standing just inside
the doorway, watching Mami talk
to the television screen.
As the latest episode
of her favorite telenovela unfolds,
the soap opera drawing her in,
the skins from the potatoes
she is peeling
drop into her apron
like old maple leaves...

Lupita is the heroine of Guadalupe Garcia McCall's verse novel Under the Mesquite. It's an emotional coming of age story. Lupita struggles with the ordinary things of growing up, it's true, but she does it all the while watching her mother die of cancer. She does it while trying to be both mother and father to her younger sisters and brothers. She becomes an adult all too soon as she tries to cope with the devastating news--the diagnosis, the treatment, and the cure that just didn't last long enough. Where does she find the strength to face the day? How does she hold it all together? How does she keep things together enough with her family? Well, it's a mystery to her too. But taking those drama classes sure does seem to be helping. And her coach wonders why she can cry on demand...

If you're looking for an emotional 'cancer' book that is more than just a cancer book, then Under the Mesquite may be just what you're looking for.

Read Under the Mesquite

• If you're looking for a good multicultural read
• If you're looking for an emotional book with very human characters
• If you're looking for a good verse novel

© 2012 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

Brushing Mom's Hair (YA)

Cheng, Andrea. 2009. Brushing Mom's Hair. Wordsong. 60 pages.

Ann's mom has breast cancer, and this has changed everything. Just fourteen, Ann is worrying about so much, such heavy stuff, she wishes that life could be, would be okay again. Brushing Mom's Hair is a verse novel told from a young teen's perspective on how cancer changes her family.

This is the opening poem:

Ballet

We stretch,
thin arms
touching toes.
Linda says,
Can you believe
my mom's friend
had one of her breasts
cut off?
Becky covers her mouth
with her hand.
Really?
I look at them
in the mirror,
eyebrows raised,
eyes open
wide.
I bend
and touch my forehead
to my knee.
I don't say,
My mom
had both her breasts cut off
and now she has stitches
covered by bandages
where they were.

It's a quick read. An emotional story as you'd expect as each family member seeks to cope in their own way. Each finds a way to deal with their own emotions and at the same time to provide support for the one with cancer.

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews