Mini Reviews #30

Today I'm reviewing three YA contemporaries that deal with growing up, finding your identity and learning to trust in yourself. FUTURE PERFECT by Jen Larsen, DUMPLIN' by Julie Murphy and INFINITE IN BETWEEN by Carolyn Mackler are all fall 2105 releases. Have you read any of them yet?

Future Perfect by Jen Larsen

"Every year on her birthday, Ashley Perkins gets a card from her grandmother—a card that always contains a promise: lose enough weight, and I will buy your happiness." 

   Ashley has never accepted her grandmother's offer...until now. This year is different when her grandmother offers tuition to Harvard if Ashley only accepts to undergo weight loss surgery. Well, doesn't this sound nice? It really wasn't. Ashley's family story was prominently on the annoying side. It's no wonder Ashley doesn't really feel content with her situation when her family is falling apart. I never saw them as a unit, but more as a bunch of ignorant people living under the same roof. Unfortunately, I never liked any of them enough to fully engage in Ashely's story or really care about the outcome. 
   I hoped FUTURE PERFECT would be a book about personal development and defying social conventions. Does your weight really change your identity? Or does the shape of your body influence your happiness? Yet, Ashley's story doesn't really offer that much insight into the topic or even her opinion. She loses herself in crazy adventures rather than facing her true feelings and her strict grandmother.

2/5 ** FUTURE PERFECT - Lightweight YA contemporary!

When I picked up FUTURE PERFECT I was very curious about the story's concept and Ashley's emotional world. There's a lot of talking going on but dialogues or inner reflections never really went deep enough to present readers with the bigger meaning to FUTURE PERFECT they've been anticipating from the beginning.

Publisher: HarperTeen
Publishing Date: October 6th 2015
Length: 320 pages
Keywords: YA, contemporary, love, friendship, family, body image
Source: Edelweiss
Goodreads Summary  

Future Perfect Excerpt
Author's Homepage

Dumplin' by Julie Murphy

Self-appointed fat girl Willowdean is confident about her body. Until her crush, popular beautiful Bo, surprisingly reciprocates her feelings and she starts to doubt everything. To prove herself and regain confidence she enters the local beauty pageant. 

   Willow is a strong protagonist who is very aware of her body and how people always tend to think she's nothing more than the fat girl. But she's happy and likes her body the way other people will never be able to accept themselves. I loved that about her! Will's romance with Bo wasn't my favourite part of DUMPLIN' but Will's relationship with her best friend and her passion for Dolly Parton and her music. I admired Willow for entering a beauty pageant together with a few other people to show off their less than beauty-queen-perfect bodies. In the end that's how DUMPLIN' conveys a very strong message!

3/5 *** DUMPLIN' - A smart, ironic and funny YA with a strong message regarding body image! 

If you ever feel insecure about yourself and need a push to be more confident, you should pick up a copy of DUMPLIN'. Willowdean with her hilarious and powerful character should definitely give you a feel-good reading experience!

Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Publishing Date: September 15th 2015
Length: 375 pages
Keywords: YA, contemporary, love, friendship, beauty pageant, body image
Source: Edelweiss
Goodreads Summary  

Dumplin' Excerpt
Author's Homepage

Infinite in Between by Carolyn Mackler

"Zoe, Jake, Mia, Gregor, and Whitney meet at freshman orientation. At the end of that first day, they make a promise to reunite after graduation. So much can happen in those in-between years….".

Carolyn Mackler's INFINITE IN BETWEEN offers a pretty great concept to readers who enjoy multiple narrators in a novel. Zoe, Jake, Mia, Gregor and Whitney are all very different characters and have their own voices who become very familiar after only a short reading time.

What I liked most about INFINITE IN BETWEEN is that a few key scenes resonated through all of our five teen's narration. Since the day they met their lives are intertwined. Every teen has something special about him or her. Identity, sexual orientation, love and friendship all play an important role at some point in their stories. Their stories of growing up.

   Since the story concentrates on these five teens from the beginning of freshman year til graduation every character gets to tell his story on  roughly about one hundred pages only. Therefore Carolyn Mackler had to be very considerate when choosing which character got to tell which part of their story. INFINITE IN BETWEEN is a collection of very short chapters of all five protagonists, making it a pretty quick read. We never really learn everything about them, but just dip into their lives for a short period of time. I prefer a story that focuses on one protagonist and allows a more intimate relationship between character and reader. Nevertheless INFINITE IN BETWEEN was still a quick read and a nice change from other YA contemporaries.  

3/5 *** INFINITE IN BETWEEN - A diverse tale of growing up!

Witness their most painful embarrassments and their greatest achievements. All their teen angst and their happiness. Carolyn Mackler's INFINITE IN BETWEEN is a story of growing up everyone can relate to.

Publisher: HarperTeen
Publishing Date: September 1st 2015
Length: 480 pages
Keywords: YA, contemporary, love, friendship, school, growing up
Source: Publisher
Goodreads Summary  

Infinite in Between Excerpt
Author's Homepage

Book Review: Side Effects May Vary by Julie Murphy

Title: Side Effects May Vary
Author: Julie Murphy
Publisher: Harper Collins
Publishing Date: March 18th 2014
Length: 336 pages
Keywords: YA, fiction, contemporary, leukemia, bucket list, romance, friendship
Source: Edelweiss

What if you’d been living your life as if you were dying—only to find out that you had your whole future ahead of you?

When sixteen-year-old Alice is diagnosed with leukemia, her prognosis is grim. To maximize the time she does have, she vows to spend her final months righting wrongs—however she sees fit. She convinces her friend Harvey, whom she knows has always had feelings for her, to help her with a crazy bucket list that’s as much about revenge (humiliating her ex-boyfriend and getting back at her arch nemesis) as it is about hope (doing something unexpectedly kind for a stranger and reliving some childhood memories). But just when Alice’s scores are settled, she goes into remission.

Now Alice is forced to face the consequences of all that she’s said and done, as well as her true feelings for Harvey. But has she done irreparable damage to the people around her, and to the one person who matters most?

Summary by Goodreads

'Alice' and 'Harvey', 'Then' and 'Now'. Two names and two tenses are all it needs to describe Julie Murphy's captivating writing arrangements. You know that an author did a fantastic job when you can't decide which chapters you are loving more and are more eager to get to. I wanted to read them all at the same time!

Alice and Harvey are friends in the 'Now'. In the 'Then' parts they aren't even talking to each other. So how did they become friends or maybe even more, recognizing how important their childhood friendship was when Alice has suddenly no time left? 

The way the childhood friends find back to each other and the chapters Alice and Harvey spend working on Alice's bucket list, clinging to life and to each other, that was exactly what I was looking forward to read when I picked up SIDE EFFECTS MAY VARY. Good moments in bad times, tears, heartbreak, loss, hope. I was so invested in Alice and Harvey's relationship that I was screaming injustice when Harvey thought it was time to say Goodbye.

As you already know, Alice doesn't die. She goes into remission, the leukemia doesn't win. And from that point on, things aren't as easy as they were before.
SIDE EFFECTS MAY VARY is very much about loss, the joy to be alive and the fear of losing it all over again. No one can blame Alice for needing time to adjust to the new situation and to shed all her fears of the past months. Julie's approach at dealing with leukemia and surviving it is unique and totally got me thinking. I never thought about there being a fear of living after something like that happened to you, but clearely there can be.

Now that Alice has her whole life ahead of her, she gets difficult and very hard to like. Her attitude isn't anything you want to deal with in a story that could've been such a destined, easy and sweet love story. It was as if she didn't want to think about what her actions were doing to other people and especially Harvey. One is expected to feel sorry for Alice all the time and excuse her behaviour, no matter how wrong she's acting. But at some point I just couldn't bring myself to try to get into her head anymore.

Where Alice isn't always so darling, Harvey is the one readers will fall in love with. The quiet and caring boy, who's always been in love with the girl whose days had been counted. Harvey is such a sweet guy and there will be lots of swoon-worthy Harvey moments for all of us to make up for the sour Alice parts.

3,5/5 ***/* SIDE EFFECTS MAY VARY – A pensive and sentimental story about the unfathomable, cruel and comic ways of life. 

The first half of Alice's story, and her relationship with Harvey, is simply awesome to read. Then after Alice's remission news everything seemed to go in the wrong direction. Still, SIDE EFFECTS MAY VARY as a whole story is written with such beautiful skill that I just have to recommend it. To everyone who is looking for a YA contemporary read that isn't only dedicated to the sad outcomes of leukemia. A read that explores how ambivalent feelings about a new chance at life can be.

"About a month later, I got the big distraction I'd hoped for. I was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia. Cancer. I had fucking cancer." ― p. 13

SIDE EFFECTS MAY VARY you might enjoy THE FAULT IN OUR STARS by John Green, SECOND CHANCE SUMMER by Morgan Matson or NOW IS GOOD by Jenny Downham. Tissue box recommended, should you decide to read them.

* Yep, that's Julie Murphy on the left. 

* Julie Murphy's second book DUMPLIN' comes out in 2015. Add it on Goodreads!

* Click here for an excerpt of SIDE EFFECTS MAY VARY!

* Want to meet Julie? Check out her event schedule.

* For information about Julie and her books visit www.juliemurphywrites.com.

* Thanks to Harper Collins and Edelweiss for the chance to review SIDE EFFECTS MAY VARY!