YA New York

It seems this autumn is going to be chock full of glorious books. Yesterday Carol Snow released her first novel for teens, Switch.

Claire Martin is a perfectly normal 15-year-old girl in Sandyland. Except for the fact that her dead grandmother has been lurking in her bedroom since she was an infant. Oh, and also except for the fact that whenever there’s a big thunderstorm she switches into someone else’s body. The thunderstorms are usually at night, and she usually has only to go to sleep to wake back up in her own body.

But one day she finds herself in the body of a gorgeous (but snobby) summer visitor, and she can’t seem to get out.

It’s a fun story, well-told, and most definitely an enjoyable read. Indeed, I remember being quite annoyed when I received the book in May, swallowed it down whole, and then looked to see that the release date was in September. “I’ll never make it to September,” I thought. But here we are — I kept the book in a safe place, and last night I re-read it to refresh my memory. It’s still as much fun now as it was in May.

Oooh. And Carol has another book set in Sandyland coming next year, though from the looks of it, it may not be a sequel. (Question: Where is Sandyland? It’s a sleepy beachside community with no movie theater, but with lots of summer guests. I kept imagining the Jersey shore, but then when I re-read it I thought maybe it was somewhere in California. After you read it, will you tell me where you think this Sandyland place is?)

Buy Switch from Amazon.com.

Dude. I totally forgot the date until now. It is SEPTEMBER NINTH, which means Skinned by Robin Wasserman is out today.

Okay. Hang on a sec. I gotta go grab my copy, because I’ve read like twelve other books since I finished Skinned and I want to get this review totally right.

You need to see this here, from the book:

“Lia Kahn is dead.

Except here’s the thing: I’m not.”

Awesome beginning. Awesome. I am a big advocate of first lines, first paragraphs, first pages, and this definitely does not disappoint on that front.

Basically, Lia, our protagonist, has had a full body transplant. Well, actually no. She hasn’t been transplanted into another person’s body. She’s gotten a sort of robotic body that looks human but isn’t.

And she’s not too happy about it. Neither is anyone else, actually. They all think she’s creepy and weird, and even though her parents are the ones who ordered the procedure, they feel as if they’ve lost their daughter to a robot of some sort.

Problem is, Lia’s brain works just fine. And her new body can be repaired any time. If ever there were irreparable damage, which is unlikely, her parents would just have her brain uploaded to a new body.

Oh yeah. She doesn’t actually have a brain, either. I mean, the brain she has works fine, except that it’s not a brain but a hard drive or something made to emulate her brain.

All of this takes place in some unspecified time in the future, I’d imagine about a hundred years from now. There are some interesting sci fi bits, but what I really love is how Robin gets into the concept of alienation and racism and, most importantly, class … all by creating a world in which a girl can be resurrected in a new body if she dies.

The emotions in this novel are really intense, especially for a girl who supposedly doesn’t actually feel, except through wires that are doing what her neurons would do if she were human. But really, the book is all emotion. It’s all about feelings of exclusion, of powerlessness, of rebellion. It’s all about grief and loss. And it is beautifully written.

Also — and this doesn’t hurt, because it’s why I picked it up in the first place — blurbed by one Scott Westerfeld. Sir Scott has yet to let me down with his blurbs and his recommendations. Scott’s quote on the front of this one says, “A spellbinding story about loss, rebirth, and finding out who we really are inside.” In fact, he pretty much sums it all up.

Look for an interview with Robin on YA New York next week.

Oh, and you can also buy Skinned on Amazon.com.

When you think of Lauren Myracle, you think cute and sweet, right? She is, after all, the author of TTFN, TTYL and L8R, G8R.

I mean, to me at least, this is what Lauren is like:

She’s cute, and she’s sweet, and she likes Hello Kitty. But it turns out she can write a bone-chillingly spooky novel, too, and that is precisely what she has done with her fourth sixth YA novel, Bliss.

Our heroine is actually named Bliss, because her hippie parents (who raised her on a freakin’ commune) thought it would be a nice name. And to make matters worse, she’s just been transplanted to Atlanta, to live with her grandmother. Let’s just say that the good girls of Atlanta society are nothing like those Bliss grew up around.

The story is set in the 70s, and while Bliss works her way through the school year all she hears about the horrible Manson Family murders. Cleverly juxtaposed with the fact that at home, she is allowed to watch nothing more hair-raising than The Andy Griffith Show.

Okay, if you were born after, I don’t know, 1990, you might want to do a bit of background research. Because if you haven’t seen re-runs of Andy Griffith, you won’t understand how totally awesome the show is, and what Bliss likes about it. So go find something on the internets, or a re-run on the teevee. And also, you need to know about these murders, just a little bit. You could read up on Wikipedia. You’ll find that Lauren condensed things a bit, but it was all for a good cause.

Anyway, back to the topic. I wouldn’t be telling you to do research if this book wasn’t absolutely worth reading. Seriously awesome. Lauren may look cute — and she is — but she’s also got a fantastic imagination for the incredibly creepy.

OH. Also, Lauren has been doing a lead-up to release day on her blog. It’s fun reading, her blog, so go there if you’ve got to wait a few days to start on Bliss. (Ahem. According to Amazon.com, the book hasn’t yet been released. On the other hand, according to Amazon.com, the book has been released. Can someone explain this to me???)

UPDATE: Lauren wrote on her blog that … all the copies of her book were printed in the wrong color. Umm, considering that she seems to have been taken over by some evil creature over the last few weeks, maybe this isn’t true, and maybe the book will come out next week instead of this week. But alas, you’ll just have to keep checking back at her site for more info, I suppose.

Or I could get on the horn first thing in the morning and put on my investigative reporter’s hat. “Hi. Is it true that Bliss isn’t out because the color of the blood on the copies of the bound book were wrong? They were what??? Who has purple blood? That’s totally bizarre. So the book is coming out when? In 2012???? No. No way.” Hmm. Maybe I’ll just wait for an update from the lovely Lauren herself …

(Pre-order?) Bliss from Amazon.com.