Book Thoughts: If I Lie

Title: If I Lie
Author: Corrine Jackson

Wow. I skimmed the first few pages of this one just to see what it was about and ended up reading the entire thing. (Also, I bawled like a baby. So many feelings!)

Quinn's from a military town, being shunned because she got caught kissing someone who isn't her active-duty boyfriend Carey, and she can't tell the truth about the situation because she's promised to keep Carey's secret.

Some of the events in this story seemed almost too extreme or dramatic to be real, but that's why it's so powerful. The novel is fictional but the events in it are so real. It's hard to believe the kind of verbal, emotional, and physical abuse people suffer just for being who they are and loving someone other than who everyone expects them to love.

I absolutely recommend it, but wow, have a box of tissues ready.

Book Thoughts: And Then Things Fall Apart

Title: And Then Things Fall Apart
Author: Arlaina Tibensky

I read this book after hearing the author speak at a conference last November and thinking that she sounded like me. I had no real idea what to expect from the book. Even so, it managed to be not what I expected.

Keek (short for Karina) is sick. Heartsick, and also chicken-pox-sick. Her parents are splitting up, she and her boyfriend had a Fight, and her baby cousin is in the NICU on the other side of the country, and on top of all that she's covered in itchy pox. The novel is essentially Keek's diary as she tries to come to terms with the insanity in her life.

What surprised me, really, is that Keek is fourteen or fifteen. I've gotten used to reading about older teens (probably because I am an older teen - I'll be twenty in less than a year). It is from older teen protagonists that I look for internal struggles about virginity, not from a narrator my baby brother's age (high school freshman). But I think that, in part, is why Keek's story is important.

These are issues that real young teens face. As much as the idea of losing my virginity at fourteen would have terrified me, that's a legitimate question. And I loved that Keek was honest with herself about it and not afraid to be afraid. I think it's great to have a character encouraging young teens to do what's best for them rather than what someone else wants them to do.

ATTFA isn't one that I would have picked up had I not heard the author speak, and it's not one that I would give to someone my age, but for someone in 8th-10th grade, I would definitely give them this book. Honest and clever and funny and thoughtful, Keek is a narrator that makes me want to be her friend.