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penmage
Breaking Point by Alex Flinn
Paul is your average outcast in a snooty rich private school. He grew up an army brat, moving from neighborhood to neighborhood and school to school along with his father’s postings, until his smothering mother decided to homeschool him. Now, his parents are divorced, his mother’s gotten a job in the office at a ritzy private school, and Paul has to face school with a bunch of obnoxious rich kids. All he wants is a friend, but it’s worse than that. As the scholarship kid, he’s constantly picked up and tormented in a hundred nasty little ways. So when Charlie Good, the golden boy of the school, starts pulling Paul into his exclusive little group, Paul couldn’t be happier. He knows that Charlie is using him, but he doesn’t care—because as Charlie’s friend, the tormenting stops, and he has people to hang out with. But popularity comes with a price. Paul thought he’d pay anything to have friends, but before the end he’ll realize that some prices are always too high to pay.
I really like Alex Flinn’s writing in general. She’s great at capturing a strong high school vibe, at getting into the mind of a teenager and the mindset of high school and cliques and everything that entails. I didn’t really enjoy this book, but that’s not because it isn’t as strong as her other books—it’s because it’s oppressive. From the first page, you know that things aren’t going to end well. There’s no joy in this book—you’re just along for the ride as Paul careens dangerously towards an unfortunate end, and even if he can’t see it coming, we can. I read this book in one gulp, because I had to get through it, had to follow it through to the end.
But unlike Laura Wiess’s brilliant and painful Leftovers, which is a similar “feeling of dread from the start” book, there’s nothing new here, no revelation. There’s nothing shocking or surprising—just an inevitable misery.
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The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney by Suzanne Harper
Sparrow Delaney comes from an interesting family. Her grandmother tends to the graves of her four dead husbands in the backyard. The family cat is homicidal. She’s got seven sisters, all named after birds. And her mother tends to hold séances in the living room.
When Sparrow starts tenth grade in a big high school where nobody knows her (or her family) she’d determined to get a fresh, normal start, and for the most part, things are going well. She’s got a new best friend, and a crush on the cute, mysterious guy in her history class. But Sparrow’s also got a secret, and the secret’s threatening to come out and spoil everything. Sparrow’s psychic—and the ghost in her history class will not go away until she helps him.
This is a fun book. Sparrow is a likeable protagonist with a cheerful, believable voice, and reading her is like talking to a teenager—an intelligent teenager who comes from an embarrassing family. I also really like Sparrow’s family, though I wish Harper had toned them down just a little. For the most part, they’re realistic even in their extreme kookiness—every now and then I felt like they were a little too ridiculous.
Parts of the book are extremely predictable, including the conclusion—I would have liked a few more surprises and originality. But that aside, this is a fun, solid supernatural teen read, and you could do worse than to have Sparrow Delaney’s voice in your head for a few hundred pages.
