Rumble by Ellen Hopkins

Rumble is a fast-paced and emotionally gripping story told in verse.  At the center is Matt, a teenager struggling with his anger against all of those in his community--parents, school counselors,  and friends, who failed to help his younger brother, who was mercilessly bullied for being gay and who committed suicide.  The only person who can take him away from his grief is his girlfriend, Hayden, but she is becoming increasingly preoccupied with her church group, a fact which further enrages Matt because he does not believe in any god who would let his brother suffer and die.  Hopkins pulls no punches when talking about the issues Matt faces--parents splitting up, homophobia, teen suicide, gun control, and his own responsibility for Luke's death.  Matt is a character easy to root for and to hate.  This is a great read!

Zac & Mia by A. J. Betts

If you enjoyed A Fault in Our Stars, you will love reading Zac & Mia.  The life lessons come across a bit differently, as does the Australian setting, but there is cancer and it does intersect with a love story. Zac is a lonely leukemia patient in a Sydney hospital cancer ward when he hears a new patient enter the room next to his.  Mia is angry and argumentative; he can hear her yelling at her mom and refusing to cooperate with her doctors.  But Zac knows "it gets better."  Mia has a type of cancer that is treatable;  the stats are in her favor.  He wants to distract her and entertain her, without even having met her;  Mia becomes his cause.  Zac eventually gets a bone marrow transplant and goes home, but for Mia things don't get better.  She loses part of her leg and most of her perfect, athletic and popular self in the process.  Eventually, desperate and suffering, she runs away from home and tracks Zac to his family's olive farm.  The story that follows relates, from alternating both points of view,  the struggle for Mia's soul and her will to live. Betts writes with humor and heart and has created main characters with depth and feelings.  This is a great book for vacation or a long weekend.

Some Assembly Required by Arin Andrews

I't hard to believe someone as young as Andrews (a high school graduate in 2014) can write so calmly and positively about the challenges he faced growing up transgender in a traditionally gendered world.  Yet he does.  He demonstrates an amazing capacity to appreciate his own gifts and hold on to his own identity even in the face of a mother who wanted her daughter to be a beauty queen and a school that saw non-normative sexuality as evil.  What I found so compelling was Arin's ability to deal frankly and without bitterness with the most painful situations growing up, from having to be a pink bunny for Halloween,  to always having to wear hair bows to please a demanding mother, to being denied contact with best friend Darien, who is lesbian.  Despite these attempts to treat Emerald as a girl, consistent with his body parts, Andrews came to realize fairly early on that  family was one of the greatest resources for support and acceptance.  By junior year in  high school, Arin was ready to start the process of gender reassignment.  The transformation from a little girl to a teenage boy is documented by a photograph at the beginning of each chapter.  The pictures help to chronicle the changes from a troubled young girl to a self-confident young man.  There were definitely bumps in the road, and Andrews emphasizes that this process is different for everyone.  He recognizes that many people in his situation are estranged from their families and suffer far greater rejection.  Andrews has written a book to help everyone better understand young people seeking to understand their gender while in the midst of the hormonal ups and downs of their teenage years.

The Islands At the End of The World and The Girl at the Center of the Worldby Austin Aslan

This proved to be a great Thanksgiving escape!  Aslan's book has a little bit of everything--take an apocalyptic collapse of civilized society; add an an epic journey for teen Leilani and her Dad, who are two islands removed from their home on the Big Island of Hawaii when disaster strikes; and season with  large doses of Hawaiian culture,  the mysteries of space, nuclear radiation, and epilepsy.  The novel starts out slowly as we follow Lei and her dad to Oahu, where she is a subject of research on the effectiveness of a new seizure medication.  As the city gradually shuts down due to a mysterious loss of power and the resulting panic, the Miltons realize they need to get home while they still can.  This means stashing food and their gear in their backpacks and trying to find a way across two islands in the absence of air travel and cruise ships.  The series of adventures includes forced incarceration in a military camp and close escapes from crazed and desperate people struggling for their own survival.

At first this looked like another version of  Cormac McCarthy's The Road.  There is the same desperation, the same conflict between doing what seems right and what is necessary, and the deep love of family.  Aslan adds more hope and a more defined goal that keep Lei and her father going.  There are two problems and two journeys--one, how to get home and find the rest of the family, and the other, to try and figure out why their world is crumbling around them.   Aslan ties it all together in a fast-paced story that also leaves one with lots to chew on, along with leftovers.

The second volume takes up where the first leaves off.  The Miltons struggle to grow enough food and manage scarce resources to survive until order returns to the islands.  Leilani has managed to communicate with an alien presence but life is full of danger--from the warring tribes on the big island and from powers that seek to steal her power.  More Hawaiian culture and a love interest or two add to Leilani's story.

Prayers for the Stolen by Jennifer Clement

What a haunting book! Teenager Ladydi Garcia Martinez narrates this tale of her harsh life in the brutal climate and equally brutal drug culture of the Mexican state of Guerrero.  Ladydi's mother takes a perverse pride in the fact that citizens of Guerrero are more dangerous than everyone else.  They have to be tough and angry to fight the poverty,  herbicides, scorpions, spiders, red ants, and poisonous snakes, while eluding the black SUV's that race through their mountain hamlet to steal local girls and sell them into prostitution or turn them into drug smugglers.  Mothers lie about their babies, announcing the birth of sons, and do their best to make their daughters ugly and dirty.  For some, this strategy, combined with safe holes where the girls can hide if there's time,  protects them. Beautiful Paula is not so lucky; known region-wide to be better looking than Jennifer Lopez, she is kidnapped by an infamous drug lord. What happens to her and how she escapes becomes part of drama that permeates their lives.

This is the story of Ladydi and her best friends,  Paula, her best friend Maria,  Estefani, and Maria's brother, Mike.  Together they struggle for an education, explore the jungle, visit the sole beauty parlor with their mothers, and dream of leaving the mountain for something better.  In this matriarchal society (all the men have gone to the U.S. or become drug dealers in Mexico City), Ladydi learn to survive through the twisted teachings and wisdom of her mother ("Those scorpions showed you more mercy than any human being ever will, my mother said."  She took off one of her flip-flops and killed all four in beating blows.  "Mercy is not a two-way street.")

Ladydi's life takes an unexpected and tragic turn when she agrees to accompany Mike to Acapulco to take a job as a nanny with a wealthy family.  Through all of her young life's challenges she discovers loyalty, betrayal, love, anger, and truth.  I found I really cared about Ladydi and her girlfriends.  The mother, not so much, but she, too had some strong qualities necessary for survival in her world.  Strong women, absent husbands, corruption and crime combine to make this a memorable tale.

Hidden: the true story of a modern-day child slave by Shyima Hall with Lisa Wysocky

Shyima Hassan was born into a poor Egyptian family, one of eleven children.  Desperately poor, her parents send one of her older sisters to work as a servant for a wealthy Cairo family.  When the sister steals from them, she's fired.  In order to regain the Hassan family honor and to reimburse the employers, Shyima's parents sell her to them.  Only eight years old, Shyima is torn from her home and family and forced to work 18 hour days, 7 days a week, for a pittance. She's regularly subjected to verbal and  physical abuse. Roughly two years later, her captors decide to move to the United States and bring her along as their only servant.  By the age of ten, Shyima is a slave-- an illegal immigrant with falsified papers, sleeping in the family's garage and doing all the cleaning, laundry, cooking and child care.

Unicef   estimates that 50% of  victims of human trafficking globally are children. In the US, roughly 27% of known trafficking victims  who have been identified are children.   What this book does is describe what slavery or involuntary servitude can mean to a child.  Not only is Shyima subjected to inhuman living conditions and exhausting labor, she is denied any chance to socialize with other children,  to receive an education, or to even learn English so she can communicate her need for help.  Worse, she has to live every day knowing her parents abandoned her.

Shyima's story is both shocking and inspirational.  Now a young woman, Shyima speaks honestly of her difficulties in California's foster care system,  her anger at her captors, and the challenges of finally getting an education.  She also praises the immigration service and social workers who stood up for her.  She now speaks to various law enforcement groups on how to reassure child victims of trafficking and adds advice for all of us on how to spot possible victims--by their demeanor, clothing, and what role they appear to be playing in a family.  Useful, enlightening and timely.

Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick

Forgive me, Leonard Peacock is a gripping tale of a troubled teen's last day of life before he shoots his former best friend and then himself with his grandfather's P-38 pistol, a relic from WW II.  Leonard's recitation of the things he has to do before his final acts is fleshed out with footnotes that reveal the suffering that drives him to plan this murder/suicide.  ""34. You should read about all of those [other]  killers.  They all have a lot in common.  I bet they felt lonely in many ways, helpless, FORGOTTEN, ignored, alienated, irrelevant, cynical, and sad . . ."  This is Leonard in a nutshell.  No one remembers his eighteenth birthday; no one except maybe his Holocaust Studies teacher,  Herr Silverman, and his elderly neighbor Walt seems to care one way or another what happens to him.  Betrayed by his best friend, Asher, snubbed by the beautiful and uber-Christian Lauren, and basically abandoned by his mother, Linda,  Leonard moves through his day hoping against hope that someone will connect with him enough to deter him from his violent intentions.

At first the story just seems like  a creepy way to introduce us to the mind of deranged potential killer who takes a weapon to school to revenge himself against everyone who has bullied him.  But as  Leonard keeps writing,  his dark humor and anguish combine to make him much more sympathetic. He is a teen with serious issues struggling to find good in the world.  As much as Leonard wants to kill Asher, he has also prepared special gifts for the few people who have made his life bearable.  

There are some rather strange passages in the beginning that appear to be letters Leonard and his daughter have written to him from the future, but eventually these make sense as a strategy suggested by Herr Silverman to show Leonard that if he can imagine a world where things get better, this will help him to deal with his depression.

Leonard seems to me to be a character well worth knowing and trying to understand.  His internal dialogs ring true as do the efforts of other characters to reach him.  Recommended.

Scan by Walter Jury and Sarah Fine

Scan is all fast-paced action that pits a super smart and talented teen (think MacGyver with jui-jitsu skills) against a variety of ruthless agents that want what he has-- a super-secret piece of technology, developed by his father, that can tell the difference between humans and aliens.

Tate Archer finds the scanner while snooping in his father's lab and decides to take it to school, where it gets way too much attention.   He doesn't realize the import of what he's done until he, his father, and his girlfriend Christina are chased from the building by police who shoot to kill.  Someone in the school--probably an agent of the aliens, has turned them in.

Tate's father dies from a gunshot wound, and Tate and his immensely spirited and resourceful girlfriend run from the bad guys and struggle to stay ahead of pursuit while they figure out whom they can trust.   Tate's dad cautioned him about trusting any aliens (known as H2) or even the core group of pure humans--The Fifty--who stand against them.  Both sides want the scanner and are willing to destroy Tate and Christina to get it.

Suspense builds as inevitably the hunters close in.  Some of the strategies to escape imminent capture seem a bit far fetched to me, but I'm no chemist.  The non-stop action is tempered by talk of Tate's relationship with his girlfriend--yes, there is romance.  Overall, this is a fun summer read with, I suspect, a sequel in the works.

Say What You Will by Cammie McGovern

For her senior year, Amy decides to dump the adult peer partners she has required for her first eleven years of schooling in favor of hiring fellow students to accompany her during the school day and introduce her to other students so she can learn about how to make friends. Matthew signs up.  It is his observation in class one day that Amy only pretends to happy, well-adjusted and thankful for her many blessings that helps her better understand her isolation.  When she confronts him, Matthew is honest,  "It's not your fault that you don't have any friends.  You always have an aide with you.  No one is going to be themselves when there's a teacher standing right there."  Amy is surprised to learn that Matthew has watched her for years, that and his honesty makes her want him as one of her four helpers.

Amy isn't the only one in this relationship with problems, however.  Matthew has OCD, his way of managing a life beset with fears and anxiety.  He hopes that no one notices his habits of tapping lockers or compulsive hand washing.  Amy does, though, and isn't shy about asking him about his behavior, "WHAT'S THE WEIRDEST THING YOU DO?"  (Amy's dialog, which she writes on her computer,  is always presented in capital letters.)  She sees that he has a pretty serious case of compulsive disorder but that he seems so much more comfortable and relaxed with her.  The story revolves around the growing friendship between them, told through the conversations which reveal much about their secret hopes, fears, and problems.  Amy wants to help Matthew as much as he takes true pleasure in working with her.

McGovern does a great job writing from a "people-first" perspective, presenting her characters as individuals who have a disability but are not defined or stereotyped by that disability.  Amy and Matthew frequently use wit and sarcasm to hide their underlying feelings.  I found it easy to care about them and hope that they could finally be totally honest with each other.  If you liked The Fault in Our Stars, you should enjoy Say What You Will.

Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson

Brandon Sanderson’s Steelheart is a a wild ride for a small group of insurgents fighting against the rule of cruel and violent Epics—humans who possess extraordinary powers such as flight, superhuman strength, and seeming invincibility.   Eighteen-year-old David watched as  Steelheart, an Epic who is immensely powerful, turns non-living things into steel and is impervious to guns, knives and fire, killed his father.  David has studied the Epics for 10 years and wants to join the Reckoners, who specialize in assassinating Epics, so together they can discover Steelheart’s weakness and destroy him.

Cover Art by Mike Bryan

The action takes place in a dystopian world, Newcago—formerly known as Chicago, shrouded in perpetual darkness thanks to the alliance between high Epics Steelheart and Nightwielder.  Some humans who are needed to run the basic functions of a government such as enforcement, providing power, and running the economy,  live above ground;  others less important or more of a threat survive in the tunnels underneath the city.  David comes from this underworld, having worked in a munitions factory throughout his childhood.  He carries with him his rifle, his knowledge of Epics and of Reckoners, and a deep desire for revenge.  When he becomes involved in an assassination attempt on the Epic Fortuity, the rebels take him prisoner.  He has to prove himself and sell the group on his plans to take on Steelheart.  Meanwhile, he also has to deal with a growing attraction to Megan, one of the members of the Reckoners.  (Note:  the dialog between these two is particularly clever.)

Gunfights, racing motorcycles, bolts of destructive forces from the hands of Epics make up the frequent action.  State of the art munitions are employed, along with an ongoing debate on the merits of rifles versus handguns.  Secondary characters are given enough personality and special talents to make them interesting.  The leader, Prof, is particularly mysterious.  How much power does he have and why is he reluctant to use it?  Personally, I liked the internal debate on whether the devil one knows (Steelheart) is actually preferable to whatever or whoever would replace him if the Reckoners succeed.  There are worse places to live than Newcago.  

Steelheart is a great combination of action, suspense, plot twists and a touch of romance. Great fun.

The Grace of Silence: a memoir by Michele Norris

Michele Norris is a journalist best known for her work on NPR's All Things Considered.  She initially planned to write a book about the various conversations on racism taking place nationwide following President Obama's election.  However, she soon realized that much of the circumvention and avoidance of truly open discussion about race and racism that she had observed as part of her work were equally present in her own family.  There were stories that had directly affected her own parents and grandparents which were hushed up or sidestepped.  Norris decided to explore her family's experience to better understand how and why they dealt so calmly with the disrespect and violence visited upon them.

Since her father never spoke of the incident, Norris struggled to uncover the story of his being shot by a white Birmingham policeman. She describes the difficult process of locating any public records--from newspapers or the police, particularly since crimes against blacks weren't considered noteworthy.   She frames the event with a description of how black soldiers in WW II were initially limited to noncombatant, frequently menial roles in segregated units. Having sacrificed to obtain freedom for others, many veterans came home to Jim Crow laws and high unemployment, and denied the right to vote.  Those who challenged such treatment risked physical harm or death, even when in uniform. In the case of her father,  injustice was met with  flight to the Midwest.

Indignities existed on her mother's side as well.  The second great family secret that Norris discovered was that her maternal grandmother worked for Quaker Oats portraying Aunt Jemima, with all the accompanying and humiliating stereotypes.  Clearly there were  moments of great discomfort within her family when considering events such as these in the past.

The author takes a look at her own upbringing to appreciate how her parents protected her and encouraged her to excel.  Norris's stories of her family are moving and instructional--providing a necessary reminder of both the overt and insidious forms of racism.

Those Who Wish Me Dead by Michael Koryta

I have a bad habit of peeking at the ending of suspenseful books somewhere around halfway through to see who makes it and who doesn't. By the end of Chapter 4 (page 41) of Those Who Wish Me Dead I was ready to see if 13-year-old Jace Wilson survives.  He is being pursued by some seriously evil bad guys--two brothers who epitomize the meaning of psychopath.  Brothers Jack and Patrick Blackwell are soulless killers who leave a trail of dead--and frequently tortured--victims who either witnessed their previous crimes or can identify them as they proceed to commit their next one.   Only three characters stand between them and their prey:  an instructor in wilderness survival skills, his wife, and a fire spotter. Outgunned and outthought at every turn,  Ethan Serbin struggles to keep his promise to protect the boy, but first he must find him.  Knowing his pursuers are getting closer, Jace, or Connor as he is now called, has run away from the group of troubled teens that he was placed in as part of a witness protection program.  He enlists fire spotter Hannah Faber to help him--and they flee deeper into the Montana mountains--and into the teeth of a growing forest fire.  How much more hopeless can a boy's chances of survival be?

Admittedly the book requires the reader to suspend belief in a number of plot twists--i.e., how Ethan's wife Allison can leave the hospital where she is recuperating from severe burns and a beating to guide a detective on horseback into the woods towards the fire.  Still,  this a great book for a day or two at the beach or a camping trip.  Come to think of it, students preparing for Outdoor Ed can pick up lots of useful wilderness skills before heading out. Recommended.

Watership Down by Richard Adams

With the school garden starting to take off-- pea and squash plants, beets, carrots all looking healthier each day--I have started to think about predators, namely the rabbits that have been hopping around behind the performing arts building.   I have a feeling they are just waiting for our vegetables to be worth harvesting.  What to do?   Get drawn into an all-out war against the furry raiders?  Nope--it's a reminder that it's time to re-read Watership Down, the timeless classic about a small group of homeless rabbits striving to create a safe place for themselves in a challenging and dangerous world.

Adams has built a complete society in the rabbits of Watership Down,  including a language and an oral tradition with supreme beings and mythic heroes to inform and inspire them.  Hazel is their leader, a determined and wise rabbit who believes that somewhere there can be a peaceful and secure future for those who have joined him.  With his size and martial training, Bigwig provides bravery when it is needed the most.   Other supporting characters include the fierce and powerful Woundwort, who seeks to destroy the band and enslave the survivors; Fiver and Blackberry, who support Hazel with their abilities as seer and problem-solver, respectively; and the does who risk their lives to escape from captivity.  Dangers abound in this quest for a safe home.  Besides Woundwort and his troops, there are the men who plow up the land and patrol their gardens with dogs and guns  and  the non-human hunters--the foxes, cats, and weasels who are an inevitable part of their world.  The rabbits find help in unlikely places, a seagull and a mouse, and throughout their adventures display incredible fortitude, trust, loyalty and courage.

We will still try to discourage the CWA rabbits from excessively raiding our garden, but with Hazel and crew in mind, I think it's possible to look a little more kindly on them.  Who knows what stories they have to tell?

Hild by Nicola Griffith

A reviewer describes this historical novel as "being like Game of Thrones without the dragons . . ."* Very true. The novel recreates a violent and unforgiving, yet decidedly complex world,  a king's court in the Dark Ages.  Plots abound as ambitious priests,  warlords, rulers of competing families-as well as potential traitors within their own families, all jockey for power and influence as King Edwin of Northumbria seeks to become "overking" of all the Angles.  Hild, based on an actual historical figure, Saint Hilda of Whitby,  is Edwin's niece and his seer, who, though barely past childhood, is expected to know everything and predict the future.  Her survival depends on her accuracy and ability to maintain the king's trust.  Hild's mother,  Breguswith of Kent, has trained her well. Hild speaks Anglish, British and Latin, and can read and write, rare talents for anyone in the seventh century, much less for females.  At various points in the novel she must identify threats,  maintain a spy network, act as healer and midwife,  predict the seasons, and decide when to plant crops. She proves herself to be a fierce fighter, both feared and respected.   She must live by her wits, trust few, and hide her emotions, including her love for her half-brother, Cian.  It is a lonely life with rare moments of peace.  

The author has recreated a vibrant and complex medieval society based on her own research into English history.  She describes lives of privilege and of hardship for all classes of people--royalty, farmers, warriors, and servants and slaves.  Above all, Griffith has created a believable character in Hild--one with fears, longings, loyalties, passion and curiosity.  Following the plot can be challenging, requiring a map, a family tree and a glossary (all included), but it is also very rewarding.   Recommended



*Back cover:  Neal Stephenson

Thousand Words by Jennifer Brown

Ashleigh is a teen who seems to have everything--a circle of good friends, a best friend, good grades,  a place on Chesterton High's cross country team, and a cool boyfriend name Kaleb.  The one problem is that Kaleb is now on his way to college, and Ashleigh is afraid he'll forget her; already he seems to spend more time with his baseball buddies than with her.  So Ashleigh,  drunk and encouraged by her friends, decides to take a naked selfie and send it to Kaleb so he will remember her.

Unfortunately, distance relationships can be challenging, and Ashleigh can't get over her sense that Kaleb is lying about his social life at college.  Her distrust started when she heard that he had either talked about or shared her picture with one or more of his friends, and she just can't shake her doubts and jealousy.  Eventually,  Kaleb has  enough of her accusations and breaks up with her. Ashleigh's friends, in a misguided show of support, spray shaving cream on his house and rub shoe polish on his car windows.  Kaleb's payback --no surprise--is to broadcast the photo.

Thousand Words  is Ashleigh's story of how she is targeted by supposed friends and strangers alike when the picture goes public.  She is bullied both in school and online and  is sentenced to community service as a consequence for texting child pornography.  Ashleigh's family is victimized as well; her father is the superintendent of schools and families challenge his ability to set a good example when his only child is caught sexting.  Through her retelling of events Ashleigh reveals the intense pain she feels from the shame and betrayals and where she finds the support that helps her survive.

The Bear by Claire Cameron

Cameron's book about two young children, five-year-old Anna and three-year-old Stick, orphaned by a bear attack while canoe camping on an island in Algonquin Park, Ontario, is absolutely impossible to put down. The story is based on an actual event--the death of two people in 1991 in the park, and the fictionalized version builds on what was known about the attack and on details of the wilderness environment provided by the author who was once a ranger in the same park.  In this account, Anna is awake in the family's tent, listening to her parents quiet talk by the campfire when her mother starts to shout.  Soon thereafter, her father reaches into the tent, grabs Anna and her brother and throws them into a large cooler that the family carries with them to store food.  Cameron describes the attack and its aftermath through the eyes of the five-year old, who can't figure out why the bear (or large black dog, as she first thinks), is trying to get into the cooler and why her parents don't answer her calls for help.

Eventually the bear leaves and the children manage to get the lid open and crawl out.  Anna's and Stick's dad is not there and the camp is a mess.  Anna doesn't see her father, but she does spot his shoe stuck on a piece of meat like the leg of lamb she once saw in the refrigerator at home.  Why, she asks herself, would Daddy put his shoe on a leg of lamb?  The children's mother is still alive, although motionless.  She whispers to her daughter to "be brave" and to put her brother in the canoe and leave the island, because it's not safe.  The rest of the novel details this bewildered child's efforts to do what her Momma wants--to paddle away and then wait for her parents to come get them.  Anna has to draw on every ounce of will and devotion to her parents and baby brother to combat hunger, thirst and fear of the black dog's return.   She is alternately hot, freezing, hungry, angry, scared and delirious.  I must confess to peeking at the later chapters so that I could keep reading about the children's suffering.  This is a great book, although not recommended for reading before or during Outdoor Ed!

Good Kings Bad Kings by Susan Nussbaum

This award winning book serves as an eye-opener on the care--or lack of care in most cases, of a group of teens with disabilities who are confined to a privately-run  but government-sponsored nursing home in Chicago.  The story is told through the voices of  three of the teens, two of the staff, a recruiter for the company that runs the home and wants beds to be filled, and a smart young woman, also disabled, who is hired as a data-entry clerk, a job which provides access to patient records and prompts her to ask questions.

A variety of relationships emerge from the teens' narrations.  Sad, vulnerable Mia is often stranded in her oversized and broken wheelchair.  Sometimes Teddy attaches her chair to his automated one so he can move her around.  Teddy adores Mia and watches over her until she mysteriously starts to shun him.  Yessie is also wheelchair-bound, but that doesn't stop her from taking on girls that steal from her or call her names. Orphaned and grieving but tough, fifteen-year-old Yessie finds a friend in Jimmie, one of the aides, who feels fortunate to escape from a life on the streets herself.   The other aide, Ricky, is a pretty cool Puerto Rican who cares about the kids and has a major crush on Joanne, the data-entry clerk.  Their romance and Joanne's increasing involvement in patient advocacy are high points of the book.

Ricky, Joanne and Jimmie are the "good kings."  There are, unfortunately, a number of "bad kings" who are abusive or criminally negligent as part of a system that values making money over delivering quality care.  The home, also know as the ILLC--Illinois Learning and Life-Skills Center, has a higher than expected number of hospitalizations for its clients.  There are disturbing undercurrents of  danger for the residents, who have few resources other than their own spirit and resilience and the dedication of the "good kings" to deflect the physical and psychological threats that confront them on a daily basis. The language is honest and raw and the situations are very believable. The tension comes from wondering if there will be any justice for the characters. The novel is gripping and at times tough to read, but its well worth the effort.

More Than This by Patrick Ness

The story opens with the vivid description of Seth Wearing's death by drowning.  We follow his sensations as Seth moves from the struggle to stay alive in the icy, merciless currents off the  coast of SW Washington,  to unconsciousness to awakening in a different world, weak, disoriented and clothed only in strange, foil-lined bandages.  In exploring the new world, which appears suspiciously post-nuclear, Seth is surprised to discover his old home in England, where his family lived prior to their move to the Pacific Northwest.  This discovery and the memories it elicits are enhanced by a series of nightmares in which Seth re-experiences scenes of his previous life--his  guilt about his little brother's kidnapping and his ostracism in high school based on the spread of an ill-advised selfie,  that pushed him to commit suicide.

Throughout the story, Seth wonders,  What is real?  His past life?  Where he now is?  Is this hell?  Is it a test?  As he looks for answers he discovers or, more accurately, is discovered by, two other teenagers who also experienced violent deaths.  Together they try to solve the mystery of where they are and why as they hide from the relentless pursuit of a merciless automaton they call the Driver.  Coming from lives marked by betrayals, they must learn to trust one another and work together to remain "alive" or real.

Written with far more questions than answers, the book nonetheless creates a believable and compelling character in Seth, as he recaptures memories of his sad and lonely childhood, and the burdens he was forced to carry by his grieving parents.  The other teens--Regine and Tomasz, provide interesting back-stories as well, posing questions and possible answers to the unusual and hostile world that confronts them.  With an unpleasant revelation around almost every corner , the story moves forward quickly, while keeping the mystery and philosophy about  their deaths relevant.  Recommended.