Autumn's Most Anticipated Reads for 2016

Joint Review: The Fever by Megan Abbott

Author: Megan Abbott
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Date of publication: June 2014

The Nash family is close-knit. Tom is a popular teacher, father of two teens: Eli, a hockey star and girl magnet, and his sister Deenie, a diligent student. Their seeming stability, however, is thrown into chaos when Deenie's best friend is struck by a terrifying, unexplained seizure in class. Rumors of a hazardous outbreak spread through the family, school and community.  As hysteria and contagion swell, a series of tightly held secrets emerges, threatening to unravel friendships, families and the town's fragile idea of security.

I think this book was supposed to be like a modern day Salem Witch Trial kinda thing.  I could see where the author was going with it and sort of liked the premise.  However, the prevailing theory throughout most of the book was that the HPV vaccine was the reason that the girls were going crazy.  I felt that was sort of irresponsible on the part of the author since the majority of the readers are probably girls of the age that would be getting the HPV shots.  They're already scared enough, why freak them out more?  Once the real reason came out, it was somewhat plausible, but it didn't really account for why all the rest of the girls were acting the way they were.  In the end, The Fever was just sort of eh for me.  I had really big expectations for this book and they fell far short.

The Fever ended up being a DNF for me.  I got about 10% in and just didn't like it.  I felt like the girls sounded like what the author thought teenage girls should sound like...dumb and boy crazed.   I also didn't like how the story perspective kept switching from Deenie, her brother and her father.  It looks like it was a hit or miss for most readers.  So, I guess you'll have to try it for yourself.

YA Week: Dare Me by Megan Abbott

by:  Megan Abbott
published by:  Reagan Arthur Books
publish date:  July 31, 2012

Addy Hanlon has always been Beth Cassidy's best friend and trusted lieutenant. Beth calls the shots and Addy carries them out, a long-established order of things that has brought them to the pinnacle of their high-school careers. Now they're seniors who rule the intensely competitive cheer squad, feared and followed by the other girls -- until the young new coach arrives.

I'm not quite sure if Dare Me is classified as YA or not.  It seems like it would be one of those crossover books or one of those books that would be in that "New Adult" genre we've started hearing about.  I don't know if I like that term, but it does help kinda draw that line.  There are few YA books that I don't think should be in the hands of kids younger than like driving age, so I guess if there was a different classification other than YA, it allows writers to take more liberties without threat of harming impressionable young minds (says the mother that let her 8 year olds watch The Walking Dead...lol).

Anyway, Dare Me is all about the world of cheerleading.  Beth and Addy have been best friends for ever.  Beth has always been Cheer Captain and Addy her Lieutenant.  Then Coach Fish retires and Coach French comes in and shakes up the status quo.  She takes the squad and breaks them down and turns them into a whole new team.

Coach French also brings turmoil and drama to the team.  Beth loses her position as Team Captain and she is out for revenge.  Coach French also starts having an affair with the Army Recruiter at the school and turns her marriage upside down.  Worse still, she turns Beth and Addy against each other.

I found Dare Me to be creepy and disturbing.  When I first started it, the name of the author Megan Abbott sounded familiar, but it wasn't ringing a bell.  She wrote the End of Everything, which I read last summer.  If you haven't read that, it's another "New Adult" young girl book that's incredibly disturbing.  Dare Me has a lot of bad language and "adult situations" in it, but on the other hand it has a lot of messages in it that I think are important to young teen girls.  So, I would definitely recommend it to teen girls, but with a lot of parental warnings to go along with it.

The End of Everything

by:  Megan Abbott
published by:  Regan Arthur Books
publish date:  July 7th, 2011

Thirteen-year old Lizzie Hood and her next door neighbor Evie Verver are inseparable. They are best friends who swap bathing suits and field-hockey sticks, and share everything that's happened to them. Together they live in the shadow of Evie's glamorous older sister Dusty, who provides a window on the exotic, intoxicating possibilities of their own teenage horizons. To Lizzie, the Verver household, presided over by Evie's big-hearted father, is the world's most perfect place.

And then, one afternoon, Evie disappears. The only clue: a maroon sedan Lizzie spotted driving past the two girls earlier in the day. As a rabid, giddy panic spreads through the Midwestern suburban community, everyone looks to Lizzie for answers. Was Evie unhappy, troubled, upset? Had she mentioned being followed? Would she have gotten into the car of a stranger?

Lizzie takes up her own furtive pursuit of the truth, prowling nights through backyards, peering through windows, pushing herself to the dark center of Evie's world. Haunted by dreams of her lost friend and titillated by her own new power at the center of the disappearance, Lizzie uncovers secrets and lies that make her wonder if she knew her best friend at all.

I started this book on the assumption that it was a YA book.  I don't know why other than the fact that the characters were 13 years old.   This is NOT a YA book.  This is an adult fiction/literature book.  The fact that it was written in a completely different cadence than a typical YA book should have clued me in initially.  That took a little getting used to, don't read bad into that, it was really quite lovely.  Once I really got into it and the story started evolving and people were speculating about what happened to Evie, my eyebrows started going up and I was thinking this can't be a YA book.  Then at the end of the book, my eyes were goggling out of my head and my jaw was on the floor and I knew for sure it wasn't a YA book.  I was reading this at the beach sans computer to check these things out for sure.

I will say I found this book to be eye opening and shocking to say the least.  Maybe not so much in the beginning, but you start to get an inkling of what's to come once Evie starts taking matters in her own hands.   There were a few moments that I found to be somewhat disturbing, but I think they were foreshadowing and setting up some of the actions of the other characters, particularly Dusty, the older sister.

This is one of those books that I'm sure will haunt me for quite some time.  I know that I haven't stopped thinking about it since I finished it.  As a mother, I'm always worried about my girls, but I don't spend a whole lot of time worrying about other people looking at them.  After reading this, I'm wondering if I should and would it matter?

If you have a mature reading group, I think this book could lead lead to some excellent discussions.  I think there were a lot of characters in this book that would warrant a deeper look, like the mothers for example.