Review: As I Descended by Robin Talley

Title: As I Descended
Author: Robin Talley
Publisher: HarperTeen
Release date: September 6th 2016
Pages: 370
Genre: Young Adult paranormal
Source: Purchased
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Maria Lyon and Lily Boiten are their school’s ultimate power couple—even if no one knows it but them.

Only one thing stands between them and their perfect future: campus superstar Delilah Dufrey.

Golden child Delilah is a legend at the exclusive Acheron Academy, and the presumptive winner of the distinguished Cawdor Kingsley Prize. She runs the school, and if she chose, she could blow up Maria and Lily’s whole world with a pointed look, or a carefully placed word.

But what Delilah doesn’t know is that Lily and Maria are willing to do anything—absolutely anything—to make their dreams come true. And the first step is unseating Delilah for the Kingsley Prize. The full scholarship, awarded to Maria, will lock in her attendance at Stanford―and four more years in a shared dorm room with Lily.

Maria and Lily will stop at nothing to ensure their victory—including harnessing the dark power long rumored to be present on the former plantation that houses their school.

But when feuds turn to fatalities, and madness begins to blur the distinction between what’s real and what is imagined, the girls must decide where they draw the line.  

This was a super cool premise, but I somehow couldn't get fully into it. In theory, I loved everything about it--a creepy queer YA retelling of Macbeth? A Southern boarding school built on what used to be a slave plantation and is now haunted by the ghosts of the slaves that died there? Not one but two gay couples as the protagonists? Latinx mythology? Yes please.  But for some reason, I kept waiting for things to really take off and for all of these elements to fit together, which unfortunately never happened.

The setting of this boarding school on what used to be a plantation and the creepy atmosphere were really well-done; the one thing that I did get out of this book was some really creepy vibes. The interactions these characters have with ghosts are fascinating and engaging, and I honestly liked them better than I liked the interactions the characters had with each other. However, I wish the history of the plantation was worked into the ghost story better; I was hoping to hear the stories of some of the enslaved people who lived on this plantation, but that unfortunately was not the case, and the story of why this school is haunted fell flat for me.

The characters were okay; they're definitely interesting, but I felt like we didn't get to know them well enough outside of the paranormal activities to actually care about all that much. Especially Maria and Lily were confusing because their motivations just didn't seem realistic. What sets off the events in this book is Maria's desire to win a prize that guarantees a scholarship to any university of her choice... even though she's the daughter of a prominent senator and didn't seem to really need a scholarship to be able to go to a fancy school. Lily pushes Maria towards committing less-than-moral acts because she wants Maria to win a scholarship to Stanford, where she has already been accepted, so that they can stay together. Asides from being very confused about the timeline of these college admissions and this prize and scholarship, I just didn't buy that Maria and Lily would be be willing to cause this much harm to other people just to get Maria, who doesn't need a scholarship, a scholarship to Stanford. And since this is a Macbeth retelling, you can assume the point was to show Maria's and Lily's descent into madness because of their selfish desires, but because the evil spirits were the main focus, that element seemed kind of forced, and I was confused by the overall message.

Even though the story and setting were intriguing, I had to push myself to keep going at times because I got a little bored and I was overall underwhelmed by the story. All around, a good atmospheric, creepy read, but an underwhelming story, characters, and message. I loved Robin Talley's debut but hadn't read anything else by her, so I will have to check out her other ones to see if they're more up my alley.

Review: Adam by Ariel Schrag

Title: Adam
Author: Ariel Schrag
Publisher: Mariner Books
Release date: June 10th 2014
Pages: 302
Genre: Young Adult contemporary
Source: Purchased
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When Adam Freedman -- a skinny, awkward, inexperienced teenager from Piedmont, California -- goes to stay with his older sister Casey in New York City, he is hopeful that his life is about to change. And it sure does.

It is the Summer of 2006. Gay marriage and transgender rights are in the air, and Casey has thrust herself into a wild lesbian subculture. Soon Adam is tagging along to underground clubs, where there are hot older women everywhere he turns. It takes some time for him to realize that many in this new crowd assume he is trans -- a boy who was born a girl. Why else would this baby-faced guy always be around?

Then Adam meets Gillian, the girl of his dreams -- but she couldn't possibly be interested in him. Unless passing as a trans guy might actually work in his favor...

This book was WILD. Wow. 

I know a lot of people took issue with this premise (especially once the movie version came out), but I think the story of a cis boy pretending to be trans is a fascinating perspective from which to explore trans issues--as long as you make clear that of course, pretending to be trans is absolutely not okay. So I was really excited to read this book to see how and if it would do that. And even though this was a super fun book to read, I'm still on the fence on whether it does this clearly enough.

Adam, in the beginning of the novel, is truly terrible. He is frustrated at his lack of sexual experience and blames women for this. Asides from the whole pretending-to-be-trans thing, he and his disgustingly homophobic and pervy friend spy on his sister (!!!???) while she is having sex with her girlfriend. He is super ignorant when it comes to queer and trans issues, and makes a number of transphobic comments.

But, I actually liked the fact that he was terrible in the beginning of the novel. While we are starting to get more and more novels about queer characters struggling with other people's homophobia/transphobia, we don't have a lot of books about homophobic/transphobic characters addressing their own prejudices and educating themselves about queer issues, and that can be a really powerful thing to read about. Reading about Adam learning so much about trans issues--even though it's for the completely wrong reasons--I think could be really useful for someone who isn't very well versed in queer and trans issues.

I also really loved the depiction of queer spaces. Adam and his group of actually queer friends go to queer sex clubs, a gay marriage rally, and a number of queer parties and gatherings, and the depiction of this subculture was much more explicit than what we are used to in YA, which I think can also be really powerful.

Finally, I thought the parodic depiction of white queer communities were really entertaining and powerful. Adam joins a community of almost exclusively white queer people who are hyper-politically correct and constantly trying to be more radical and to think of the least privileged queer people, all while ignoring the lived experiences of queer people of color. Adam--despite all of his shortcomings--comments on these discrepancies that make for a productive engagement with whiteness in queer activism. I was really disappointed that the movie completely erases this element of the novel, since this to me was one of the most powerful elements.

I was really torn on what to make of this novel's depiction of sex. This novel includes some of the most graphic sex scenes I have ever read in a YA novel, and it discusses in detail how Adam straps down his actual penis in order to strap on a dildo in order to have sex with Gillian. On the one hand, pushing the boundaries on what level of sexual explicit material is acceptable in YA is really powerful, especially because of this discussion of non-normative sex acts such as the use of sex toys and the discussions around queer trans people's sexual pleasure that go along with it. On the other hand, the novel never really addresses the fact that all of the sexual interactions between Adam and Gillian, during which Gillian thinks she is having sex with a trans boy, are a clear violation of consent. There is one scene at the end that is especially icky in terms of consent. This novel really pushes the boundaries on what is acceptable in YA--in ways both good and bad.

***THIS PARAGRAPH CONTAINS SPOILERS***
Even though I thought I liked where the novel was going, I was really frustrated by the ending. I cannot believe that Gillan stays with Adam after finding out that he is not trans. I felt like the novel would have needed to punish Adam (as bad as that sounds) in some way for pretending to be trans and for violating consent with Gillian in order to really demonstrate to readers that these choices are reprehensible. By having Gillian forgive Adam, the novel, if not condoning his actions, makes the case that they are forgivable and understandable, which really detracted from the novel's message. And then, the very ending, in which, after Adam and Gillian break up, Gillian starts dating another cis boy... As a declaration of the legitimacy of bisexuality (the way it's framed in the movie), this could have been an important point to make, but because this is never discussed, it veered into iffy turning-the-lesbian-straight territory.

Adam is one of the most shocking YA novels I've ever read, in ways good and bad. While I didn't love everything about it, and I really wish the ending had taken Adam to task for his actions more explicitly, this novel opens up a lot of important conversations and pushes queer YA in new directions. Plus, its shock factor makes it a super fun read.

Coming Back to Blogging!

Hi!

Is anyone there?

Does anyone still follow this blog after my accidental 4-year hiatus?

Does the YA book blog community still exist??

Regardless, I'm coming back! I miss talking about YA with other people who are as obsessed with it as I am. 

What I've been up to since I stopped posting...

I stopped blogging in the summer of 2016, the summer I graduated from college and started grad school (and, honestly, the year before that my dedication to blogging was already pretty spotty) because I just wasn't willing to make time for this blog anymore. But I definitely did not abandon my love for YA! After graduating from college, I went on to get my MA in Comparative Literature, and wrote my Master's thesis about neoliberal diversity politics and Young Adult literature. I then went on to start a PhD program in English Literature and Critical Gender Studies, where most of my work has still been on race and sexuality in Young Adult literature and youth studies. Grad school can be kind of all-consuming, and since I was already reading and writing the whole time, I just couldn't get myself to do even more reading and writing for this blog. But I've still been thinking and writing about YA this whole time; just in significantly more formal and less fun spaces than this one....

Why I'm coming back to blogging...

The main reason is because I miss it! In my academic work I've started to talk more about online YA communities, and writing about teens' knowledge production and the way YA online communities can impact publishing trends has made me nostalgic for my days of participating in this world! I recently started writing reviews of the YA books again because I missed working through my thoughts on a book by writing them out, without planning on posting them anywhere but GoodReads. But if I'm already writing them, I figured I might as well post them on here too... Plus, I miss the YA community! I've seen that many of the bloggers I interacted with back in the day aren't blogging anymore, and I don't know if the YA book blog community is quite the same as it was 5 years ago, but I'm hopeful that some of you all are still out there, and that there are new YA lovers to get to know!

Also, ya know, what else am I supposed to do during quarantine!?

What to expect from this blog in the future...

There's no way I'll be able to post as much as I did during this blog's heyday--how in the world did I have the time to read 3 YA books a week and post 5 times a week?? Ah, right, by not having a life in high school...--but I am hoping to post at least once a week! During the summer I will probably even post more than that, but once school starts again reading and reviewing a YA book every week already sounds pretty ambitious.

I might also write some longer posts adapting some of my more academic thoughts on race and sexuality in YA to a more informal style and writing more about that here too!

Other than that, this blog will mainly just be YA book reviews, unless... are memes still a thing? Does anyone still do Top Ten Tuesdays and Waiting on Wednesdays? Someone catch me up on what I've missed and teach me how to YA book blog in 2020...

If anyone is still following this blog and actually reading this, thank you for sticking with me! And even if not... I'm just looking forward to writing book reviews again :)