Monday, October 17, 2011
The Killer’s Cousin by Nancy Werlin
Werlin, Nancy. The Killer’s Cousin. New York: Delacorte Press. 1998. ISBN 0385325606
AWARDS:
1999 Edgar award winner.
American Library Association "Best of the Best: Best 100 YA books of the Past 10 Years selection, 2005.
ALA Best Book for Young Adults
ALA Quick Pick—Top 10
ALA Teens' Top 10 Best Book Pick
Booklist Editor's Choice
SUMMARY: After being acquitted of murdering his girlfriend in a freak accident, David Yaffe leaves Baltimore to go live with his distant Uncle Vic and his family in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Uncle Vic’s family includes his wife Julia, a dead daughter, Kathy, and 13 year old Lily. David is to attend a private school there to escape all the publicity about him in Baltimore. The uncle’s family is not happy to have David living with them.
From the moment he moves in, he is met with intense hostility by Lily. Everyone else eventually warms up to David. He feels that Kathy’s ghost is haunting him and wanting him to help Lily. He sees her ghost and hears strange noises. Eventually, he comes to realize that Lily killed her sister Kathy. Finally, Lily admits that she did kill Kathy. He tries to force Vic and Julia to get Lily help, but they think he is the one who needs help and ask him to leave. After David leaves, Lily tries to kill herself in a fire, but David rescues her. They vow that they will help each other because only they truly understand what they have gone through.
CRITICAL ANALYSIS: The story is part mystery, but also contains elements of the supernatural. We want to find out what really happened to David’s girlfriend, as well as what really happened to Kathy, his cousin. The story is told from David’s point of view. As David’s character develops, we begin to feel sympathy for his situation. His parents are stereotypical parents who get their son out of a situation and then shield him from the backlash that comes with being acquitted of murder, by sending him away. We never really understand what is behind his Aunt Julia’s hostility toward David and his family. Vic, the uncle, is sympathetic as well. He is obviously the one who pushed for David to move in with the family and he tries to bond with David. Lily’s character is a mystery to me. She has no redeeming traits, and it easy to imagine her as a killer. I had no sympathy for her, yet at the end, after being the villain through the whole story, it seemed that the author wanted her to be a victim as well.
The setting is unimportant to the story. It could have been any town in America. The new high school David attends is not significant to the story, except that it is a private school. His change from public to private school is most likely to shield him from the media and public ridicule.
The plot contains elements of a mystery story. The six essential rules introduced by Hillary Waugh are present. This mystery type seems to follow “The Amateur Detective” classification. David has insight that no one else in the story seems to have. He is the only one who thinks that Lily is evil. The story also contains elements of the supernatural, as David lives in his dead cousin Kathy’s room . He sees shadows, hears noises, and also hears Kathy’s voice telling him to “Help Lily.” Lily is so mean to David it is unrealistic to me that he would ever feel anything but contempt for her. Yet, it seems that he bonds with her in the end. I enjoyed the story and found it addicting, but the ending was hard to believe.
It is well written and and packed with suspense. I would recommend it to teenage boys or girls. It is a great read for reluctant readers.
REVIEWS:
School Library Journal:
“David Yaffe, 18, having recently been acquitted of murdering his girlfriend, is sent to live in Cambridge, MA, with his aunt Julia, uncle Vic, and cousin Lily to repeat his senior year of high school. Lily, 11, is resentful of his presence; she feels that her dead sister Kathy's room is rightfully hers, and that he should not be staying in it. Lily taunts and torments David until he begins to doubt his own sanity. His emotional fragility is compellingly revealed as he works through the loss of his girlfriend and the complicity he feels over her death. Readers see Lily through David's eyes; she is alternately depicted as the troubled child of dysfunctional parents, a spoiled brat, and a truly evil character. She plays on his fears and pushes David to the edge until he realizes what he has always known: that she, too, is a killer. This psychological thriller will keep readers involved and should appeal to fans of Lois Duncan and Joan Lowery Nixon.”
Booklist Review:
“In this utterly terrifying psychodrama, a teenager already laboring under a crushing load of guilt finds himself cleverly, relentlessly stalked by his 11-year-old cousin. David killed his lover. The fact that it was accidental and that he's been acquitted of her murder, matters to him not at all. To finish high school and perhaps find a way to live with himself, he moves away from home to stay with Massachusetts relatives, where, in an attic apartment that may be haunted, he lives above a family driven seriously dysfunctional by a daughter's apparent suicide four years before. His hosts' remaining daughter, Lily, greets him coldly and starts a campaign of surreptitious harassment designed to enrage him beyond control. Why? Powerless to stop her and unable to make her parents believe that she needs help, David hangs on grimly, meanwhile trying to fit in at a new school and finding there an unexpected friend. Positioning her characters in an intricate, shadowy web of secrets, deception, bad choices, family feuds, and ghostly warnings, Werlin winds the tension to an excruciating point, then releases it in a fiery climax: realizing in the nick of time that he's not the only killer in the family, David races into a burning house to save Lily from suicide, then promises her that she won't be alone with her anguish any longer. With this tautly plotted thriller, rich in complex, finely drawn characters, Werlin more than fulfills the promise of her first novel, Are You Alone on Purpose?”
RESOURCES:
Werlin, Nancy. The Killer’s Cousin. New York: Delacorte Press. 1998.
Nancy Werlin Website
Harper Collins, Canada website. Interview with Nancy Werlin.
Image by Google Images.
The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
Cooney, Caroline B. The Terrorist. New York: Scholastic Press. 1997. ISBN 0590228536
AWARDS:
ABA Pick of the List
ALA Quik Pik
Texas Lone Star Award
SUMMARY: Billy Williams and his family have recently moved to London because his father’s job has transferred him there. Billy and his sister Laura attend an international school which educates students from all over the world. Billy is headed to school one day when a stranger hands him a package. It is a bomb and Billy dies in the explosion. His family learns that it was a terrorist attack and his sister Laura decides she will find his killer.
She suddenly is befriended by a school girl, Jehran. When she gains Laura’s friendship, she reveals that she needs to leave the country because her brother has given her to a 54 year old man, as his new bride. She insists that Laura use Billy’s passport to help her get to New York and away from her brother. Laura is sympathetic and agrees.
The plan is for Laura to fly with Jehran to New York and then Laura can fly back alone to London. They set up the plan and Laura almost gets on the plane, until she realizes that Jehran has used her to get out of London. Jehran had Billy killed by her terrorist group so she could use his passport to gain freedom. After a scuffle, Jehran is caught, but later disappears and is never seen again. Laura and her family go back to America. They go on with their lives, but Billy’s killer is never punished.
CRITICAL ANALYSIS: This mystery story starts with excitement and ends with excitement as well. We spend the first chapter falling in love with Billy Williams. He is such a great character and it is a shame that he is gone so suddenly. I thought that the author developed the character very successfully in the first few chapters. You feel sad about his fate. The character Laura, is believable and sympathetic. We root for her to be successful in her search because she feels like we would feel if it happened to our family.
Jehran is an excellent villain. Befriending her victim’s sister, and actually getting Laura to help her, is a great plot twist. The fact that there is no punishment for Billy’s killer, was a big disappointment for me. I disliked the ending, but it is believable. How many times does a killer walk free in our world today?
The setting is important because an international setting was essential for the story. England and the international school are essential for the plot because it brings all these different cultures together. If not for the family being American, Jehran would have never seen them as a means to get her to America. England is important to the story because this is where many terrorist groups develop and carry out their attacks. This also makes it believable that the killer’s attack is not as big a priority to law enforcement as it would be in America. England deals with attacks like these all the time.
This is an exciting and well written story. I would recommend it to any teenager. It is face-paced which makes it perfect for reluctant readers.
REVIEWS:
Publishers Weekly Review:
“An American girl living in London loses her younger brother due to a terrorist bombing and seeks revenge. "Thought-provoking as well as a just plain good read," said PW.”
School Library Journal Review:
“A provocative look at an American family living abroad, destroyed by a not-so-random act of violence. Billy, 11, a brash but lovable all-American boy, accepts a package from a stranger in a London subway station and becomes the victim of a bomb. His grieving 16-year-old sister is obsessed with capturing the unknown terrorist. An average student at the London International Academy, she alienates her circle of friends as she begins to suspect each of them. Laura, the typical Cooney heroine, is rather self-centered, plodding through life until tested by trauma. She and her family play the roles of well-meaning, but rather ignorant Americans, oblivious of the world in which they live. Plausibility takes a back seat to plot toward the end as Laura neatly places herself in the hands of the cold-hearted villain. Not since Barbara Parks’ Mick Harte Was Here (Knopf, 1995) has a deceased sibling been so carefully memorialized. Indeed, readers come to know the short-lived Billy better than many of the other characters, including the vaguely draw villain, whose motivation is never really clear. Cynicism rather than honor is the victor at the tale's conclusion; it ends not with a bang, but a whimper. While this book is not as gut-wrenchingly terrifying as Robert Cormier's After the First Death (Pantheon, 1979), Cooney's fans will find it more accessible and even harder to put down.?”
RESOURCES:
Caroline Cooney Website.
TeenReads Website. Caroline Cooney Interview.
Image by Google Images.
I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have To Kill You by Ally Carter.
Carter, Ally. I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d have to kill you. Chicago: Hyperion Books. 2007. ISBN 9781423100041
AWARDS:
Maryland Black-Eyed Susan Book Award Winner
Maud Hart Lovelace Book Award Winner
Amelia Bloomer Book Award
SUMMARY: Cammie Morgan is a second generation Gallagher Girl. She attends the Gallagher School, which is a high school academy for spy training. Her mother is the head master of the academy. Cammie and her friends live at the school located in a Rosewood, Virginia. The town believes that the school is a rich girls’ prep school. The school has prepared her for taking on the world, but nothing about boys. She and her friends are on a mission in Rosewood one day when Cammie meets Josh, a local boy. Cammie and her friends research him and decide to cover for Cammie so she can date Josh. Everything is great, except that the life she is telling Josh is hers, is a total lie. After many close calls, while on a mission at the end of the semester, Josh finds out the truth about Cammie.
At the end of the semester, Cammie doesn’t know if Josh will want anything more to do with her or not, but she realizes that her friends and family will always have her back. Cammie decides that for now that is good enough.
CRITICAL ANALYSIS: This spy adventure is a cute romp through adolescent romance but nothing very adventurous happens. The plot consists of Cammie trying to have this relationship based on lies. The plot has a few spy adventures with the girls, but I didn’t find them that interesting. They are all part of her school work and you know that nothing is really going to happen to her. There was no suspense or real drama. The spy jargon and the way it is written are entertaining. The story is funny and cute, but nothing memorable. I would recommend this book to junior high school girls.
The character of Cammie Morgan is likeable and fun, but no other characters are well developed. Her friends are not developed as characters, so you don’t really bond with them. The character of Josh is probably the most appealing, as Cammie’s “ normal” boyfriend. He is sweet and sympathetic and I hoped their relationship works out for his sake. Her mother is the head mistress of the school, but we never really feel she knows anything about her daughter. The fact that she rooms with other girls at the school instead of her mother, doesn’t allow any relationship to develop between them.
The spy school setting is essential to the plot. The spy school could have been set in any small city to be effective.
REVIEWS:
School Library Journal Review:
“Cammie Morgan, 15, is a student at Gallagher Academy, a top-secret boarding school for girls who are spies-in-training. She studies covert operations, culture and assimilation, and advanced encryption, and has learned to speak 14 languages. Her troubles begin when she falls for Josh, a local boy who has no clue about her real identity. Keeping her training secret forces her to lie to her new love, which leads to comic complications. Subplots include Cammie's relationship with her mother–the headmistress at Gallagher–and her grief over the loss of her father, who died while on a spying assignment. The teen's double life leads to some amusing one-liners, and the invented history of the Gallagher Girls is also entertaining, but the story is short on suspense. The stakes never seem very high since there are no real villains, and the cutesy dialogue quickly becomes grating. However, the novel has been optioned for a film and will likely attract readers who enjoy lighthearted, frothy tales and squeaky-clean romances. Unfortunately, it lacks the warmth and appeal of other teen books turned into movies, such as Meg Cabot's The Princess Diaries (HarperCollins, 2000) and Ann Brashares's The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Delacorte, 2001).”
Pulisher’s Weekly Review:
“The spy game isn't just a guy game, as witnessed by Carter's diverting entry into the flurry of teen espionage novels flashing loads of girl power. Unfortunately, Raudman sounds like she's straining (and sometimes squeakily so) to sound younger than she is and her intonation is a bit off, giving her reading a falseness that's hard to overcome. Cammie is a sophomore at the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women a place that lives up to its name, as Cammie knows 14 languages and is a skilled killing machine. Of course, Gallagher girls become the most elite spies, and Cammie fires ahead on that career track (as was her mother, now the school's headmistress) until romance with an ordinary guy, no less threatens to derail her progress. Despite any shortcomings, aficionados of this burgeoning fiction genre will be tempted to give this title a go.”
RESOURCES:
Ally Carter Website:
Spy Society/Gallagher Girls Website:
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)