Bookburger

30-Sec Lit Crit: Thank You, Lucky Stars by Beverly Donofrio

Yes, it's time for another quickie review from Amanda, our terribly talented teen reviewer....Hit it, Amanda...

Here's a cute little story about Ally, a fifth grader who’s very excited for her fifth grade year with her best friend Betsy. They’ll enter the talent show, wear matching outfits, eat lunch together… However, things don’t go as planned and Betsy ignores Ally, and becomes friends with Ally’s archenemy, Mean Mona. The only person that will talk to her is Tina, the different new girl, who wears her hair like Princess Leia, and lives life in a fun and showy way.

After weeks of mourning over the loss of her best friend, Ally decides to enter the talent show, and perform a disco dance, her favorite, with Tina. Will she win the show? Will she get her best friend back? Will she finally learn to love 5th grade? There’s so much and more in this simply written, charming book.
In honor of the main character, Ally’s penchant for writing poems about what’s going on in her life, I have decided to write a poem. So, here it goes:

Thank You, Lucky Stars, a poem written by Amanda:
                       I read a book the other day, about a 10-year old girl
                       At first I was apprehensive, then I decided to give it a whirl
                       It told a story about disco, hairstyles, and lucky stars
                       Girls who love the moon, and girls who seem like they’re from Mars.
                        In the end, a lesson was learned, and the book, I’d say was cool
                        It made me think of my younger years, and why I loved school.

So, go pick up a copy of Thank You, Lucky Stars. You’ll thank your lucky stars you did.

30 Sec Lit Crit: 30 Days to Getting Over... by Clea Hantman

Here's the latest words of wisdom from our fabulous new teen reviewer! While we at burger hq were interviewing Clea Hantman, Amanda was away in her secret book-review lair reading and reviewing her new book....so take it away, Amanda!

30 Days to Getting Over the Dork You Used to Call Your Boyfriend by Clea Hantman is a rockin’ new nonfiction handbook specifically for girls who have just parted ways (ahem, been dumped), by their last jerk of a boyfriend. It’s an exceptional, extraordinary book about how to move past that dork, and regain your confidence and shine that you had before him.
      Unlike many handbooks and self-help guides, Hantman treats the readers as actual people, cares about their problems, and actually legitimately tries to help them. She offers great advice that is both fun and goofy, but actually helpful.
      Hantman makes getting over an ex actually almost… gasp, fun. She offers activities, songs that match the theme (WHICH I LOVE!!), movies about breaking up, and wonderful advice that could come right from the mouths of your friends and mom.
It’s an amazing book that will most likely become a classic in the minds of many heartbroken teenage girls. It will make girls rethink and reinvent themselves, and will make so many girls stronger in the end. Fabulous, witty, hysterical, and creative, these 30 Days will be ones you’ll never forget.
P.S: Check out Clea’s blog at www.gettingoverthedork.com, it features awesome songs handpicked by the author, as well as super-cool break up advice!

30 Sec Lit Crit: How Not to Be Popular by Jennifer Ziegler

It's a great moment in burger history: the first book review by AMANDA, the latest in a long line of lovely teen reviewers (well, actually the line is rather short, but quite distinguished). She is 16 and a passionate reader who dreams of becoming a writer herself one day....and we are just completely happy to be posting her reviews. So here's the first one....take it away, Amanda!

          

How NOT to Be Popular is a new, fantastic book by Jennifer Ziegler that is hysterical and fast-paced, with unique and kooky characters and situations. It’s a fresh take on high school and a reinvention of the typical young adult themes of how to become popular and be the alpha dog of the school. It’s about a girl named Maggie, whose real name is Sugar Magnolia (no, I’m not kidding), whose hippie nomad parents make her move away from her boyfriend and friends in Portland, Oregon to a new home in Austin, Texas. The title of the book comes from Maggie’s plan to not be popular at her new school, so that when she leaves shortly, it won’t be as painful and hard to do. This book is a truly fun and entertaining story full of laughs, heartache, and ugly clothes.
       Since the book’s chapters are in the form of a list, I’ve decided to make a little list of my own:
        How to NOT write a boring book (inspired by Jennifer Ziegler):
1.       Write about zany characters with equally weird names and situations. Example: Sugar Magnolia, a love child of hippie parents, Rosie and Les. Rosie and Les like to study astrology, herbs, and befriend any stranger they meet on the side of the road. They also like to experience life and move every 8 months. Oh, and walk around naked.
2.       Make the story relatable, but still very creative.
Example:  After Maggie comes up with her great big unpopular plan, she falls in with a bunch of “losers” (or so she initially thinks), with a love for helping the community. She meets a “Young Republican” named Jack, and starts to feel genuine feelings for him. While this whole storyline is something that many teenagers probably haven’t gone through, many have feelings for people they don’t want to, or people who they initially think are too opposite of them. Many teenagers can identify with Maggie’s thoughts and opinions, while still being entertained by the craziness of her life.
3.       Write in a new and different format, that foreshadows the events of the next chapter.
Example:  Ziegler writes the story in chapters that are titled according to a list of how to not be popular and feature tips on how to achieve the unpopularity quotient. These tips tell what’s to come in the next few pages, and are really fun to read and predict what’s next for Maggie in her quest. My favorites are: Chapter Two’s “In order to be unpopular, you must look the part. Remember four words: “plastic flowered swim cap”and “Unpopularity is a state of mind. Feel Nerdy, It also helps to use the word vaginal a lot.” Yeah, this book is just that funny.

So run out and get this book, How NOT to Be Popular by Jennifer Ziegler. After you lend your friends the book, you’ll sure to be the most popular girl around. Trust me.

30 Sec Lit Crit: The Clique #7: It's Not Easy Being Mean by Lisi Harrison

[Here's a review by Leila Roy, dropping in from Bookshelves of Doom]

Yes, I read another one.  No, I don't know what is wrong with me.

This time, the girls have been un-expelled from OCD, but they have been forced to join an extracurricular activity.  They've also been given a quest by the eighth-grade alpha, Skye Hamilton:  To earn the right to take charge of the Secret Room* at OCD, the girls have to find the key, which Skye has hidden under the mattress of a boy she's kissed.  The list is LONG, and the Pretty Committee is not the only group looking for it.

Meanwhile, Claire's acting career is taking off.  She's set to audition for a movie with a multi-Oscar-winning director, which is awesome, but she's feeling left out of all of the Pretty Committee fun**.

• Still with the brand names.  There were at least fifteen fashion labels mentioned in the first chapter alone.  That's not counting the plethora of consumables, electronics, magazines, etc.  Also, there are fifteen pages of ads at the end of the book.  (I fully admit that it could be worse -- at least the ads are for other books.)
• Lisi Harrison does have a real talent for extremely catty -- but extremely funny --description:

"Stand up, you!" bellowed Kori Gedman as she approached their table.  A tight tan sweater accentuated her notoriously bad posture.  She looked like a croissant.

• Why in the WORLD would the girls choose soccer as their extracurricular activity?  (Discounting Kristin, of course, who is already a star player on the team.)  They mention that it'll burn calories and get them closer to the boys, but I find it odd that they wouldn't have considered the embarrassment factor.  Massie's a beast, but she's not stupid.
• Massie's crush, Derrington.  Good God, that boy is obsessed with butts.  Every time he appears, he's shaking his butt at someone or something.  And then, when he's talking about kissing Another Girl, he says, "Her lips were too puffy.  They felt like a butt."  Le sigh.  This is what dreams are made of.
• Speaking of Derrington, I'll be surprised if he and Dylan don't get together, ultimately.  They have that whole bathroom humor thing in common -- he's obsessed with butts, she's obsessed with burping at people.

In the Q&A at the end, Lisi Harrison says that there will be eight Clique books.  Only one more, and my torment will end.  Oh, wait.  She follows that up by saying: "But if you want more, I'll write more".  Damn.

She does sound like a good egg, though -- in the section on Becoming a Writer, she says "If someone tells you you'll never be a writer, put on your pointiest boots, take a deep breathe, and kick them in the shin.  Write about that!"

I'm curious to see if I'll be able to exert my will power and avoid the next one.  Either this one wasn't as entertaining as the last couple, or I've matured.  (I'm going to go with less entertaining.)

*A room that the teachers don't know about.  Yeah, I don't quite get it either.

**Because it's so much fun to be bossed around and mocked 24/7?  I still don't get it.

30 Sec Lit Crit: The Hollywood Sisters: On Location by Mary Wilcox

ATTENTION CLIQUE CHICKS: an important public service announcement
Hey, those Lisi Harrison novels are ok, but what does girlfriend do when girlfriend has read all seven, and number eight isn't out yet? Check out this review by Leila Roy of Bookshelves of Doom...she'll point girlfriend in the right direction:

I loved the first installment in the Hollywood Sisters series, so I was happy to pick up the second.  (Perfect timing, too -- I really needed a shiny pink book yesterday.)

This time, the cast of Two Sisters (and, of course, Jessica) are -- go figure -- On Location.  They go from Los Angeles to Mexico, from Mexico to Wisconsin.

We've entered into the Formula Fiction zone -- another saboteur, more romantic misunderstandings, another Special Guest Star Disaster, more characters you'll recognize from the gossip pages.  (Paige's mother is CLEARLY Dina Lohan, which I thought was especially hilarious.) 

Formulaic nature aside, it's still an entertaining sequel.  Jessica is still a likable, down-to-earth heroine -- and her narration still brings the laughs:

And poetry--those stacks of little sentences stand by you in tough times.  This is exactly the kind of poetry you need to read as a broken heart:

LOVE - what is love?
A great and aching heart;
Wrung hands; and silence;
and a long despair.
Life - what is life?
Upon a moorland bare
To see love coming and see love depart.

--R.L. Stevenson

See?  Don't you feel worse already?

I've brought a book of poetry for the plane and my summer reading, To Kill a Mockingbird.  That title packs as much sad as a whole poem, I say.

I'll continue handing this series to Clique fans, in the hopes that they'll take to it.  As I said about Backstage Pass, like the Clique, it's mostly clean, it's got the money, the brand names (not as many, thankfully) and the in-fighting, but it's witty and it's not bitchy or gross.  Hooray!

30 sec lit crit: Going Nowhere Faster by Sean Beaudoin

[this review comes to the burger from the lovely leila roy, parachuting in from her brilliant blog Bookshelves of Doom]

Stan Smith:

1.  Lives at home with his organic-food-eating, Amazonian mother, his inventor father, his adorable and beloved little sister, a flatulent dog and a zen master.

2.  Has just graduated high school, and despite being a certified genius, has no college plans.

3.  Works in a video store, where he refuses to allow people to rent Hugh Grant movies.

4.  Is in love with Eleanor  -- call her Ellen, please -- Rigby, goes out with (or used to go out with) Chad Chilton.

5.  Is being stalked by the aforementioned Chad Chilton, who, on the last day of school, informed Stan, "I WILL HURT YOU.  BAD."

My thoughts on Going Nowhere Faster:

1.  I enjoyed Stan's book and movie references:

Okay, okay, I know what you're thinking:  Stan's been reading Catcher in the Rye.  Hey, it's not my fault there are two people in the world who are hopeless and also love their little sisters.  Besides, that's a book.  This is life.  In fact, sitting there, I was again reminded that Olivia was the only thing, the only evidence, the only compelling arguing I could make, just by her sheer existence, that the world wasn't, in reality, a massive and useless pile of crap.  So Holden can go screw.

Regardless of the fact that it seems to be happening more and more often, I'm still not sick of YA characters referencing Holden.  The "that's a book, this is real life" line is getting a bit tired, though.

2.  Most of the characters were just types -- the embarrassing hippie mother, the trying-too-hard-to-be-hip shrink, the cool-without-trying best friend, the adorable little sister, the unsuccessful inventor father, the stinky but lovable old dog.  The two love interests, Cari and Ellen, had more potential than the rest, but they never really got fleshed out.  Even though I didn't find many of the characters particularly multifaceted or engaging, I did find that Stan had a real talent for describing types.  This is a description of his therapist:

He also tended to use "lingo," mostly MTV rapper stuff, Do you feel what I'm saying? or I hear you, nodding like he knew what it meant or like if you went to his house and looked in his fifteen-CD-changer it wouldn't be filled with every Simon and Garfunkel album ever made.

Unfortunately, character development of the minor characters was done like this:  Stan's boss is an ex-jock-pot-bellied-candy-vacuum.  Near the end of the book, Stan visits his boss's apartment and discovers that he is an ex-jock-pot-bellied-candy-vacuum with chintz curtains and framed Klimt prints.  Similar scenes happen with other characters, teaching Stan that He Doesn't Know Everything about Everything, and that You Shouldn't Judge People.

3.  The humor was really hit or miss for me -- at first I enjoyed the chapter headings (Chapter One:  STRANGERS ON A very strange and long and boring TRAIN) and I liked the first couple of lists, but after about twenty pages, it got old and just felt like he was trying too hard to be funny.  Major death knell for comedy.

4.  My favorite part of the book was Appendix B:  Stan Smith's Totally Official List of the Sixteen BEST Truly Awful Films Ever Made, which included Roadhouse, The Color of Night (which, thinking about it years later, still makes me cringe) and actually made me want to see The Postman in a train wreck sort of way.

5.  Interestingly, the book is pretty clean, considering the age of the narrator.  Stan's mom offers him some condoms (in what what I thought was the funniest scene) and he has some beers, but other than that, I can't think of anything major that parents would find objectionable.

Personally, I'd rather hang out with Randal, but it might go over well with some teen movie buffs/reluctant reader-y fans of humorous fiction.

30-Sec Lit Crit: The Hollywood Sisters: Backstage Pass by Mary Wilcox

[HEY BURGERFOLK! We're back from vacation, and totally thrilled to welcome to our newest teen reviewer, Jocelyn! Here's her take on the first novel in a new series from Mary Wilcox--oh, and if you like this one, #2 is out March 13....]


Backstage Pass is a very fun read about the kind of life the rest of us have only dreamed about (and I'm sure we've all wished for it at one time or another!): life in Hollywood. It sounds great, doesn't it? In Backstage Pass, Jessica Ortiz has had to leave behind her friends and move to Hollywood, because her older sister, Eva, is the newest Hollywood It-girl. Jessica's not like most people in LA, though. She's not trying to become a singer or an actress or anything. She wants to help Eva, though. These sisters get along a lot better than any I've known in real life! They're not totally unbelievably close all the time, though, so it's okay. Anyway, Jessica wants to help out her sister by catching whoever's trying to sabotage Eva. Which, of course, is not as easy as she thinks--whoever it is, they're trying to frame Jessica!

It's a really entertaining read, of course, especially because dreaming about celebrity life is always fun. Obviously--why do you think People and Us Weekly are so popular? Still, though, it could have been a lot better. Mostly because of the characters involved--they didn't seem exactly real to me, except for Jessica. It's a good book, still, but not as good as some other books I've read that are similar--and books about life in Hollywood are everywhere right now! I guess it's some tough competition, as there are some really fantastic ones out there. Backstage Pass is fun enough to make me anxious for the sequel (as you'll be if you read it!), but it's not fabulous. It's a fun way to pass a boring afternoon, though! 

30 SEC LIT CRIT: How to Get Suspended and Influence People by Adam Selzer

[review by lovely Leila Roy, parachuting in from Bookshelves of Doom]

Fourteen-year-old Leon isn't your stereotypical "gifted child":

Now, on TV or in the movies, whenever the main character is a boy genius or something, the smart classes are made up of dorks who tuck their shirts into their underwear, do math in their heads, and might actually sign up for the good grooming activity.  In reality, our advanced classes and gifted pools were always made up of a bunch of miscreant kids who just happened to read books from the adult section of the library.  Many of us even read newspapers.  That was all.  The real dorks weren't smart enough to get in.

When he and the rest of the advanced students are told they are to make health-related videos for the sixth and seventh-graders, they aren't interested in recreating the snorefests that they've been subjected to for years:

It sounded to me like the school was just trying to spare the expense of buying a bunch of new videos, but I had to admit that the project sounded like fun.  When Mr. Streich passed around the list of possible subjects, I looked them over and was a bit surprised to see that sex ed was on the list.  They were actually going to trust an eighth-grader to make a sex-ed video?  Were they drunk when they wrote out the list of topics?  It was like being handed a live grenade and being invited to lob it at one of the teachers.  Eating disorders struck me as a good topic, too, because you'd have a great excuse to do a puking scene, but I couldn't say no to the chance to make a sex-ed video that every student really wanted to see.

At first, Leon is mainly concerned with cramming as much nudity as possible into his video, but as he progresses, he becomes more and more interested in making Great Art That Might Help Kids Understand Themselves.  Of course, what with the subject matter (and the nudity) some adults don't see it quite the same way. 

How to Get Suspended and Influence People is a freaking laugh riot.  Leon is super smart but not overly mature for his age, I loved his friends and his parents.  Totally fun and enjoyable (and educational, but not in an annoying or overly obvious way).

I wouldn't be all that surprised if this one gets challenged at some point -- though that would be a tad ironic, since it is partly a story about censorship.  The book jacket will hopefully (HOPEFULLY) make the content obvious to any freak-out-prone adults.  The inside flap is very clear about the topic of Leon's project and the word 'smart-ass' pops up both there and on the back cover, so maybe they'll steer clear. 

If they don't, they'll probably find something to be offended by -- the gifted kids pretend to be Satanists to annoy a teacher, there is some swearing, some talk about pot and (this might end up being the biggie) one of Leon's main video goals (other than flashing boob pictures) is to get a "masturbation is normal" message across.

As I said though, WAY FUN.  I hope that it finds an audience, and I hope that there'll be more from Adam Selzer soon.

30-SEC LIT CRIT: Rash by Pete Hautman

[review by lovely Leila Roy, parachuting in from Bookshelves of Doom]

It's the mid-2070s, and the United States has changed.  It's not the USA anymore, for one thing.  It's the USSA -- United Safer States of America.  People are encouraged to wear helmets when they walk, beer is illegal, and football was banned for being too dangerous.  The Child Safety Act of 2033 made protective gear mandatory in the school sports.  And we're not just talking mouth guards in field hockey.  Here's what students of the time wear to run the 100-meter dash:

... AtherSafe shoes with lateral ankle support and four layers of memory gel in the thick soles, knee pads, elbow pads, and a FDHHSS*-certified sports helmet.  We raced on an Adzorbium track with its five centimeters of compacted gel-foam topped by a thick sheet of artificial latex.  It's like running on a sponge.

Jail has been abolished.  When people break the law, they are sent to work camps.  Almost a quarter of the adult population is serving time -- not surprising, as breaking the law is not very difficult:

"Littering is only a class-four misdemeanor--you don't get sent up for that."

"Mr. Stoltz did."

"That was for assault.  Melody Hynes got hurt."

"But all he did, really, was litter.  He dropped an apricot when he was unloading groceries from his suv."

"Yeah, then Melody slipped on it and got a concussion."

"She should have been wearing her helmet.  My point is, Bo, all the man did was drop an apricot and they sent him away for a whole year.  A year of hard labor on a prison farm.  For dropping an apricot!"

"But if he hadn't dropped it, Melody wouldn't have gotten bonked," I said.  Sometimes my grandfather could be kind of dense.

The men in Bo Marsten's family tend to be quick-tempered (his father is serving time for road rage and his older brother for getting into a fight) and Bo is no exception.  Though the Levulor he takes usually prevents violent outbreaks -- it slows his anger reflex (and, in an unfortunate side effect, every other reflex) by a tenth of a second -- but he occasionally "forgets" to take it.

Given his family history, it's not real surprise when sixteen-year-old Bo is sentenced to serve three years for a plethora of violations.  (Verbal assault, physical assault -- well, he tried to punch someone -- and causing the outbreak of an itchy rash at his school.**)  He is send to Canada (which was annexed to the USSA in 2055) to work in a gourmet pizza factory.

This arm of McDonald's Rehabilitation and Manufacturing Corporation is a terrifying place, full of sharp corners, non-padded clothing, and people who have no qualms about verbally assaulting (not to mention physically assaulting) others.  The factory is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a tall fence, beyond which are ravenous, man-eating polar bears.  The warden runs an illegal football team. 

If the team wins the Tundra Bowl, they will all be treated to early release.  If they lose, they'll be Polar Bear Chow.

AWESOME.  It's a sports story, a futuristic dystopia story, a juvie camp story and a story that mocks consumer culture.  It explores Big Ideas, about government and free will and safety vs. freedom, but without ever feeling like a Frying Pan***, and without ever feeling heavy.  It's rare for a book to be both thoughtful and thrilling.

Highly recommended.  I'm planning on trying it out on older fans of Holes, as well as teens into Uglies and So Yesterday, Feed and Jennifer Government.  Also fans of thoughtful sports stories -- I think there are a lot of Chris Crutcher fans who will enjoy it.

*Federal Department of Homeland Health, Safety and Security.  Also, that description totally made me want to re-read Harrison Bergeron.

**Good thing that Those In Charge don't know about the possibly-sentient AI entity that he (oops) accidentally created.  He could get twenty years for that, easy.

***Frying Pan Message Books:  Books that are so message-driven to such an extent that you feel you are being battered with a Message-Laden Frying Pan.  Duh.

30-SEC LIT CRIT: Brent Hartinger's split personalites

[review by lovely Leila Roy, parachuting in from Bookshelves of Doom]

Split Screen:  Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies and Bride of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies by Brent Hartinger

I have such affection for this group of characters.  Especially for Gunnar -- maybe because he reminds me a little of Xander Harris.  I love it that in this book, he becomes a Relationship Guru.

Russel, Min, Gunnar and Em sign up to work as extras in a horror movie.  Split Screen chronicles their two weeks as zombies.  But here's the twist.  It's a flip book.  You remember flip books, right?  Read one side of the story, flip the book over and read the other?  I always got a kick out of them.  So Yay, You!, Brent Hartinger, for bringing the flips* back to me.

Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies (Russel's story):

Though they live eight thousand miles away, Russel is still happily involved with Otto.

Kevin Land, Mr. Hottie McHotHot Jerkface Jock from Geography Club, makes it known that he wants Russel back -- and that he's finally willing to come out.

To make life even more complicated, Russel's parents have discovered he's gay, and they are NOT taking it well.

Bride of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies (Min's story):

Both of her best friends in happy relationships and singleton** Min is feeling lonely and left out and a little jealous.  She's very happy for them, though, and she doesn't like the way that Kevin Land has been eyeing Russel.

Her love life begins to look much more promising when she joins the Brain Zombies fun and meets Leah, who might just be the perfect girl.

But then she discovers that Leah is very much NOT out of the closet -- and that all of her best friends are homophobic cheerleaders.  (THE HORROR!!  And I am not being sarcastic.)

First off, it was fantastic to finally hear Min's voice.  She's super-smart and super-funny (On streaking her hair purple: "I could justify this by saying that I'd done it to express my individuality, but no, I'd really just wanted to shock people.") and I loved her relationship with her mother.  I'm definitely hoping for another book that focuses on her.  (One that focused on Gunnar would be good, too.  Also Kevin.) 

I got a huge kick out of the differences in perspective.  Russel describes Kevin Land's smile as 'impish', while Min says 'smug'.  Re: Gunnar and the zombie movie, Russel says, "I hadn't seen him this excited since he found lamprey eels in the creek near our house", while Min's Excitable Gunnar Memory is "the night they left the gate unlocked at the sewage treatment plant".  Way fun.

I actually liked Min's story more -- I think that was mostly because that was where the surprises were, but also because Russel's segment, on occasion, felt a little message-y to me.  Regardless of that feeling, I did enjoy the conversation Russel had with the priest.  I would think that when writing a scene like that, it would be tempting to make the guy out to be a jackass, but BH didn't -- actually, I thought he came off better than Russel's parents did.  Honest about his own hypocrisy, at any rate.

I don't want to give anything else away -- just know that you should very definitely read the stories in Russel/Min order.  Good pick for fans of the rest of Brent Hartinger's books, as well as for fans of GLBT lit that doesn't feature a gay character being run over and of course, teens who enjoy breezy romantic comedy.

*And of course it would be Brent Hartinger to bring them back -- after Grand & Humble (which had definite flippy potential, though I like it just the way it is), we all should have expected it.

**Obviously, I re-watched Bridget Jones' Diary recently -- is there anything better than that Hugh Grant/Colin Firth fight scene? 

30-SEC LIT CRIT: Silent Echoes by Carla Jablonski

[review by lovely Leila Roy, parachuting in from Bookshelves of Doom]

It seems that Spiritualism is IN.  Fine by me.

1880s. New York City.  Backed by her confidence-man father, Lucy Phillips is posing as a medium, hoping to make some money off of the rich and gullible.

Imagine her surprise when she actually hears a disembodied voice.  One that begs for her help.

Present day.  New York City.  Lindsay Miller cowers in her closet, hiding from her drunk mother and her new (also drunk and (hey, bonus!) violent) stepfather. 

Imagine her surprise when she hears someone answer her.

In Lucy's time, hearing voices leads her to fame and fortune, but keeps her from being accepted into high society.  In Lindsay's, it leads to assumed madness and the psych ward at the hospital.  Can the girls find a way to help each other?

Okay.  I was torn about this one.  I loved the fun little factoids about the nineteenth century -- there was even a bit about the Oneida cult -- and I thoroughly enjoyed the sections about Lucy. 

Except for the hospital scenes, though, the Lindsay sections didn't really do it for me.  They seemed stilted and forced.  Not always, but more often than not.  At times, the dialogue between Lindsay and Lucy did too, but that I could live with -- it made sense that their dialogue would be a little off, what with the differences in language and general weirdness of the situation.

Possible spoilers ahead.

The other thing that bothered me is TOTALLY my own problem.  But me being me, I'm going to mention it anyway.  Talking across time, no problem.  I can buy that.  But sending objects back and forth in time behind an icebox that hadn't been moved once in the years separating Lucy and Lindsay...  it was just too much.  My suspension of disbelief only goes so far.  Like I said, though.  That isn't the book's fault.  I blame my own lack of imagination.  But also.  When Lindsay ran away from the hospital, wouldn't someone have traced her ATM card or blocked it or something?  Or do I watch way too much Veronica Mars?

Anyhoo.  Give it a try on non-ultra-picky fans of the Libba Bray books.