Review of This Is Not the Jess Show by Anna Carey

Carey, Anna.  This Is not the Jess Show.  Quirk Books, 2020.

Jessica Flynn is a seventeen-year-old junior who plays clarinet in the high school band.  She comes from a nice family; her mother is an interior designer, but her dad isn’t around all the time.  She loves Swickley, NY, the small town where she has grown up.  Jess has three good friends, Kristen and Amber, and Tyler, who she realizes is now her first crush.  The only sad thing in her life is that her sister, Sara, has Guignard’s disease, a terminal illness.

 

Jessica begins to notice some strange things happening around Swickley.  She realizes that many of her school classmates and townspeople are absent with the flu.  She can hear strange chanting in the distance, but no one else seems to notice.  A black object with an apple on it falls out of Amber’s backpack, and she pretends not to know what it is.  And the weirdest thing of all is, her dog, Fuller, seems different; he acts like he doesn’t know her.

 

Jess feels like someone is always watching her, and she eventually realizes that she a character on a reality show called Stuck in the 90s.  She decides to escape, although the cast is trying to prevent her from leaving.  As she is being hunted down by the network, she gets help from sympathetic cast members and learns the year is actually 2037!  She concludes that her whole life has been a lie, and she never wants to go back to 1998.

 

This Is Not the Jess Show has been billed as The Truman Show for teens.  Author Anna Carey has written a fun, engaging read that is a real page-turner.  The way the story unfolds is rather unremarkable in the beginning, until Jess finds out that she has been living a lie her whole life.  Jess seems very naïve at first because she is fooled by changing characters and people playing multiple roles in her “life”.  However, when she discovers that she has been misled, she shows what a strong character she is by running away.  This only adds to the show’s drama because the network is milking her escape and using social influencers—shades of today-- to poll viewers as to possible outcomes.  

 

The addition of the 90s nostalgia and memorabilia to the story enhances the authenticity of the reality show.  The story has some surprising twists and turns, and the ending sets readers up for the next book of the duology.  Hand this book to readers who enjoy 90s bands and nostalgia and reality shows.  I recommend it for middle school, high school, and public libraries and give it four out of five fleur de lis!

Thank you to NetGalley and Quirk Books for allowing me to read and review this book.

Review of Between Here and Forever by Elizabeth Scott

Between Here and Forever by Elizabeth Scott.  Simon & Schuster, 2011.

For years, Abby has worshiped her “perfect” older sister, Tess, whom everyone loves. But now Tess is lying in a hospital bed in a coma, the result of a car accident. Abby just wants Tess to wake up and get on with her life so that Abby can get on with hers. Abby’s daily visits to Tess’s bedside to talk to her and wait for her to wake up consume Abby’s life. Enter Eli, the most gorgeous boy Abby has ever seen; even his voice is beautiful.

Abby comes up with a plan to help Tess wake up. She enlists the help of Eli, whom she asks to spend time talking to Tess. Surely, his wonderful voice will jerk Tess out of her coma. Of course, when Tess wakes up, she will see Eli, and it will be love at first sight. Everyone will then live happily ever after.

But things don’t always work out like they’ve been planned. Abby never counted on having feelings for Eli, and she always thought Tess would wake up. She didn’t know that Tess and their neighbor, Claire, were carrying around secrets that had affected both their lives and their futures. What Abby comes to realize is that no one is really perfect; perfection is in the eyes of the beholder.

Elizabeth Scott has touched on many sensitive subjects—self-perception, sexuality, racial discrimination, and OCD—in her lovely story. Abby feels she has always been overshadowed by her older sister, nearly to the point of invisibility. Everyone loves Tess, wants to be around Tess, wants to date Tess. Abby feels she will never measure up to Tess, even when Tess is in a coma. Even though Abby says she hates Tess, it is apparent that is exactly the opposite. Why else would Abby try so hard to wake her up?

The way that Eli’s OCD is presented is both touching and believable. Many people with OCD cannot live a normal life, even on medication. Although Eli still exhibits some symptoms, he is able to cope in a fairly normal way. However, on top of his disorder, he also has to deal with the fact that his parents consider him damaged goods, and send him to live with his grandfather. Additionally, Eli is half Japanese, part black, and part white.  While he is taunted and ostracized by the students at his school for his disorder, he is accepted at the school for his ethnicity. While this makes for a heavy burden, Eli is still sensitive, caring, and even gets ruffled at times. I loved Eli; he was a “knight in shining armor” for Abby!

Claire, Abby’s neighbor, now works at the hospital where Tess is. Much to her surprise, Abby discovers that Tess and Claire had been much more than best friends. When they had their falling out, Claire wanted Tess to “come out” so that they could be seen as a couple. Tess was afraid that everyone’s perception and expectations of her would change; she would no longer be perfect in everyone’s eyes. Claire was wounded by Tess’s actions, got pregnant and had a baby boy. Tess could not forgive Claire and, thus, ruined her senior year. This part of the book was extremely interesting, especially seeing these events unfold, in retrospect, through Abby’s eyes. She finally was able to understand that her sister was very unhappy, and possibly depressed. Of course, this was not how everyone else saw Tess!

I found out, after reading the book, that Abby’s parents had actually been teenagers in another of Elizabeth Scott’s novels, Bloom. While Between Here and Forever is a stand-alone book, if readers want some background information, they might want to read Bloom first.

This novel is a sensitive, flowing read. I recommend it for high school and public libraries!

*Note: I read an advanced readers’ copy of Between Here and Forever that I received from Simon & Schuster’s Galley Grab on nook. The book will be released on May 24. 2011.

Review of Payback Time by Carl Deuker

Payback Time by Carl Deuker. Houghton Mifflin, 2010.

Daniel "Mitch" True has had aspirations of being the editor of his school newspaper ever since his freshman year. But instead of being voted editor, or even lead reporter, he is assigned to be the school sports reporter. Mitch, named after the Michelin Man for obvious reasons, teams up with photographer Kimi Yon to cover all aspects of their school's sporting events. Little do they know this will lead them to become investigative journalists, trying to uncover the story behind the new, talented cornerback, Angel Marichal, who just appears on the practice field one day and has a bullet for an arm. To make matters worse, head football coach Hal McNulty will only let Mitch do interviews that he himself sets up, which makes Angel "off-limits!" On top of that, every time Mitch submits an article to The Seattle Times, Chet Jetton, the sports editor, cuts out everything about Angel! Between writing, sleuthing, and doing homework, Mitch manages to lose a lot of weight and solve the mystery at the same time. In one fell swoop, Mitch can nail Coach McNulty for using an inelgible player, which could be his ticket to admittance to journalism school at Columbia. However, Mitch and Kimi find out that things aren't always what they seem. They will have to decide if it is ethical to take advantage of their findings, and it could be the hardest decision they have ever made.

What a great read this was! The story is filled with intricate characters, plot twists, and fantastic descriptions of action-packed football games! Mitch is not your average hero; he is just an ordinary guy who has ordinary problems, and he meets them head on. The side plot of his losing weight shows that he is a very determined young man and extremely goal-oriented. Having him narrarate the story also gives him a very sympathetic, but persistent, attitude. Kimi Yon, to whom Mitch is attracted, provides an interesting "side-kick" to Mitch, and having her father, whom she describes as "embarassing, help them at a crucial point in the plot was pure genius! Coach McNulty comes across as guff and hard, but we see another side of him near the end of the book.

My only question about the plot is this: Why were Mitch and Kimi the only students to notice that Angel Marichal was not getting the attention he deserved for the crucial minutes he played in the school's football games? It seems odd that they would be the only ones to notice his heroics on the field! I wish some explanation would have been given for this. However, students ignoring Angel only served to deepen his mystique!

The final climax of the story is both surprising and exciting! Payback Time is not just for football fans, nor is it just for guys. I highly recommend this book for middle school, high school, and public libraries!