Book Review: THE ABANDONMENT OF HANNAH ARMSTRONG (BOOK ONE: SARATOGA WOODS)

Title: The Abandonment of Hannah Armstrong (Book One: Saratoga Woods)

Author: Elizabeth George

Publisher: Elizabeth George

Pages: 407

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

I signed up to read Saratoga Woods because I’m a big fan of Elizabeth George and enjoy reading her Inspector Lynley series. But I couldn’t quite get into this one at the beginning. It was a slow start.

 

When 14-year-old Hannah Armstrong’s stepfather, Jeff Corrie, turns out to be a criminal, a fact she learns about because she has the power to hear people’s thoughts, her mother, Laurel Armstrong, uproots them from California to Whidbey Island, near Seattle. With a new name, the young girl, now Becca King, is sent to live with her mom’s old friend, Carol Quinn, who has promised to shelter her.

When Becca reaches Whidbey Island, she learns that Carol has died of a heart attack. With Laurel unavailable on the burner phone, Becca has nowhere to go in a strange town.

When Derric, a new friend, has a nasty fall on a bike trail, he goes into a coma. The town sheriff, Dave Mathieson, who is also Derric’s adoptive father, is sure that the young girl who called 911, the owner of the burner phone, has something to do with the accident. Will Becca be able to stay out of trouble, or will it come looking for her?

It is up to Becca to sort through the confusion in her own mind, and stay afloat and out of trouble until her mom returns for her, while solving the mystery of who might have wanted to hurt Derric.

 

This is a coming-of-age story with fantasy elements. Besides Becca, there is another character who might have a supernatural power. But where the other person has the gift under control, Becca is still figuring out her way around it.

The story is written in the 3^rd person omniscient PoV. The writing is more tell than show, which is the author’s style, but I still enjoyed it.

Here’s a sample of her metaphors:

The idea of missing someone was like the swooping of a bird too close to her face.

She came into the room like a tractor rolling over a field.

Debbie gave him the kind of look a teacher gives to a kid when she suspects there are lice crawling in his hair.

 

Elizabeth does a great job recreating Whidbey Island in our minds, a place where everyone knows everyone else.

 

In her most vulnerable state, Becca encounters a slew of characters. There’s Debbie Grieder, who offers her shelter in her motel, Diana Kinsale who is sympathetic towards her, Seth Darrow, a school dropout and musician who helps her, and Derric Mathieson, a boy from Uganda who she finds fascinating. Then there’s Jenn McDaniels who can’t stand Becca, Hayley Cartwright, Seth’s former girlfriend who he suspects broke up with him on account of Derric, Debbie’s grandchildren, Josh and Chloe, Seth’s grandfather, Ralph, and his dog, Gus, and Derric’s parents.

 

As befitting a series, Becca has individual subplots with Seth, Debbie, Diana, Derrick, Josh, Chloe and Jenn. Seth has subplots with Hayley, her parents, grandfather Ralph, dog Gus and Derric.

 

The stories of these characters converge in multiple ways. For the greater part, it all seems like delicate wisps of unconnected threads. It’s only at the end that they come together.

The first description we get for Becca comes from the most minor of minor characters and it’s not flattering, but by then, we’ve bonded so well with her, we don’t care. We feel sorry for Becca, stranded in a strange place with no safety net.

 

While I loved the book, there were some things that rankled. There are multiple characters whose names begin with the letter D. There’s Debbie Grieder, Diana Kinsale, Seth Darrow and Derric Mathieson. Why did the author flout the fundamental rule of not naming characters after the same letter?

I couldn’t understand the significance of the Paul Revere poem that Laurel keeps repeating, when she doesn’t want her daughter to listen to her thoughts. Perhaps its meaning will be clearer in the subsequent books.

The mystery of who pushed Derric hinges on a footprint but it’s odd that the police don’t ever latch on to that clue. The mystery itself is a slow burn; who hurt Derric takes a backseat to who was the girl who made the call to the police station.

 

While the main plot of this book ends on a successful note, the overarching story in the series shows up on the very last page, making the way for Book 2. I look forward to the next one in the series.

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: THE KEEPER OF THE KEY

Title: The Keeper of the Key

Author: Nicole Willson

Publisher: Parliament House Press

Pages: 286

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

 

Heed the Dead or Join Them, said the warning on the cover, and I braced myself for a good read.

When 16-year-old Rachel Morley’s mother, Tara, decides to accept boyfriend Geoff’s invitation to move into his mansion, Morgan House, in St Mary’s, Rachel feels uprooted. When they get to Morgan House, Rachel gets the creeps. She can’t help feeling that someone is watching her. Soon strange things begin to happen.  She feels a strange presence in the house and hears odd noises.

Her mother, eager to build a future with Geoff, hopes Rachel will settle. But that won’t be easy as Geoff has lots of rules, the strangest of which is that Rachel is never to go into the basement.

Luckily what makes her new town bearable is the presence of Nick Alexander, a good-looking guy who takes Rachel to the cemetery on their first date. Suddenly, the town of St Mary doesn’t feel so unbearable. The only trouble is that Morgan House seems more dangerous than ever. Each night she has horrible dreams about something evil in the basement, and a strangely familiar man whose face she can’t see, then wakes up to find herself in the basement, even though she doesn’t remember having gone there.

The book is written in the 1^st person present tense PoV of Rachel. The author creates a sense of dread. The eerie atmosphere weighs us down. The writing evokes the right imagery. The pace is good. Even though I guessed the source of the mystery, I still continued reading.

 

Geoff is a pain from the beginning, at least to Rachel. But he comes across as one-dimensional. Initially, there is nothing to redeem him in Rachel’s eyes.

The mother’s character could have been a little stronger. She doesn’t seem to have any agency of her own. She tells Rachel to give Morgan House a shot, and that if she doesn’t like it, they will leave. But then when Rachel expresses her misgivings, she still won’t move.

Another time, she tells Rachel that if she is not happy with Geoff’s proposal, she will decline. But then, she accepts the proposal. In both instances, Rachel settles down and makes peace with her decision. Which is a letdown, given her fierce desire to leave.

They don’t decide to leave until the very end. They should have at least made an attempt to leave.

Overall, I felt that there should have been more scenes with Rachel and her mother together, without Geoff around. We don’t get to see the mother-daughter dynamic enough. Also, Rachel mentions her father initially, but then halfway through the book, she comes to know something about her dad that she hadn’t known and that detail seemed forced. Having come to know of that fact, Rachel stops stressing over it, and doesn’t mention it again. This is strange, given that relationships play a huge part in this book.  

There were some things that weren’t clear.

Why was Rachel targeted? Just because she lived in the house?

What was the deal about the key in the title? Why does that key show up so late?

Rachel talks about another kind of ghost, when friendships fizzle out. I found this very sad. She knows that best friend, Elena, will soon forget her. On the other hand, Rachel herself forgets about Elena, once she meets Nick. 

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: A LIE FOR A LIE

Title: A Lie for a Lie

Author: Jane Buckingham

Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press

Pages: 256

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Sabrina Richards, a high school student, is determined to get into Harvard, in honour of her deceased mother whose dream it was to study there. When her application is deferred, it’s one more blow, given that she is already stressed out about the fact that her father’s girlfriend, Kaye, and the latter’s daughter, Parker, might move into their home. She’s also worked up about the drama of former best friend, Brooke. Brooke, Sabrina and Emily have been best friends since elementary school. But now Brooke is a Cool Girl, one of the high school elite. Only best friend, Emily remains by her side, until Sabrina learns that Emily has been admitted into Harvard, and it wasn’t even her dream.

Meanwhile, there is an anonymous person at Milford High, @Revenge, who is adept at helping the students get revenge. The person reaches out to Sabrina and, in a moment of weakness, Sabrina gives in to the desire to act out against Emily. But now @Revenge is asking her to do something worse. To prank the school’s star basketball player. And Sabrina dare not refuse, not when @Revenge holds the cards. But

The only thing she can do is find out who @Revenge is before more people get hurt. Or before @Revenge outs her own secret.

 

The book is written in the first-person present tense PoV of @Revenge and in the third-person limited present tense PoV of Sabrina. The Prologue in this book was a rare instance of a Prologue done well. It piqued my interest and forced me into the story.

I wish the author had written more chapters from the PoV of @Revenge. They were more interesting than Sabrina’s limited PoV, and made Sabrina look rather bland.

The first part of the book was an overly long introduction. Things kicked up a notch only at the 38 percent mark. I was plodding through for the purpose of this review.

I didn’t like Sabrina or Emily or any of the characters. For that matter, we don’t really get to know any of the characters. The only character I felt drawn towards was Charlie, Emily’s twin.

Sabrina drones on and on about Harvard. The excessive use of tell, with hardly any flashbacks, prevents us from getting into the story. The device of the dead mother’s letter is weak.

There were some questions that didn’t have answers. How did a basketball court full of people not register the bottle in Finn’s hand? How did the police not look for it, nor think of checking it for fingerprints? The bottle wasn’t even mentioned. There were no details about how the crime against Finn, or any of the others, was carried out, not even at the end.

Sabrina asks a teacher, Mrs Esry, if another character, who she suspects of being @Revenge, couldn’t have made another social media account or used another phone, both of which activities are possible, the teacher says, it is impossible. When Sabrina presses her for an answer, she evades the question and answers that he is in the clear, without answering what evidence she has to support that claim. It’s just, Believe me, we’ve checked. How lame!

Sabrina is just as daft. Even when the antagonist admits to being @Revenge, Sabrina doesn’t understand what the admission means.

There were some issues with the incorrect use of tenses, which should have been weeded out.

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: DANGEROUS GIRLS

Title: Dangerous Girls
Author: Abigail Haas
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Pages: 388

Abigail Haas has written a thriller for the YA audience that manages to go beyond the usual drama associated with YA novels.

Dangerous Girls is creepy and seriously messes up with your mind. Of course, there is one big question that is still left unanswered and I wish Abigail hadn’t stopped writing one chapter too soon. The How remains unanswered, leaving us to grapple with the hows and ifs and how-could-it-bes?

Dangerous Girls starts with the transcript of a 911 distress call to Aruba Emergency Services, letting us know right at the beginning that something terrible has happened.

Eight teenagers, Melanie Chang, twins Max and Chelsea Day, AK (Akshay Kundra), Tate Dempsey, Elise Warren, Anna Chevalier and Lamar, are all students at the posh Hillcrest School, where Anna was an outsider until Elise befriended her and became her best friend at a very critical time in her life. It was a time when Anna’s mother was slowly dying of cancer, and had refused chemotherapy, choosing to die without medical aid.

Long after her mother’s death, Anna and the others are on their spring break to the beach of Aruba, to a home owned by AK’s father. It’s supposed to be a fun week – no parents, no rules.

Until one of them, Elise, is found brutally murdered in her room, stabbed multiple times.

All the others, except Tate and Anna who are in a relationship, were out surfing on the day of Elise’s death, and so Tate and Anna become the prime suspects, even though Anna reveals that Juan, a local vendor who Elise flirted with and then humiliated, had threatened revenge. And that Niklas, a rich playboy, was the last one to see Elise the previous night.

Tate and Anna are held separately, then Tate is released on a $5 million bail while Anna is led to remand as her father cannot post bail.

The prosecuting attorney, Klaus Dekker, is convinced that Anna knew about Tata’s affair with Elise, and that she killed Elise out of jealousy. He has no evidence, except what he can reconstruct through speculation and the collection of random information from her life. As Anna asks, Wouldn’t we all look guilty if someone searched hard enough? And yet it seems enough to put her away forever, unless she submits to a plea bargain after pleading guilty.

Egged on by a true crime reality show, which paints her in the worst colours, everyone begins to believe her guilty. It seems that it is only a matter of time before the court reaches a judgement of guilty.

Anna is the only one to maintain her innocence.

Will the court find her guilty or innocent? Anna’s future and life hang in the balance, and when the identity of the killer is ultimately revealed, it is someone you would never have guessed.

Anna finds herself alone, as one by one, all her friends seek to distance themselves from her, resorting to lies and even perjury under oath, in the case of Melanie. All of them teenagers though they are, show themselves capable of deceit and betrayal.

From Anna’s perspective, initially, it seems, that Elise is the commanding one, the girl who is the life of the party and enjoys being outrageous. But as she herself admits, they are both equally wild at heart, and their friendship evolves naturally. Both have a dangerous edge, but while Anna holds herself back, Elise lets go. Both of them Fall into friendship like its gravity.

The book takes us into the world of American high schools where being alone is a punishment and bullies and mean girls abound, scarring lives. It is in this context that Elise and Anna first meet, with Elise leaving her rich clique to befriend Anna.

The story is written mostly as the first person present tense account of Anna, with occasional transcripts of police interviews and of a true-crime reality show on TV breaking into her accounts. We also read newspaper articles, and a poem that Anna wrote in high school that exhibited violent tendencies.

Anna’s narrative takes us back and forward, to how she and Elise first met, the partying and the life at school, what happened on Halloween Night, as well as the custody, the hearing and the long trial that follows.

Since Anna’s is the only account we get to hear, we get totally sucked into her story, the ordeal she suffers in custody as she is held guilty of the murder of her best friend.

Anna is a very complex character. Her mother’s struggle with cancer plays a big role in her life, wrecking her emotions, making her value her relationships, making her afraid to lose them.

We feel sympathy for Anna. Our sympathy is heightened, when we realise that Dekker is gunning for her, is painting her as the classic sociopath.

This book messes up so seriously with our minds that at the end of it, we don’t know what hit us, and how we could have failed to arrive at the truth ourselves.

The beauty of this novel is that so much is left unsaid, implied, suggested, so that we don’t know whether it is our imagination or not. When Memory and imagination are only a knife edge apart, it’s hard for us to separate truth from belief, memory from imagination, particularly when they are intimately wound together.

Book Review: THE MOST DANGEROUS PLACE ON EARTH

Title: The Most Dangerous Place On Earth

Author: Lindsey Lee Johnson

Publisher: Random House

Pages: 288

The Most Dangerous Place on Earth is Middle School in America. 

You would think that they are mere children, with childish desires and likes, but as thousands of bullied and victimized children know, it is a minefield filled with dangerous adults-in-training, a battleground where the influential, the good-looking and the powerful pick and prey on the loners and the outcasts,

When the book begins, in a privileged community set in a small town in California, Calista ‘Cally’ Broderick is Best Friends Forever with Abigail Cress. She has a crush on Ryan Harbinger who flirts with her. Together they all revel in their own popularity, intentionally or otherwise, taunting and teasing Tristan Bloch, who has no friends at all. 

Tristan, who has a crush on Cally, pours his heart out into a letter. Unfortunately, for him, Cally, who is uncomfortable with breaking the status quo, shows the letter to Abby who, in turn, shares it with Ryan. Within hours, Tristan is bullied and taunted on Facebook, prompting him to throw himself off the Golden Gate bridge just a week before the end of eighth grade.

Years later, they are in Junior High, we receive the stories of all the kids. New teacher, 23-year-old Molly Nicoll, is just seven years older than her students. She is filled with a deep compassion for them, and is eager to be a friend to them, and steer them through the turbulence of teenage. But the seven-year gap seems to wide to bridge. 

As Molly perceives, They betrayed no hints of the awkward vulnerability, the blushing, blemished, essential discomfort with self, that had plagued her own teenage years. 

Through her own experience, Molly knows what Tristan discovered in his final days. That when you are a victim, the only thing worse than being ignored…was being a target.

Molly, who is single, begins a friendship with Doug Ellison, another teacher. She deludes herself into thinking that this friendship could grow into something bigger. But Doug is already in a relationship with a student, Abby, who doesn’t realize that Doug is a predator.

Molly wants to make a difference in the lives of the children, to protect them from predators like Doug, the expectations of their parents, from the pressures imposed by their peers.

It appears as if the administration and the teachers have absolutely no control over the students, something that is unheard of in the average Indian school. As Algebra teacher Gwen says, The inmates are running the institution. The children text and chat in class, initiating greater relationships with their phones than with their teacher.

The book is written from the third person point of view of a number of characters. Each of the chapters tells us the story of the character most affected as the story progresses. 

We hear about Abigail and Doug’s illicit affair, of David Chu (The Striver), a student of Asian origin who is mediocre at studies and can’t meet the expectations of his Berkeley alumni parents. 

David pays the eternal hustler (The Artist) Nick Brixton to take the SAT on his behalf. Meanwhile, Doug, faced with exposure, leaves school, and Molly is left bereft of an awkward friendship.

When Elizabeth, who also appears for the SAT, does not speak about the fraud committed by Nick, he offers to pay her hush money, a share of his earnings from Dave. When she refuses the money, claiming that she has nowhere to spend it, he asks her to use it to host a party at her home. 

This party quickly degenerates and it is here that we see all the characters at their worst.

Returning from the party, there is an accident in which Emma, a talented ballet dancer, is left battered, ending her dancing career.

The cruelty of the kids and the havoc they can play with a weapon like social media is seen through the stories of Tristan and Emma.

It is only through the course of the book that the drama in the lives of these privileged kids from a small town becomes evident. At the beginning, they seem so innocent, so childlike, yet there is so much perversity in them, such a keen desire to take advantage of others to further their own selfish ends.

The only two people who are outside this sphere are Tristan and Elizabeth. Tristan escapes it by ending his life, and Elizabeth spends her childhood and teenage years in isolation.

Cally’s story serves as both the Prologue and the Epilogue.

The multiple stories make it hard for us to relate to any one person. The only story that touched me was that of Elizabeth Avarine; all the others left me unmoved.

This book contains far too much drama for 13-year-olds, and I don't know if that's an expression of reality or just fiction. My school life was a picnic in comparison. I just hope my kids are spared such excitement when they are old enough.

Here the author touches upon so many subjects that cause tumult in the lives of youngsters. Sex, drugs, exams, teachers, dysfunctional home lives, alcohol, too many expectations, predatory relationships, bullying, suicide, social media -- everything has potential for creating trouble.

I liked Molly because she loved to read aloud, the way the words pronounced, surrounded and sheltered her. I was also touched by her eagerness to make a difference in the lives of her students.

I found the description of Emma’s ballet dream very beautiful. I was equally saddened by Ryan’s story, by the choice he made, to enter a world which preys upon the young, and also by his decision not to seek forgiveness and redemption in the arms of his mother. I was struck by the pathos in that line, Given the slightest clue, she would never stop looking for the little boy he had once been.

That tragic line summed up the lives of all the characters, the loss of innocence from their childhood to their teenage years. So much of it lost irrevocably.

(I got a free ARC from FirstToRead).

Book Review: AMY CHELSEA STACIE DEE

Title: Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee
Author: Mary G Thompson
Publisher: GP Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers
Pages: 232

This book did an amazing job of taking us into the conflicted mind of a victim of abduction, a young girl who has spent six horrific years in captivity. 

At the end of six years, she returns home, still unwilling to speak of what she has gone through, not because she has any misguided sympathy for her kidnapper, but because silence is the only way to ensure the safety of those who were unable to flee to safety with her.

Six years ago, Amy Macarthur and her cousin Dee Springfield were forced into a vehicle by an unidentified person. Amy was 10 and Dee 12. Amy’s disappearance breaks the family down. Her dad moves to Colorado, where he remarries, and her brother Jay forever resents Amy for the split.

When asked what happened during the 6 years she was away or where she was, Amy/Chelsea just won’t talk. It isn’t safe. It seems as if she is still in denial.

Slowly Amy reveals her memories to us, memories of the past, good memories, back when the family was together, refusing to talk about the last six years. While her family is patient with her, they wish she would talk, so they could all look for Dee. Dee’s mother, Hannah, is impatient with Amy’s refusal to talk, but her sister, Lee, seems to understand the trauma that Amy may still be suffering and is more patient with her.

Kyle, their kidnapper had dolls, chiefly, Chelsea, Stacie and Lora, among others. He kidnaps Amy and Dee to stand in as his human Chelsea and Stacie respectively. Failure to play along with this pretence results in cruelty, assault and the withholding of food. 

Gradually, Dee disappears into insanity, losing herself as she is raped repeatedly. She gives birth to two girls, Lola and Barbie. Incapable of caring for them or for herself, it is Amy as Chelsea who mothers them, bathing and diapering them.

The story is written in the first person present tense point of view of Amy, making it more real and intimate. But Amy’s own sense of trauma makes things confusing for us.

I found Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee confusing initially but once I caught on to what was happening, I found it extremely disturbing and creepy. I understood that Amy and Dee were taken away, but who then were Chelsea and Stacie? Little by little, the story revealed itself.

Kyle was one devious and twisted character. As the horrors of what he put the two girls through were revealed, I felt a deep sense of pity for them, and was able to understand why Amy behaved the way she did. Even the bad decisions that she took began to seem logical, given her experiences.

In the beginning, the narrator comes to Amy’s house, pretending to be Amy, yet talking to herself as if she were Chelsea, a girl who has no right to come to Amy’s house. There’s a mystery surrounding this girl and it leaves us feeling lost.

It seems that Amy has come home, but we are not sure she is really Amy. In her self-talk, she addresses herself as Chelsea.

Their account while in captivity feels horrifying. She says, Taste means nothing when you’re hungry, after Kyle shows his cruelty through food.

I also felt for the characters of Amy’s parents, particularly her mom, and her brother, Jay, and Dee’s mom and sister. I was touched by how Amy’s mother chews her hurt and her anger with her food, swallowing it.

Amy was a complex character. For a long time, she withholds her memories from us, and we don’t know what to make of her. We see her as cruel, for having left Dee and returned to her family. She herself is plagued with guilt for having kept silent while her cousin was being raped by Kyle, and for having prayed that it wouldn’t be her next. What’s more, she loved Lola and Barbie who were born as a result of the rapes.

This is a story of conflicts.

Amy’s dad feels a sense of conflict between his earlier family and his newer one.

Amy herself feels conflicted between being Amy and Chelsea. She longs to be wholly Amy and live in the moment with the family that she has been restored to. But all along she cannot stop thinking of herself as Chelsea, knowing that Lola and Barbie are still there, in the clutches of Kyle.

Slowly Amy reveals the extent of the depravity and nightmare that Kyle was. How she learned to say things to appease Kyle because the truth didn’t set you free, it got you hurt.

We feel for the plight of Dee, raped repeatedly, raped a month after her baby was born.

The author builds the momentum well, and like Lee, we too are patient, afraid to push Amy, afraid of the truth. Amy’s narration brings in an element of indirectness to Dee’s situation, making it both remote and strikingly real at the same time.

This was a YA story that has appeal for older readers as well, and might be too disturbing for younger readers, because of the horrible experiences lived through by the main characters.

An intense story.

(I got an ARC through First To Read.)

Book Review: UGLIES

Title: Uglies (Uglies #1)
Author: Scott Westerfeld
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Pages: 406






The very first sentence read, The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit. Even though it tried to express beauty in comparison with an unpleasant bodily function, I was not left with feelings of disgust or distaste. 


Perhaps it is true when they say that beauty is relative.

So apt in a novel which packs a punch around the issue of beauty.

Tally Youngblood has lost her best friend, Peris. He has moved to New Pretty Town, after having turned pretty. In this world, turning 16 entitles you to undergo a series of surgeries that will make you beautiful. Being Ugly is of no worth in this world, and that is why on hitting puberty, every boy and girl dreams of turning pretty.

There was something magic in their large and perfect eyes, something that made you want to pay attention to whatever they said, to protect them from any danger, to make them happy. They were so…pretty.

Like our real world, there are all kinds of advantages in being pretty, including being able to sleep as late as one wants to, and enjoying a life of non-stop partying and luxury.

Tally, who lives in Uglyville, sneaks into New Pretty Town to meet Peris. She finds that the friendship is no longer important to him. Tally can’t wait to turn 16 and be a part of that world. On her way back, she meets Shay, another Ugly girl, who shares the same birthday. 

Shay quickly fills in the void left by Peris. The two girls begin a friendship that brings comfort to both as they await their 16^th birthdays and their chance to turn pretty. Tally looks forward to undergoing the surgery along with Shay and spending their lives having fun.

But Shay, it appears, does not want to turn pretty. She does not buy into that culture, and even tries to talk Tally into staying Ugly. She tells her of a place called Smoke, where a guy called David has organized a group of people who have chosen not to turn pretty, yet lead happy, unprogrammed lives.

A week before her birthday, Shay decides to run away to the Smoke. Tally refuses to go with her.

And yet Tally’s birthday brings disappointment. Special Circumstances, a group that controls the city, threatens her with a lifetime of ugliness unless she leads them to the Smoke. Tally has promised Shay that she won’t betray her but she has also promised Peris that she will turn pretty soon. Choosing to keep her promise to Peris, Tally, armed with cryptic directions given to her by Shay and a pendant that will lead Special Circumstances to the Smoke, sets out. Now she is a spy for Special Circumstances.

Reaching the Smoke, Tally renews her friendship with Shay and befriends David and the others, looking for the opportunity to activate the pendant and get pretty. Until David and his parents reveal to her the truth about being pretty.

In the Smoke, Tally learns how the Uglies there trade their belongings for food and clothing. Everything has value and history, and here we are rejecting everything for something else, trading the intangible for the intangible.

David’s description of newspapers, like books, but you threw them away, and got a new one everyday, gives us an idea of just how wasteful we are. 

No wonder Tally’s world thinks of us as an idiotic, dangerous and sometimes comic force of history. But as David reminds her, Every civilization has its weakness. There’s always one thing we depend on. And if someone takes it away, all that’s left is some story in a history class.

Pretties have a lot of luck. They are seen as healthy and loved, and preferred as potential spouses. The novel invokes evolutionary biology and how humankind came to equate the beautiful with health and strength, seeing beauty as desirable.

This is truly an interesting world, a world where plastic recycles itself. Tally chews a toothbrush pill and wears an interface ring which lets her interact with inanimate objects.

The story is written from the third person point of view of Tally. In Tally, we have a heroine who opts to do something patently unheroic as breaking a promise and spying on her own friend. She deludes herself into thinking that Shay is misguided and that she must bring her back home.

Set in the distant future, when people like us, who are called Rusties, are long dead. In their History classes in school, young Uglies learn that the past included a time when people killed one another over skin colour, and taller and more good-looking folk got better jobs, spouses, and the best of everything. Sounds familiar?

In this world, the Rusties lived a lifestyle, much like ours, more than 300 years before Tally’s time. It is a lifestyle that demanded constant pillaging of the earth’s resources. The criticism of the Rusties also makes a point about our vacuous entertainment options.

Much of the story felt harsh, like a critique, or worse, like an indictment of our way of living, which has threatened and destroyed our world.

In reading about what Tally thought of the Rusties, I was reminded that, as a people, we are truly Ugly, not for our physical imperfections but for the ugliness that we spread around and leave behind. The Rusties were totally savage, like we are today.

And yet, not everything that the Rusties did was a waste. The railroads have their uses, but Tally still can’t understand their tendency to blast through mountains to fix tracks in straight lines. One particular sentence hit home: Whole rain forests had been consumed, reduced from millions of interlocking species to a bunch of cows eating grass, a vast web of life traded for cheap hamburgers.

Because the locale is so harsh in this dystopian world, the writing feels urgent and true.

The new world is divided into new pretty, middle pretty, late pretty and dead pretty, and keeping watch over them are a group of people known as Special Circumstances.  

This is a world of survivalist tendencies. Dystopian on account of its perceived utopianness.

The book ends on the cusp of a sequel, with Tally receiving a chance to redeem herself and save the others.

I look forward to reading, Pretties, the second in the series.

Book Review: THE POTION DIARIES

Title: The Potion Diaries
Author: Amy Alward
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Pages:  384

The Potion Diaries is a story of love, friendship, forgiveness, deception and betrayal that should appeal to people of all ages.

The book is written in two viewpoints: the third-person past tense viewpoint of Princess Evelyn, the only daughter of the King and Queen of Nova, and the first-person present tense viewpoint of Samantha Kemi, an ordinary girl with no magic who hails from a family of alchemists.

The Kemis were at one time the alchemists to the royal family, and one of the most prominent apothecaries in Kingstown, but have now fallen on hard times as most people prefer to buy remedial potions from the synthetic potion manufacturers rather than from the alchemists.

On her 18^th birthday, Princess Evelyn mistakenly drinks a love potion that she had made for Zain Aster, the son of Zoro Aster and heir to ZolAster, the wealthiest synthetic potion manufacturers in the kingdom who now enjoy the favour of the royal family.

While drinking from the goblet, Evelyn sees her own reflection and falls head over heels in love with herself. The entranced-with-herself princess becomes a danger to herself and to the kingdom, and the King calls for a Wilde Hunt, a competition inviting the alchemists of the kingdom to find a cure for the princess’ condition. Samantha and her grandfather, Ostanes Kemi, are also summoned to participate in the Hunt.

When Ostanes refuses to participate against the Asters, Samantha yearns to follow her dreams and come into her own as an alchemist. She signs up and finds herself pitted against the Asters, including Zain, on whom she has a crush, and Emilia, the King’s sister who was exiled because she dabbled in the dark arts.

Against the wishes of her granddad, Samantha and Kirsty Donovan, the Kemi family’s Finder, enter into the Hunt, only to get thrown out when their search for merpearl, the only ingredient that the princess has written down, is thwarted by Zol and his cronies. Apologetic about his father’s behaviour, Zain offers to help Samantha to classify ingredients in her shop.

While cleaning the shop, Samatha learns that her grandfather hid the merpearl they had to prevent her from participating in the Hunt. Using a truth serum to ferret out his confession, she and Kirsty take off with the merpearl to Bharat, where all the Participants have gone in search of the remaining ingredients.

Initially, they team up with the Patel siblings, Samantha’s best friend Anita, and her brother Arjun, but when they are attacked by Emilia, Kirsty decides that it is safer to split from them and work separately.

Later, the King’s evil sister vandalises the Kemi family library in search of the recipe for the love potion.

Will Samantha be able to fight the dangers posed by Emilia and Zol? Will she ever regain Anita’s friendship again?

I found the premise to be refreshingly original.

The adventure is well written and I can see youngsters enjoying the ride.

Author Amy creates a wonderful fantasy world, where magic is as real as the commercialism that gets in its way. There is something fairy-tale-like about the setting. From Kingstown which was built on the remains of an extinct volcano.

This is a world of mythic creatures like mermaids and sentient plants like the eluvium ivy.

The language is beautiful. In one instance, Amy describes the forest as a sacred place – a natural cathedral, a living library, an organic lab.

The fact that screens at bus stops and on screens get transformed into customized video message boxes for individuals reminded me of Back to the Future 2. I also found the concept of Transport, a strange form of Teleporting involving touching through screens and maintaining eye contact, interesting.

I liked the references to other parts of the world. Often novels tend to be America-centric even when set on another planet. Here there are references to Bharat and Zambi, the India and Zambia of this world.

At first, I thought that Bharat was just a token reference. But the land known by India’s ancient name is without doubt, the India that I know of, albeit set on a planet where magic reigns supreme. The land of the Ayurveda, which is full of concoctions and mixtures and pastes, translating into the Potions of this world. References to Indian culture were clearly visible in Bharat.

While on the subject, I must mention that Hallah is a diminution of the name, Himalayas. And Mount Oberon is Mount Everest, while the abominable Yeti is known here as just the abominable.

I also appreciated the Indian characters, the Patel family. Daughter Anita is Samantha’s best friend, and her brother, Arjun, and her parents are good people, and Samantha is attached to all of them. When they were first mentioned, I hoped they were not just token characters, and it was satisfying to see that they were not.

I liked Samantha. She is a list person, and makes up lists for almost everything. List of things to ask Kirsty; list of things to repair etc.

I found Samantha to be a lot like me. Apart from her tendency to make lists for everything, she says of the Hunt, They’re not for people who would rather live their adventures through characters in books. I like staying home, thank-you-very-much, where I know I can always find a plug point for my laptop, I’m never ten steps from a kettle to boil for tea, and I can go to sleep wrapped up in the comfort of my own duvet.

Yet she gives in to her dream and agrees to participate in the Hunt, with Kirsty as her Finder, against the wishes of her grandfather.

It was good to see the team work and the mental affinity between Samantha and Kirsty.

The title, The Potion Diaries, refers to the diaries maintained by alchemists, in which they note down their recipes, notes and dreams.

A sweet adventure that youngsters particularly will enjoy.