Review: Reunited by Hilary Weisham Graham

Reunited by Hilary Weisham Graham
Simon & Schuster BYR, 336 Pages
US Release Date: June 12, 2012
Challenges: Local Library Challenge, Contemporary Challenge

1 Concert
2000 Miles
3 Ex-Best Friends

Alice, Summer, and Tiernan are ex-best friends.

Back in middle school, the three girls were inseparable. They were also the number one fans of the rock band Level3.

But when the band broke up, so did their friendship. Summer ran with the popular crowd, Tiernan was a rebellious wild-child, and Alice spent high school with her nose buried in books.

Now, just as the girls are about to graduate, Level3 announces a one-time-only reunion show.

Even though the concert’s 2000 miles away, Alice buys three tickets on impulse. And as it turns out, Summer and Tiernan have their own reasons for wanting to get out of town. Good thing Alice’s graduation gift (a pea-green 1976 VW camper van known as the Pea Pod) is just the vehicle to get them there.

But on the long drive cross-country, the girls hit more than a few bumps in the road. Will their friendship get an encore or is the show really over?
---------------------Goodreads summary

Notable Quote

Summer had always admired how uncensored Tiernan was. Sure, her lack of a filter got her into trouble sometimes, but it also got her what she wanted. Summer, on the other hand, spent so much effort not saying what she actually thought and denying herself the things she thought she "shouldn't" have that sometimes it was hard to remember what she really wanted in the first place.

I've always known that if *NSYNC ever reunited, I'd drop everything and every penny in my pocket to get to that show. Now thanks to Reunion, I'd absolutely love to do it with my two best friends in a green VW Van Pea Pod, too.

Reunion is a fun, winding adventure of 3 ex-best friends chasing the childhood band that had brought them together so many years ago. Though they're not friends now and have no plans of ever being friends again - thanks in part to a Winter Ball Showdown during their sophomore year - it seems their trip has other plans for them.

I'm never one to turn down a road trip novel, and this definitely ranks among one I'd love to have been on! The description of the Pea Pod was so much fun and so vivid, I felt like I could really see the band posters and collages plastered on the interior wall. The shenanigans they find themselves on during the trip, from the wayside hippie festival to the hot swimming boys to the radio contest were hilarious and filled with good hearted hijinks, and I loved every second of it.

I'll admit that some of the elements to this novel are not the most original. Each personality the friends represent are pretty typical, and the movement of friendships followed a clear path that a reader could have guessed no problem. And I know I'm not the only one who had flashbacks to the movie Crossroads with Britney Spears. Even the personalities of the three felt suspiciously like the characters from the movie - one studious, straight-laced brain, one popular flighty girl, and one party girl with a side of snark. I know there's no funny business going on, but I couldn't help but remember the movie as I was reading.

Still, despite some of the originality issues, this book was pure fun and friendship. Alice, the instigator of the trip and purchaser of the tickets, is fairly innocent throughout the entire novel; but Summer and Tiernan both have some other motives. I love the quote from Tiernan about how a runaway can always spot another runaway - it was so fitting and meaningful. And even though I'm focused on the friendship and adventures the girls stumble on, there's a great depth to the meaning of true friends and figuring out who you are as an individual amongst your friends - former or otherwise.

My only other issue with the book was how long it dragged out this Sophomore Year Winter Ball Showdown. Each girl constantly refers to it throughout the entire novel, always getting so close to finally explaining what happened until backing off. And that's fine, I get the point of drawing it out, but I felt it was a little...lackluster. A little underwhelming. It fit fine with the book, and I was quite happy that it's a situation that I understood how it would break up the friendship. In that respect, it's near perfect. But the buildup was so much, and the followthrough didn't quite live up to it.

Something I did love though? The ending. Parts of it were a bit unexpected, but it's totally a predictable ending that kind of ends all wrapped up in a pretty bow. Normally I'm not a fan of those, but with Reunited? It's so perfect and playful that I couldn't NOT love it. It's exactly as it should have happened, and I closed this book with a ginormous smile on my face.

4 Stars / 5

Review: The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour

The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour
Dutton, 307 pages
US Release Date: February 16, 2012
Challenges: Sophomore Reading Challenge, YA Contemporary Challenge

Colby and Bev have a long-standing pact: graduate, hit the road with Bev's band, and then spend the year wandering around Europe. But moments after the tour kicks off, Bev makes a shocking announcement: she's abandoning their plans - and Colby - to start college in the fall.

But the show must go on and The Disenchantments weave through the Pacific Northwest, playing in small towns and dingy venues, while roadie- Colby struggles to deal with Bev's already-growing distance and the most important question of all: what's next?

Morris Award–finalist Nina LaCour draws together the beauty and influences of music and art to brilliantly capture a group of friends on the brink of the rest of their lives.
------------------------Goodreads summary

Notable Quote

She stares in wonder at the eggs and toast, and I know how she feels, how everyday things are rare and exciting when they turn up in unfamiliar places.

I really wish The Disenchantments was out when I had graduated high school...or even college, really. It's a brilliant, stunning novel about finishing one thing and trying to figure out the big, all-encompassing question of "What next?".

When I was about halfway through the novel, I tweeted out that The Disenchantments made me want to write again. I've been a trained journalist for 12 years, but I rarely talk about the fact that I'm a writer first and foremost. Not a published author (yet), but I have the dreams; just have yet to finish the story. For reasons too personal for the blog, I haven't written a story in a few years -- I've done NaNoWriMo every year, but it's never a story that I know in my heart is destined to be seen. It's been a very massive, very intimidating writer's block, essentially.

But The Disenchantments made that itch flare, made that deep need to write and create and express through words bubble up in my chest again, and it was absolutely amazing. Because this book is something I would absolutely love to write one day (not exactly, of course!). It's filled with that subtleness that works its way unknowingly into your heart, in that quiet fashion where you don't even realize how much it's striking your soul until there's so much of it it overflows. There's nothing EXPLOSIVELY HUGE or anything that comes from left field here, and it's perfect.

I think what really sold this book for me is how absolutely real it is. There aren't massive emotional swings, or tricks in the plot that are supposed to smack you upside the head: like real life, it's a struggle, a slow chipping away at a problem that opens it up gradually and painfully. It's that moment when you learn of the fissure in the foundation, and all that follows are the slowly and ever-expanding things you finally figure out to realize just how broken and screwed you are.

I can talk about how it's an amazing road trip novel, filled with that perfect journey - both literal and metaphorical - as we watch four friends become closer to who they think they want to be; and I could talk about the music (The Supremes!) and how awesomely well it all comes off the page, from Bev's breathy voice to the irregular drum beats to the feedback of the amps; I could talk about how appropriately and quietly art and all its forms and what it opens up in a life are distributed in the book; I could even talk about how even though it's not the sexiest, hottest or dream-worthy kissy scenes I've ever read, I do think they're absolutely perfect in this book and made me swoon just as hard.  I could talk about all that, because it's all true...

But it's about how well it all comes together, how masterful Nina LaCour ties it all together into this perfect little mini-band tour.  Each character (including Melinda!) is so unique and lovely in their own way, and I have to admit that Colby is possibly the best male POV I've ever read--YA or not. I felt like I was in the van with them, answering those quotes on a slip of paper, wishing I could know what was on Bev's walkman, buying Colby a half an hour in the hot tubs. And not just because I loved them all so much and wanted to be their friends, but because I found a little (or even a lot) of myself in every single character; even though sometimes that hurt, it was the best kind.

5 Stars / 5

(and more if I could!)