Perfect Chemistry

Perfect Chemistry
Author: Simone Elkeles
Publisher: Walker Books for Young Readers
Release Date: Dec. 2008

Series: Stand-alone title

Brittany Ellis has it all. She's the Queen Bee at her school, popular, captain of the pom pom squad, dating the captain of the football team, great grades, and gorgeous to boot. Everyone thinks her life is perfect because she's worked very hard to create that illusion. In truth, her mother is a perfectionist who harps on Brittany constantly. Her father is a workaholic who avoids family problems by staying away from home as much as possible and hiding in his study when he can't. And Brittany's older sister, Shelley, who suffers from Cerebral Palsy, has grown so frustrated and difficult to manage that her parents are talking of sending her off to live in a home for the disabled. As if her home life didn't suck enough, Brittany has just been assigned the lab partner from hell for her senior chemistry project: gangbanger Alex Fuentes.

Alex has reluctantly followed in his dead father's footsteps, joining the violent Latino Blood gang in order to protect his mother and two younger brothers. He's cultivated the image of a tough, menacing guy who isn't afraid of anything or anyone even as he refuses to engage in the more illicit activities of gang life. He serves as the muscle when it comes time to collect debts owed to the gang's leaders, but Alex stands his ground when it comes to dealing drugs. Still, it kills him to know that his future probably includes dying at a very young age and that there is absolutely no way out of the life he's been born into. The future certainly doesn't include college or a relationship with someone like Brittany Ellis, the Snow Queen of Fairfield High. When he's assigned to be her lab partner, he figures he'll have fun baiting the girl to torment her boyfriend and reinforce his rep as someone who doesn't give a damn. And just to ensure that he keeps his distance, he makes a bet with his friends that he can sleep with Brittany before Thanksgiving.

As the weeks pass, though, both Brittany and Alex realize that what everyone around them believes about them is really nothing more than a carefully constructed facade that hides a person riddled with demons and troubles. Brittany fights her growing attraction to Alex, reminded time and again by both her parents and her friends that Alex is not the type of guy she should associate with. Alex's image of Brittany as a spoiled rich girl begins to crumble when he gets a glimpse of her home life. And the two find that the only person they seem to be able to be themselves around is the other.

But the leader of Alex's gang is pushing for him to get more involved in the gang's drug business. Brittany's parents have finally decided to send Shelley away for good. And both must face the disapproval of their friends as they realize that they've fallen in love.

Perfect Chemistry is a perfect example of how good storytelling can make up for poor writing. While I found myself rolling my eyes quite a bit at the clunky dialogue, forced plot points, and out-of-character observations, I couldn't keep from turning the pages to see what would happen.
Brittany and Alex are appealing characters almost despite Elkeles' portrayal of them. While Brittany comes over as a doormat of the worst order - taking the crap her mother dishes out to her with meek acceptance - at least her love for her sister gives us some motivation as to why she might be trying to be so perfect. Brittany honestly believes that she must make up for the fact that her sister is handicapped, and it never occurs to her until near the end of the book how unfair it is for her parents to both place all of their hopes and expectations on her or to project their frustrations and disappointments from having a handicapped child on their youngest daughter. Brittany spends a good portion of the book worrying about what everyone else will think, and while I imagine this is true for most teens, it got a bit tiresome.

For his part, Alex is a decent hero. He's been forced to join a gang, but still he embraces the image of gangbanger whole-heartedly. His desire to keep his younger brothers out of the gang do much in making him admirable. In the beginning of the book I felt Elkeles really struggled to establish Alex's image in school as a bad-ass that the other kids feared by giving him what I think was supposed to be smart-assed dialogue that came across as simply annoying and made him look stupid. In this case, I imagine a guy like Alex to be someone who says as little as possible. But Elkeles would have him actually raise his hand to make an obnoxious comment that didn't sound so much bad-ass as a bad-ass wannabe more likely to be openly ridiculed than respected.

Another cliché Elkeles relied on to establish Alex's street cred was to have him constantly be accused of things he didn't do. As if his reputation at school was so horrible that everyone immediately looked to him when some misbehaviour was discovered. At one point, Alex is brought before the principal when graffiti is found in the school gym and a can of spray paint is found in Alex's locker. Alex didn't do it, and he's able to prove his innocence in such a way as the principal believes it. However, we never discover who framed him or why. It was as if the entire scene was strictly there to demonstrate what a bad rep Alex had that he gets dumped on for everything.

While I never quite saw Alex as a scary badass - the type of guy I'd cross the street to avoid - nor did Brittany ever quite seem the kind of girl who would rule the school given her lack of backbone, at least the relationship between the two was well drawn. The almost forbidden attraction between them grew naturally and built steadily. Even as they fight their feelings for each other, it's undeniable that they are meant to be together. I think this is what kept me turning pages - to find out when and how they would finally give in to their feelings.

Unfortunately, the ending of the book was both a bit forced and a bit trite. Alex does something for reasons I still don't fully buy, and the conflict it created was resolved far too easily. I could have done without the Epilogue altogether.

One issue I had with the book's setting I can't manage to resolve. Elkeles set this story in a suburb of Chicago, and reading the back cover information about Elkeles, it seems she's actually from Chicago and therefore has intimate knowledge of the city and surrounding burbs. Fictional Fairfield High is supposedly located where huge mansions sit on Lake Michigan beachfront property (which would be the Northern Shore communities) but there is also a large population of economically disadvantage Latino families. The high school social structure is divided into the North Side Rich Kids and the South Side Latino kids. It could be that such a place exists and I just don't know it, but I couldn't imagine a school with such an extreme divide in the Chicagoland area. And I'd bet dollars to donuts that no community that contains people as well-off as Brittany and her friends' families are described to be would ever tolerate the presence of Latino gangs who ride around flashing gang symbols and wearing bandannas to indicate gang membership. They'd make sure their tax dollars were being used to keep the "riffraff" far away from their homes and schools.

In the end, I would say that this book is a very intriguing read that kept me turning pages so therefore can be considered a success. You do have to have an accepting attitude when it comes to the writing itself, which I thought fell short of what it could have been. I give it a qualified recommendation.

Rating: Couldn't Put It Down

Dairy Queen

Dairy Queen
Author: Catherine Gilbert Murdock
Publisher: Graphia
Release Date: June, 2007

Series: Book 1 of 2 to date

D.J. Schwenk is only 15 years old, but she has the work load of three adults. When her father injures his hip, the work of running a small, family dairy farm falls on D.J. Her older brothers, Win and Bill, have left home to play football in college, and even if they could come back, a falling out with their father makes that impossible. So D.J. must sacrifice the things she enjoys in order to spend her days doing the endless chores necessary to keep the farm operating. She quits the sports teams where she is the star player, and she even flunks her English class when her work keeps her from completing assignments.

Non-communicative and un-complaining, D.J. does what's asked of her without a word of refusal. When the quarterback from rival high school Hawley's football team shows up on the farm with instructions to offer a helping hand in exchange for training by D.J., she wants to refuse. But she agrees, and in between milking and haying and maintaining the farm, she spends her time with Brian Nelson coaching him to be a better player. Over the course of the summer, she realizes that the skills she has that allow her to be a trainer to Brian - hours of playing football with her older brothers - would also allow her to play on her own school's football team. The idea of for once doing something she wants to do and chooses to do for herself rather than all of the things people expect her to do is very appealing.

However, she's sure no one in her life would share this enthusiasm. Not her father, who's inability to show any appreciation for the work that D.J. does or the sacrifices she's made don't indicate a willingness to embrace such an unconventional concept as a girl playing on the football team. Certainly not Brian, who would become her competition and might view their time spent together as her way of spying on him rather than an attempt to make him a better player. Maybe not even the school's coach, who admits that he has no idea if a girl can play on the team, and even if so, not one who has flunked her English class.

Meanwhile, D.J. struggles to understand why the relationship with her long-time best friend, Amber, has grown so tense of late. She despairs at the feelings she's developing for Brian, a guy she's certain would never be interested in a stupid farm girl like herself. And she silently rages against her tight-lipped family that never talks about problems but rather shuts each other out so that they resemble a group of strangers living in the same house.

D.J. is a fascinating character. She's so unlike the normal girly-girl protagonists you find in so many young adult novels aimed at girls. Despite her advanced maturity and the adult-like burdens she carries, she's amazingly lacking in confidence. She truly views herself as nothing more than a hick farmer who will never fit in, so stupid she can't pass English despite knowing that it was not her lack of smarts but her lack of time for schoolwork that caused the problem. The idea of someone like Brian ever finding her in any way interesting is completely foreign to D.J., and when he does show interest, she sees it as fleeting at best.
Too, D.J. is unusual in that she does not speak often. While as readers we are fully aware of what she is thinking and feeling at a given moment, Murdock makes it clear that D.J. is unable to articulate these thoughts and feelings. While we want D.J. to scream and shout against the unfairness of her situation, D.J. herself never views things this way. Nor would it occur to her to say anything about it even if she did. She accepts her burdens stoically. Too, her inability to communicate causes rifts with Brian that are very realistic.

While I appreciated the fact that D.J. was not a whiner, I did grow increasingly frustrated with what I viewed was a certain level of child abuse that I thought her parents were engaging in. The idea that parents would allow working on a farm to interfere with their child's grades - to the point that D.J. flunks English despite many written warnings to her parents - is despicable at the best. They take advantage of D.J. to the degree that I would think a call to Child Welfare wouldn't be out of line. The amount of physical labor alone is horrific.

Too, I found it highly reprehensible that D.J. was expected to give up the things she loved to do - play on the basketball team, run track - in order to run the farm virtually alone. That her parents would not consider other options is unbelievable. Granted, I'm sure in such a situation options are very limited, but it was hard for me to read about D.J.'s experience without fuming at the unfairness of it all.

Murdock does an amazing job conveying D.J.'s feelings in such a way as you can believe D.J. is really describing them. She maintains D.J.'s voice throughout, and I wanted very much to know how things would work out for this girl. At times I wanted her to tell everyone around her that they are all jerks - especially D.J.'s father whom I found very hard to like or sympathize with - and at one point, D.J. does allow all of that low-simmering rage to come to the surface in her own way.

As a character, Brian Nelson is very three-dimensional. He's got both faults and virtues that make him real - he's a spoiled boy quarterback who's aware of it and doesn't necessarily like the fact. His feelings for D.J. remain undefined and uncertain, which is in line for what D.J. perceives to be the case. We're never quite sure how he feels about her, because neither is she.

All in all, I really loved this book. I expected something much lighter and more humorous when in truth, this book is rather dark in the way it portrays life on a family farm. There are no easy answers, and people are portrayed complete with some very serious flaws. Even so, I loved D.J. as a character and am anxious to read the next installment in the series.

Rating: Couldn't Put It Down
Status of Series: Outstanding first installment

Plan B

Plan B
Author: Jenny O'Connell
Publisher: Simon & Schuster/MTV
Release Date: March, 2006

Vanessa Carlisle is a planner, and the next year of her life has been plotted to the last second. Finish senior year at private high school Cabot Academy. Get acceptance into Yale. Spend the summer traveling around Europe with her best friend, Taylor. Then head to Yale, where she'll join her boyfriend, Patrick, who already attends as a freshman. She's dotted every i and crossed every T.

What Vanessa doesn't plan for, however, is learning that she has a half-brother who not only is coming to live with them and attend Cabot High, but just so happens to be a bad-boy TV star. Reed Vaughn has gotten into trouble one time too many, and his mother sends him to Chicago to gain some new perspective. Which means Vanessa must go from only child to sharing the spotlight with a Hollywood star.

From the outset, Vanessa resents Reed. She doesn't want him to come, she knows she isn't going to like him, and she determines she's not going to let his presence change one thing about her life. However, she soon finds that her carefully laid plans start to unravel.

The premise of this book - finding out you have a brother who happens to be a famous TV star - really drew me in. I couldn't wait to see how Vanessa handled the sudden fame, dealing with starstruck friends, and maybe even learning that Reed was just a normal teenage guy deep down.
However, Reed remained pretty much a background character throughout the entire story. We never get to know much about him or how he feels about moving to Chicago or what he thinks about being a star. In fact, Reed comes across as a pretty decent guy, and I felt rather sorry for him when nearly every guy at Cabot treats him like a threat and the only friend he seems to make is the one girl at school who doesn't own a television.

Too, Vanessa's immediate and inexplicable hatred toward Reed is never fully explained or justified. From the minute she learns about Reed, she determines that he will be nothing but a problem for her. She treats him rudely at best and is outright disloyal and cruel at other times. However, I never found Reed's behaviour towards Vanessa to be anything deserving of such hostility. In truth, she often comes across as a spoiled brat, far more of a diva than Reed. I can't say that I ever liked Vanessa or felt sorry for her situation because I never fully understood her problems to begin with.

A big part of the story focused on Vanessa's attempts to continue her relationship with boyfriend Patrick, who was attending Yale as a freshman. Unfortunately, every twist and turn this storyline followed was completely predictable.

Vanessa's journey throughout the story involves her ability to accept that sometimes things don't always go according to plan, and sometimes that opens doors for things to be better. While learning to live with an unexpected sibling requires Vanessa to adapt, I'm not sure that Reed was the catalyst to her changes. Over the course of the story, she experiences troubles with Patrick that had nothing to do with Reed. Ultimately, Vanessa fights against accepting Reed as a part of her life, and I would argue that she only barely concedes to this situation. She doesn't change because she's learned anything from Reed. She changes because she realizes she has no other choice. Ultimately, her Grand Plan is only affected slightly.

One question I had after reading the story was why O'Connell chose to make Reed a famous TV star rather than just a normal guy who comes to live with Vanessa and her parents. Reed's fame added nothing to the story. Granted, he was immediately accepted at Cabot High because of his status. But because this aspect of Reed was never fully explored - the situation never examined from his point of view - and it never truly affected Vanessa in any direct way, I still don't know why O'Connell chose this particular direction. It left me feeling as if a great opportunity was missed.

This is the second book written by O'Connell that involved Chicago as a setting, with Boston playing a strong secondary role. (The first was The Book of Luke.) I know from the information given about O'Connell that she currently lives in Boston, thus I can see her focus on that area. While the Chicago portions of the book are written as if O'Connell has done thorough research, I do wonder if she's ever actually lived here. Something about her sense of setting is a bit forced, as if she's relying on guidebooks rather than her own experience. I could be wrong about this.

O'Connell's saving grace is her ability to tell a story cleanly. Her voice is easy to read, and while her characters frustrated me, they were well written. The dialogue is natural and the narrative well paced. I only wish she'd do better in executing these wonderful premises that are promised on the back cover copy. With her books, I always feel like I've ordered a hot fudge sundae only to get served a fruit yogurt cup instead.

Rating: Held My Attention
Status of Series: This is a stand-alone title