Sunday Summary: Weather, Werewolves and Manic Pixie Dream Girls.

London: 

If 2013 will be forever remembered as the year we had no spring, then the winter of 2014 will be chiefly remembered for its storms and floods (at least here in the UK. I understand the USA has been experiencing freak snow.) Last weekend I had made plans to stay with my sister just outside London, but the weather forecast was not good. I'd booked myself a late evening train, and all the reports pointed towards having to cancel. However, when I left work on the Saturday night to find it dry and a bit windy, I decided to risk travelling, and aside from a bit of rollercoaster-tummy on the ferry, I had no trouble getting to my destination (though my train time had been altered, causing a bit of confusion, in order to accommodate a couple of extra stations.) I got to her flat just after 10PM, where she was at the ready with copious amounts of curry and her Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVD. She has befriended the staff at her local Indian restaurant/take-away, and ended up with a whole load of freebies "so there's enough for everyone." How many of us did they think would be eating?

In actual fact, the weather stayed fine the whole time I was in London: a bit cold, a bit drizzly, but OK, though the Thames was horribly flooded between Kingston and Richmond. I met up with friends on the Sunday and they pointed out where the cycle path usually was, and the road. All were underwater, with a car parked in the river with a council notice stuck to its back windscreen (probably saying: "your car is getting wet, please move it.")

And now... the weather:

I thought we'd got off quite lightly on the Isle of Wight, but yesterday, various friends posted photographs on Facebook of some of the coastal towns' flooding, particularly in West Cowes, where the high street was underwater all the way up to Sainsbury's (which is a bit of a walk from the seafront and the ferry terminal.) Apparently the military were helicoptered in to help out. Checking the local news site, I've also just found out that Ventnor Undercliff is being evacuated due to landslides. I've been unaffected by it all, as I live in the centre of the Island and uphill.

Shopping!

One of my Christmas presents was a gift card for Foyle's, so I travelled into London with my sister on the Monday morning, before heading back home via a shopping trip to Southampton later that day. I'd planned to spend it on The Girl With All The Gifts by M. R. Carey and Attachments by Rainbow Rowell, but astonishingly, I couldn't find either of these titles in the famous five-storey bookshop. Not that it was too hard to find something else to spend my voucher on: eventually I settled on The Explorer by James Smythe, which I remembered seeing reviewed on Ellie's book blog, and Dream London by Tony Ballantyne, which was an impulse buy. It is brand-new to me, but looks bizarre, unsettling and fascinating. I bought The Girl With All The Gifts in Waterstone's on Oxford Street (the little one in the Plaza, which I like better than the one with the funny Twitter account; it has a friendlier atmosphere, I think) but could not find Attachments in any of the big stores in either London or Southampton. Not to worry, though, as there was a copy back on the Isle of Wight.

Since I've lost both my local HMV and Blockbuster, I have to do my DVD-buying whenever I get the chance. I'm especially disappointed in the loss of Blockbuster for boxsets - there are so many series I want to watch, but don't want to shell out £20 or so if I don't know if I'll like them. I found the first series of Battlestar Galactica in HMV for £6.99, and a second-hand season one of Heroes in Southampton's CEX. (Now, why don't we have a CEX on the Island? It is needed.) Both of these are things I've been curious about for a while, and did not mind spending just a little more than it would have cost to rent them. In the meantime, I've been continuing watching Buffy and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

What I read:

Last week I read through two decent but underwhelming teen novels: Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher, and Severed Heads, Broken Hearts by Robyn Schneider. I'd read Pitcher's My Sister Lives on the Mantlepiece (or, more accurately, let David Tennant read it to me when I had a migraine) and was very impressed, but unfortunately Ketchup Clouds didn't live up to expectations. I couldn't figure out how old the narrator was supposed to be: her voice came across as much younger than the events she was reporting. I suppose this is fair enough: she must be between fourteen and sixteen, an age where childhood and adulthood sit very uncomfortably together. The cover story alluded to a girl haunted by a terrible secret, but the plot focused more on the run-up to the tragedy than its aftermath, and though beautifully written, it was a storyline that didn't really interest me.

Severed Heads, Broken Hearts is a very John Green-esque coming of age story, funny and affectionate, but unfortunately spoiled for me by the awareness of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. Last year, the Internet got quite indignant about Manic Pixies, declaring them to be a sexist portrayal of women, that they appear only in relation to men and don't get to tell their own story. I don't necessarily agree with this argument: characters look different from the outside than from the inside. If Cassidy, or Alaska Young, or Margo Roth Spiegelman were the protagonists, rather than the love interests, would that in itself stop them from wearing the "Manic Pixie" label? Can you think of any characters who could be "Manic Pixies" if they were shown from another perspective? I wonder if even my beloved Anne Shirley would come across that way, if her story was told from the perspective of Gilbert Blythe. Jeane from Sarra Manning's Adorkable is an interesting version of the character, as the narrative switches between her point of view and the boy's. Also, are there Manic Pixie Dream Boys? Augustus Waters springs to mind. And let's not forget all the supernatural creatures in the form of a teenage male, who are seen only in relation to a teenage girl. An Interchangeable Magical Boyfriend Creature is very different to a vampire, werewolf or faerie narrator who happens to have a girlfriend. Does this mean there is no place for the trope? Nine out of ten times, when I think analytically about tropes, it enhances my reading experience, but occasionally it ruins it. Cassidy Thorpe is a textbook Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and though I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, the controversy of the trope made me enjoy Severed Heads, Broken Hearts a lot less than I might have done a year ago.

Glen Duncan's The Last Werewolf has been sitting on my to-read pile for a couple of years, so I decided that if I was going to read it, I should hurry up about it. It is very dark - perhaps not surprisingly for a book about a man who turns into a ruthless killer once a month! My preferred version of the werewolf legend is when the person and the wolf are pretty much separate - and that the wolf looks like a wolf, not a weird hybrid. The Last Werewolf uses the hybrid version, which extends into narrator Jake's human life as well. He cannot compartmentalise his human and wolf selves, so he's developed a very nihilistic worldview to cope with his changed nature. So he kills people every month: he has come to terms with this in order to survive. The Last Werewolf is bleakly philosophical, darkly poetic; not always a pleasant read, but it's good to have another version of the werewolf legend to compare with the Lupins, Ozzes and Elenas.

Though I wouldn't call myself a Tom Hiddleston fangirl, I do like him a lot as an actor and a person. He's been acting in Shakespeare's Coriolanus recently, which I haven't been lucky enough to see, but the Twitter-talk about it prompted me to read the play. As is often the case with Shakespeare, I was blown away by how applicable this story of ancient Rome still is today: the tragedy of a powerful man whose fatal flaw is his underestimation and disdain for the ordinary folk. This isn't one of Shakespeare's plays where every other line is a famous quotation, but it does include the words "to fob off" (exactly as one would use it today) "thwack" and "sprightly."

Eleanor and Park - Rainbow Rowell

Rainbow Rowell is a name I've seen all over the book blogs the last few months, but Ellie's review of Attachments was what prompted me to buy one of her books for myself. Unable to find a copy of Attachments anywhere, I settled on Eleanor and Park instead; after all, it had been on my wishlist for a

while.

When Eleanor steps onto the school bus for the first time, she is all too aware that everyone is staring at her. She can't help but stand out, with her wild red hair and mismatched clothes. But she doesn't stand out in a Manic Pixie-girl way; she stands out in a Carrie White way. A Katherine Edwards circa 2001 sort of way. From her very first day, Eleanor has been marked as the bottom of the food chain. That girl's just weird, think her classmates, and not in a cool way. As she looks desperately around for somewhere to sit, Park Sheridan takes pity on her. On this school bus, seats are allocated for life - or at least for the school year - and woe betide anyone who sits in the wrong place! So Park and Eleanor are stuck sitting together, and though they don't speak, they bond over comic books and music, and a friendship of sorts develops. And as Park gets to know Eleanor better, he discovers dreadful things about her life, both at home and at school.

For a moment, when I read Eleanor's reflections on "the bus situation" in her first chapter, I thought what bus situation, exactly? The other kids stared at her and wouldn't let her sit next to them. Yes, it sucks, but it's not exactly the end of the world, is it? And compared to the other things Eleanor has to deal with - poverty, an abusive stepfather ruling the house with terror, looking after four younger siblings, Carrie-style bullying from the other girls at school - it's not much. But then I remembered my own high school days, and the number 51 bus and all its horrors. Being the unpopular kid is not much fun at school, but without any adult supervision (because the bus driver barely counts) it is the perfect opportunity for the bullies to let loose on you. You're trapped in a metal can with your worst enemies for twenty minutes, and there's not a lot you can do but try to ignore them the best you can, and hope they'll get bored. Confession: I sometimes used my lunch money to catch the public bus home, rather than the free school bus. Some drivers would let me use my bus pass on public transport, others I was too timid to even ask.

At least I had a good, loving family. I was not prepared for the awfulness that was Eleanor's home life, where five siblings would huddle together in a single bedroom as their stepfather raged at their mother, trying not to alert him to their existence or do anything to make him worse. Where there was no door to the bathroom, and no shampoo, toothbrushes or much food. Where everything that would be considered normal teenage behaviour - friendships, phone calls, babysitting jobs, learning to drive, never mind dating - had to be conducted under secrecy for fear of Ritchie's anger. Eleanor's helplessness was so upsetting: thank goodness for Park. Without him, this story would be all doom and gloom - and who knows what might have happened if Eleanor had telekinetic powers! But Park's friendship and later love provide a refuge for Eleanor, a place to go where she can be happy and survive, despite everything, though always in fear of discovery. Their relationship is heartwarming, very funny and gloriously geeky as they bond over comics - X-Men, Swamp Thing, and the ongoing series of The Watchmen. I read Watchmen earlier this year and loved it, so it was great to follow the duo reading it as a serial. Also, Eleanor hates being made-over but Park wears eyeliner and looks great. There are Star Wars and Star Trek references, and this book really made me want to listen to the Smiths again. Just a few songs at a time, though. I don't want to get too miserable.

Early on in the novel, Eleanor voices my objections to Romeo and Juliet - I love Shakespeare, but hate that story, or at least, don't consider it the great romance and tragedy that everyone else does. (I know, I know, I have a heart of granite.)

"Romeo and Juliet are just two rich kids who've always gotten every little thing they wanted. And now, they think they want each other."

I've never had much patience with these young, all-or-nothing romances, and yet Eleanor and Park got to me. I think the book spoke to my inner teenager; there was a bit of longing in me as I read it. Park is an absolutely lovely boy, and the thought of someone like him falling for someone like me as a teenager was more than I could have hoped for. My feelings changed along with Eleanor's, through the growing romance and I so desperately wanted things to work out with the couple. It is a cute but not cutesy relationship, with the necessary complications of anything which involves two insecure people. These are two young people who need each other. Such a need could destroy them, but instead it strengthens them.

In Eleanor and Park, Rainbow Rowell created two characters I deeply cared about, not just as individuals, but as a couple. This is rare for me. I don't do "shipping" and generally romance is a thing that is to be endured for the sake of the story. But this time, the romance was the heart of the story, and it made me cry. That's quite an achievement. Perhaps I'm getting soft.

Memorable quotes:

"Maybe I'm not attracted to real girls, he'd thought at the time. Maybe I'm some sort of perverted cartoon-sexual."

"She tried to remember what kind of animals paralyzed their prey before they ate them...

Maybe Park had paralyzed her with his ninja magic, his Vulcan handhold, and now he was going to eat her.

That would be awesome."

15-Day Book Blogging Challenge: Day Eleven

Day 11: Show off! 5 of your best blog posts!

1. The 50 Greatest Harry Potter Moments.

This one is what it says on the tin. My definitive top fifty moments from the entire series, both books and movies - but if I've forgotten one of your favourite scenes, lines or characters, let me know!

2. When Children's Books Were Two-And-Sixpence

An old post from the days before I actually had more than a couple of followers, before I'd found a book blogging community. In which I rant about kids' classic books being updated for a modern audience.

3: Adults: Why do you read YA?

From 2010, I wrote this post shortly after I'd rediscovered that teen fiction was not all shallow fluff. Also contains pictures of me as a scrawny teenager for you to laugh at.

4. Theatre: Much Ado About Nothing

A review of William Shakespeare's comedy, as performed in London by a certain Mr D. Tennant and Ms C. Tate. Be warned: contains fangirling.

5. V for Vendetta

A review in my very occasional "Graphic Novel Novice" series, this review compares book and film, setting the book against the context in which it was written, and how the different versions of the story complement each other.

Paper Towns - John Green

In the middle of the night, Quentin "Q" Jacobsen's next-door neighbour and long-term crush Margo Roth Spiegelman appears at his bedroom window and bids him come with her on an adventure - a campaign of revenge. The next day, Margo is missing. It's not the first time Margo has disappeared, but Q is worried. He makes it his mission to find Margo, uncovering some cunningly hidden clues about her whereabouts. But finding Margo's physical location turns out to be just the beginning of the challenge. In their hunt to find her, Q and his friends realise that not one of them can be sure they ever really knew Margo. Paper Towns is as much about uncovering Margo as a real person as it is about finding where she is hiding.

Is it terrible to say that I really like revenge stories? The escapades Q and Margo embark upon are an entertaining take on the usual "bring down the mean girl" high school drama. To give you a sense of the duo's unusual pranks I will duplicate Margo's shopping list. (N.B. random capitalisations are Margo's.)

"3 whole Catfish, Wrapped separately

Veet (It's for Shaving your legs Only you don't Need a razor It's with all the Girly cosmetic stuff)

Vaseline

six-pack Mountain Dew

One dozen Tulipsone

Bottle Of waterTissues

one Can of blue Spray paint."

I will not give the game away about what they do with these items - you can use your imagination or read the book yourself. Needless to say, it was hilarious, with a touch of the guilt you feel for enjoying watching people get what they deserve.

But Paper Towns is not really a revenge story, not after that beginning. It soon becomes a mystery, a sort of treasure-hunt to find Margo, who seems not to want to be found, but leaves obscure clues for Q to figure out nonetheless. And if there's anything I like better in a novel for teenagers than revenge plots, it's mysteries and treasure hunts. Not that I expect to be able to work it out before the protagonists, and nor do I really want to. I enjoy the thrill of being utterly clueless about the author's intentions, of being surprised and trusting them to make it all make sense in the end. Margo's treasure-hunt takes Q and his friends, Ben, Radar and Lacey through Walt Whitman's poetry (note to self: must read some more Whitman) to a seriously creepy office in an abandoned mini-mall, and ends up sending them on a race-against-time road trip from Florida to a non-existant town in New York state, the boys wearing nothing but their graduation gowns. It's a riot, a page-turner, and Q's ticking clock - will they reach New York in time? - adds to the sense of urgency. By this point I was racing through the book as though I too would run out of time.

I may have mentioned before that I really love John Green's books. They have a unique nerdy appeal, with smart, sarcastic and funny characters, and weird little details that just make the books stand out against the rest. In Paper Towns we have Urban Exploring, the world's largest black Santa collection, a teenage boy in a "World's Best Grandma" t-shirt, cross-hatched writing to make a notebook's contents illegible to anyone except the writer. I have since adopted this, as I could find myself in Harriet The Spy trouble if I were to accidentally leave my notebooks lying around.  And of course there are the titular Paper Towns, which are fictional locations invented by mapmakers in order to identify breaches of copyright. All fascinating stuff, and I loved it. But it's not all just quirks and chuckles; Paper Towns makes the reader think about how we view others - as real people or supporting characters in our own lives? Can we ever truly know another person - and if so, how?

Mini-reviews: Miranda, The Land of Decoration, The Fault In Our Stars

I always find it exciting to start a new year in Storyland, venturing out into the uncharted lands of new books, TV and film, without any idea about which stories will become home to one's heart and mind. I've read three books so far in 2013: two for the first time and one reread, and so far all three have satisfied.

1. Is It Just Me? - Miranda Hart

One of the biggest selling hardbacks of the Christmas season was comedian Miranda's book - not so much an autobiography, but a "Miran-ual" of ponderings on life generally. Written as a dialogue between adult Miranda and her eighteen-year-old self, Is it Just Me? is packed full of reflections on being big and clumsy, of the joys of stationery and spontaneity, and whether carrying one's personal effects in a battered old rucksack rather than a tiny handbag really means that one is not "taking oneself seriously as a woman." (Spoiler: no.)

Is it Just Me? is an absolute joy to read, especially as someone who cannot leave a room without crashing into the doorpost. I mentally read the book in Miranda's own plummy tones - helped by her addressing the reader as "My Dear Reader Chum" (MDRC for short.) I howled with laughter at some of her escapades - although I did wonder how many had been embellished just the teensiest bit. Her recollections of an embarrassing picnic brought to my mind the memory of a disastrous incident with a barbecue burger bagel I battled in Cardiff with plastic cutlery. I won't go into details. Just imagine anything that could go wrong with these things and you probably wouldn't be far off. It was mortifying. But back to Miranda: I left this book feeling admiration for this woman who could be so confident in her goofiness and unwillingness to be a decorous grown up that she can not only laugh at herself and not care, but star in a sitcom about her life. Is It Just Me? is a funny and feel-good read that was just what I needed to get me through my annual Christmas Lurgy (although it is not good when you have a cough.) I originally bought it as a gift for my best friend, who lent it straight back to me. Now it's my mother's turn to read it.

2. The Land of Decoration - Grace McCleen

Ten-year-old Judith is an unusual child. Brought up by her strict widowed father and bullied at school, she finds refuge in the creation of a miniature world in her room which she calls "The Land of Decoration." Desperate not to have to go back to school, Judith makes snow for the Land of Decoration, and sure enough, it snows in the night, closing the school. Judith becomes convinced that she has miraculous powers, and tries to use these to make life better. But then things start to go wrong. Very wrong indeed.

Grace McCleen leaves it up to the reader to interpret what is going on here. Is Judith really having mystical experiences - and if so, are they benign or malevolent? Alternatively, is she simply over-imaginative, or even mentally troubled? Judith's narration is only reliable to a certain extent, revealing more to an adult reader than the child would understand, and it is unclear how literal we are to take her "visions." I am as yet undecided where I stand, but inclined towards her having a vivid imagination, shaped by her skewed religious upbringing.

At the heart of The Land of Decoration is the relationship between Judith and her strict father. Judith matter-of-factly says that she knows her father doesn't love her, because of her mother's death from complications giving birth to her, and because he always seems so angry. The discerning reader will understand that the truth is far more complicated than this. McCleen's portrayal of the grieving father trying to find his way as a single dad in a difficult world is all the more poignant for being described by someone too young to really understand.

The Land of Decoration is an extraordinary book, strange, challenging and often dark. It took a few pages to hook me, but once it got my attention, I could not put it down. A masterpiece from a new author.

3. The Fault in Our Stars - John Green

It hasn't been long since I read The Fault in Our Stars the first time around and my every intention was to pick up one of the many other books in the staff room library, but somehow this little blue paperback fell into my hands instead. The Fault In Our Stars is an incredible book, marketed at teenagers but one which should be read by people of all ages. I didn't have much to say about it the first time around and can't really add to it today, either. Just go out and read it. Buy, borrow, steal a copy. (Don't steal, kids, it's bad.) I always love John Green's characters: they are so funny and sarcastic and smart and angry, and reading about Hazel and Augustus actually hurt. The Fault in Our Stars hit home even harder the second time around, knowing what was coming. I recommend it whole-heartedly; it is a fiction full of truth and heart - but beware. You will need tissues.

Some Girls Are, Courtney Summers

Regina Afton has worked hard to get to the top of the high school hierarchy. She's sacrificed a lot: her friends, her integrity, her conscience. When an incident at a party sparks off vicious and untrue rumours, she finds herself despised and alone, learning first-hand just what it feels like to be on the receiving end of the bullying she used to help deal out.

The mean-girl drama is nothing new in teen literature. I've reviewed similar books here at the blog: Speak, Before I Fall and Getting Revenge on Lauren Wood - and, of course, the name Regina not-so-subtly recalls Mean Girls. Some Girls Are was a pretty dark version of the story, unflinching in dealing with the inventive cruelty of teenage girls. In many such stories the victim wins out with their goodness, or rise above the pettiness of their peers by discovering their inner depths. But in this novel, the bad guys getting their just desserts would not be satisfying: after all, that is what this story's all about.

Regina's been a mean girl too long. She demonstrates feelings of regret and self-loathing for the popular girl she used to be, but she has faked so much in order to fit into the inner circle that she's lost touch with her inner goodness and decency. It's in there, but buried so deep that no one can see it any more. Regina is a complex narrator, and I wasn't quite sure how to view her. I wanted to sympathise with her, but she'd done some terrible things. Did she deserve all the abuse heaped upon her? "Nobody deserves that," said Michael, the closest thing Regina has to an ally all through her ordeal. We're not shown Regina's former cruelty first-hand, and though we see the results, she holds back from telling too much about what she'd done to make two thirds of her school actively hate her. I felt that Regina was an unreliable narrator, toning down the events of the past, censoring herself so as not to utterly alienate her audience. Something didn't quite ring true between how Regina presented herself on the page, and how her classmates saw her - 300 enemies are a lot. I also wanted to shake Regina at times for walking into the mean girls' traps, and giving them power over her.

Regina is not one to take bullying lying down, and it turns into an ugly war of revenge for revenge, spiraling out of control. For me, like for Regina, it was temporarily satisfying to see the bullies getting a taste of their own medicine, but that satisfaction is quickly replaced with unease and anxiety for what would happen next. I felt sure that the situation would escalate into disaster or tragedy, because I could not see either side backing down. Ultimately, I found the conclusion hugely anticlimactic and boggled at the author's decision to end the book the way that she did. Is that it? I wondered.

It's reading books like this that I feel grateful that I was never popular at school, with fewer expectations to live up to or compromises to make. Not that I was entirely guiltless in these matters, still moderating my Katie-ness (in fact in those days I was Kathy, not Katie, a more significant thing that you might think) in an attempt not to give people within and outside my "friendship" group reasons to pick on me. But the cost of fitting into a clique such as the Fearsome Fivesome is too high to ever be worthwhile.

Mini-review: The Fault In Our Stars, John Green

 Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never beenanything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten. (cover blurb) 

The Fault in Our Stars is one of those intensely human books that make you laugh even while your eyes are full of tears and you can't read any further. Hazel and Augustus are clever, witty teenagers, quirky thinkers that you can't help loving immediately. Their relationship is fun and natural, and made me really believe in love again. By 200 pages in, I just couldn''t imagine the world without them. But this book is about both life and death, with two teenage cancer sufferers falling in love even while facing their own mortality, and it's not fair.

How can any single book be so funny, so uplifting and so heartbreaking all at once? I guess that's what life is. With a few, well-chosen words in the right order, John Green makes poetry of simple prose and helps to bring understanding of the incomprehensible almost within reach. Green is without doubt one of the cleverest writers for teens out there. He knows.

Special kudos to Green for his correct identification, use and strategic abuse of the word "literally," and for his understanding of what star-crossed lovers really are.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson/Dash and Lily's Book of Dares

Will Grayson, Will Grayson: John Green and David Levithan

I'd read a lot about John Green on young adult book review blogs, and the general consensus was that I ought to go out and buy all of his books! So, gift card in hand I wandered down the road to the other bookshop and perused the shelves. Should I go for An Abundance of Katherines, about a boy who only dates Katherines - because guess what? Katie is short for Katherine. Or Looking for Alaska? In the end I was won over by Will Grayson, Will Grayson's shiny cover and the novelty of the idea of two main characters with the same name - Will Grayson.

The book is written in the first person, alternating between the two Wills, with each author taking on a particular Will Grayson. Both Wills are quite lonely individuals. The first tries to live quietly and unobtrusively, his two rules being "Don't care" and "Shut up," out of fear of getting hurt. To his dismay, his best friend, Tiny Cooper - who he isn't even sure he likes very much - is the exact opposite, big, loud and flamboyant, falling in love every other day and the writer, director and star of a school musical - about his own life!

The other Will Grayson is clinically depressed and trapped in a state of self-loathing, putting up barriers between himself and the world. I've read a lot of reviews where people have found Will 2 to be moody and unlikeable, but I felt that he was a very real character who I could identify strongly with. The two Wills meet by chance in Chicago, and their lives change and take on new directions, in a rollercoaster of a story that is at times hilarious, heartbreaking and really, really corny - but in such a way that you can't help but grin.

Despite the title of the book, it is really Tiny Cooper who is the central character, and plays a crucial role in both Wills' lives. At first seeming to be a lovable but somewhat stereotypical "gay best friend" supporting role, gradually you come to realise that this boy has a huge heart beneath all his posturing, someone who genuinely lives to try to make other people feel better about themselves. He was truly lovely.

Because both Wills were written by different authors, I found it interesting to see how the characters were alike, and how they were different. In many ways, their "journeys of self-discovery" echoed each other's, but not in a self-conscious way. There were two authors, each writing their own version of a coming-of-age story, so their characters had both similarities and differences that came across more realistically than if a single author were to assign different characteristics to the different narrators.

While reading Will Grayson. I was surprised to find a little handwritten note inside, from somebody named Alicia, advising me to look at John Green and his brother's vlog site at Youtube, and recruiting me into their "nerdfighters' army." I was ridiculously excited that someone was passionate enough about her favourite author to want to share her love of reading with random strangers in a bookshop like this, and it led me to think of reviews I had read of one of David Levithan's other co-authored books:

 Dash and Lily's Book of Dares: Rachel Cohn and David Levithan.

Dash is browsing the bookshop one Christmas vacation, when among his favourite author's books, he finds a little red notebook with messages in code from a girl named Lily. Instead of merely contacting her with his personal details, he leaves a dare for her in ret
urn, and so the game begins.

Like Will Grayson, this book is written in alternating chapters: one narrated by Lily, the other by Dash. It's a light-hearted, cheerful and hilarious festive read - I kept laughing out loud on the train and ferry - and a sweet, heartwarming romance. Dash and Lily are loveable, nerdy characters - he is a word nerd, she's a strange, lonely girl, both more or less home alone for Christmas. Their dare game takes them all across New York: through the bookshop, Santa's grotto, nightclubs and Madame Tussauds, with the aid of  friends and relations working in each place. Yes, there are a lot of unlikely coincidences and contrivances, but it is another cosy, feel-good novel for the Christmas season.

Paranormalcy, Kiersten White

I'd been vaguely aware of Paranormalcy for a while, from other people's "mailbox" and review posts, but I'll be honest, it really didn't jump out and grab me, probably because of the title. I'd been coming to think the word "paranormal" to be a bit overused, an easy categorisation of an entire genre of books, without anything to say what makes this one different. Also, as a Brit, the word "normalcy" just doesn't sound right, and that, too, might have turned me off. But then, I happened upon author Kiersten White's blog, and after reading a few posts, decided I wanted to see more, went out and bought the book.

Yesterday, I was sorting through my books, picked up Paranormalcy to add to my to-read pile, then flicked it open. I was going to pick up and reread The Princess Bride, but upon opening Paranormalcy, literally from the first line or two, I could not put this book down.

The first chapter was called, "Oh, Bite Me!"

"Wait- did you- You just yawned!" The vampire's arms, raised over his head in the classic Dracula pose, dropped to his sides. He pulled his exaggerated white fangs back behind his lips. "What, imminent death isn't exciting enough for you?""Oh, stop pouting. But really,the widow's peak? The pale skin? The black cape? Where did you even get that thing, a costume store?"

I had to read more. Just one more sentence, to see if it was as funny as the last, and another, to find out what exactly was going on. It didn't take very long to get a clear picture of narrator Evie: Sassy, snarky, exuding attitude, but a girly-girl at heart. She might be employed by the International Paranormal Containment Agency to track down supernatural creatures - vampires, werewolves, faeries, you name it - for monitoring, but despite her unusual life, Evie herself is just a normal teenage girl, who would like nothing better than to be an ordinary high school student with a driving license and a locker. Just because she has the unique ability to see beneath the glamours - magical disguises and illusions - of "paranormals" - doesn't mean she herself is anything but normal.

But then immortal creatures start dropping dead by the dozen, and the person responsible is somehow connected to Evie. They seem to have more in common with each other than any of the other weird and wonderful creatures IPCA is keeping tabs on. Perhaps Evie's not as normal as she thought.

I'm usually wary of fantasy stories set in the real world which have too many different species of impossible creatures, preferring to stick to just one. But Paranormalcy really worked. Although "paranormals" aren't known to most humans, to Evie they're just differently normal. Her best friend is a mermaid, her ex-boyfriend a faerie, many of her colleagues werewolves, and her new crush Lend is something no one quite knows how to classify. It had a bit of an Eyre Affair feel to me, with its humour and matter-of-fact acceptance of the bizarre. The book launches straight into the action, the world-building being done by immersion rather than exposition, but it is easily picked up and understood.

At first I was a bit surprised that Evie was only sixteen; her bag-and-tag job seemed far too dangerous for one so young. But as we get to know her, she is a very realistic teenager, sometimes a bit bratty but basically likable, funny, obsessed with all things pink and sparkly and her favourite high school soap opera. I found her fascination with all things high school very understandable - I'd have loved to go to an American high school, or a boarding school, just to see how different it was from my own school experience!

Kiersten White has a refreshing take on various different "paranormals" from myth and literature. Her vampires may look suave and seductive, but all Evie sees is walking corpses. Sexy(!) Her friend Lish, the mermaid, lives in a tank of water and can't speak English, so has a computer translate her speech for her. But some of her more imaginative language translates to "bleep," something that Evie picked up. I'm not sure whether "bleep" necessarily worked in this book all the time. I liked the idea of it as an in-joke that turned into a habit, and I certainly think that less is more when it comes to swearing, but it sometimes jarred, if it was at a point of high tension - I'd rather nothing at all than a substitute-swear. But that's a small criticism.

Evie's double, Vivian, was an interesting antagonist that constantly kept me questioning the morality of Evie's world. She was a villain who evoked pity and caused me to wonder whether she was really all that bad, or if there was something in her reasoning. There wasn't a clear-cut black-and-white solution to this tale, which I appreciated.

I've read on other people's reviews that, despite its title, Paranormalcy is more an Urban Fantasy than a Paranormal Romance (which I've translated as meaning that plot and character come first, rather than just being an excuse for the IMBC* mushy stuff.) It is a fun, fast-paced story that had me grinning and turning the pages right the way through. And there was a wonderful jab at Twilight and the like:

Arianna snorted. "Why on earth would a vampire go to high school?"

Why indeed?

*Interchangeable Magical Boyfriend Creature