Meh-Fest: 'The Power of Six'

This review was originally published on The Film Yap.

I didn't see "I Am Number Four." I was vaguely intrigued by Dianna Agron as the love interest, as she is quite possibly one of the prettiest women on Earth. However, the movie looked like every other young-adult sci-fi wannabe out there.
 I also didn't read the New York Times-bestselling novel on which "I Am Number Four" was based. That said, I'm a sucker for young-adult fiction. When the Yap was sent a review copy of "The Power of Six," the sequel to "I Am Number Four," I decided to take a crack at it.

 The verdict? I wasn't exactly depressed, but I was far from impressed.

"The Power of Six" continues the story of John Smith, who is part of an alien race of nine young people sent to Earth when their home planet is overtaken by evil forces, living in hiding throughout the world with assigned adult guardians. When the first three were hunted and killed by the evil forces, John (Number Four) had to make some difficult decisions and eventually go on the run with the female Number Six and his best friend Sam, whose father was a human ally to the race and mysteriously disappeared.

The book has two parallel stories: John, Six and Sam's cross-country travels and combat training in the States, and Marina (aka Number Seven), undercover in a Spanish convent school and discovering her own unique abilities (called Legacies, which develop when the individual needs them most).

Though "The Power of Six" is a sequel, catching up on important plot points isn't an issue: Everything a new reader needs to know is scattered throughout the book. Action pops off nearly every page, and the relationships — Marina's struggle with her now-reluctant adult guardian; John's conflicting feelings for Six and for Sarah, the girl he left behind; John and Sam's mourning for their lost father figures — are never boring. Technically, Pittacus Lore (a pen name that figures into the book prominently) does everything right.

And yet, I was never completely drawn into this fictional world. Though I kept turning pages, I couldn't bring myself to care about the characters. Like standout series such as "The Hunger Games" and "Harry Potter," "The Power of Six" seeks to create a parallel universe with oddly named characteristics but grounded-in-reality issues. Unlike these other series, "The Power of Six" has drier prose and slower pacing, which contributes to a sense of distance from its characters and conflicts. Yes, it's cool that John can illuminate things with his hands and Marina can breathe underwater, but why should I root for them?

Clearly, the author wants "The Power of Six" to transition to the silver screen. The novel has a cinematic quality: long on action and dialogue, short on description. I don't know if "I Am Number Four" did well enough at the box office to warrant a sequel. I do know I wouldn't pay $12 to see it.

"The Power of Six" is now available in print and ebook.

Forever You and I: 'Chain Reaction'

If you've read this blog, well, ever, you know my reading propensities: I like angsty teenagers. I adore romance. I dig forbidden love. I read YA well after I was in the target age range and well before Rowling and Meyer made it acceptable for adults to publicly peruse, and I've never apologized for it.

You know what I also love? Free books!

So you can imagine my dorky squeal of happiness when I received a review copy of Chain Reaction by New York Times-bestselling author and fellow Chicagoan Simone Elkeles, whom I interviewed last year. (As I have all my packages sent to work to prevent theft, our mail dudes know to ignore me when I jump up and down.)

First, a disclaimer: I don't gush about something just because it's free. Hell, I don't read something just because it's free, as my TBR pile is too big to begin with.

That said, I loved the everloving crap out of Chain Reaction.

Chain Reaction is the third in a trilogy about the Fuentes brothers (as I've learned over the past year and a half, it's a common romance novel trope to follow a family, usually a set of siblings, over several books. I really like this, as it's fun to have characters in the same universe, and a good family dynamic makes for compelling reading). After Alex (Perfect Chemistry) and Carlos (Rules of Attraction), Luis is the youngest brother and quite possibly the most intelligent. He's been mostly kept away from the gang life that almost consumed his oldest brother, but he's still an adrenaline junkie and a girl magnet. When Luis is reluctantly relocated from Boulder back to the Chicago suburbs, he falls hard for straitlaced Nikki, whom clashed with at Alex's wedding a few years back. But when Luis' family is threatened by Alex's former gang, and Nikki holds back some secrets of her own, both their love and their lives are put in grave danger.

In other words, Chain Reaction has everything I like in a YA and in a romance. A believable family who don't always get along but who truly care for one another. An interesting hero and heroine, neither of whom are TSTL (Too Stupid to Live. Thank you, Smart Bitches Trashy Books). Complicated problems that can't be solved in one chapter, and intimate scenes that bring back the fumbling adrenaline of first love. (And I know I've said this many times before, but physical intimacy - especially between teenagers - is really, really hard to write. Try it sometime.)

Also, I hate to judge a book by its cover, but how hot is that cover? Seriously.

The one small thing that bothered me was some of the Fuentes brothers' dialogue. Apparently they don't pronounce their "ing"'s, so everythin' was spelled as such. I get that Elkeles was trying to be realistic with speaking patterns, but I found it rather annoyin'.

Overall, however, the author hit it out of the park with Chain Reaction, and with the Fuentes family trilogy as a whole. As Elkeles will tell you, she had to fight for the trilogy's first book, Perfect Chemistry, even switching agents in the process. It's inspiring to see what can come out of never giving up on a good story.

Chain Reaction is out in bookstores and ebook tomorrow.

A Little "Something Borrowed" About Love Triangles

I'll own it: I read a lot of YA and chick lit.  Regarding the former, I'll descend into Hipsterville and say I was devouring teen books way before Twilight blew up (just ask my ex, who thought it was really funny to follow me into that section at Borders).  And as for the latter, I'll be a bad feminist for a second and say that I think the cutesified term for women's fiction is, well, cute.  And unlike the early 2000's, chick lit (or women's fiction, if you're a good feminist) is less all about men and shoes and more about real women dealing with real issues.

Such as falling in love with the last person you're supposed to.

The love triangle is a tale as old as time and one frequently visited in YA, chick lit, and romance (another genre I adore).  The thing about the love triangle?  It is very, very hard to write.  Sure, the stakes are really high (something I constantly struggle with in my own fiction), but how do you NOT make everyone seem like assholes?  You've got the girl who's crossing a major boundary (person/point one), often at the expense of her friend who in lesser love-triangle stories is portrayed as a cartoonish meanie (person/point two), with a guy they may both be better off without (person/point three).

See what I mean?  The potential for a crappy story where the reader hates everyone and ends up throwing the book across the room (um, not that I've ever done this, Chicago Public Library, I swear) is huge.

Last year I reviewed Something Like Fate, a YA love-triangle story by the darling Susane Colasanti (whose new book, So Much Closer, just came out last week).  I won't rehash the whole review here, but this was a love triangle done right.  The friendship between the two girls was believable.  The boy was simply awesome, if a bit idealized (but hey, who didn't idealize a boy in high school?  If you're like me and grew up surrounded by asshole jocks, it was hard not to put the nice guys on a pedestal).  The sense of "this is so wrong yet so very right" was palpable.  Also?  I didn't want to smack anyone.

Later in the year, I read another YA love triangle, Elizabeth Scott's The Unwritten Rule, and had the very opposite reaction.  Now, Scott's books are hit or miss for me.  I tend to like every other one (Living Dead Girl; Love You Hate You Miss You; Something, Maybe?  Oh yes!  Bloom, Stealing Heaven?  Not so much.)  The Unwritten Rule fell into the unfortunate latter category.  I couldn't stand the protaga-dude and dudette.  I felt like he was a shallow jerk and she was a selfish bitch masquerading as a "good" girl.  I felt that neither of them gave the best friend enough respect or credit: yes, she could be mean, but she also had a pretty terrible home life.  Now, Sarah of Smart Bitches Trashy Books disagrees with me, but even for teenagers, these two were acting pretty horrible in the name of "love" (and I gave them about three months anyway).

Which brings me to a very recent chick-lit read: Emily Giffin's Something Borrowed.

I've seen this book on shelves for years but was never tempted to pick it up.  I think I was turned off by the cover (yes, I'm that shallow).  But Jezebel's been posting the shit out of the new movie version starring Kate Hudson, Ginnifer Goodwin, my husband John Krasinski, and some guy who played Erica Kane's aborted fetus on All My Children.  And I was sick at home one day with only my Nook for company, so I figured, why not?

I don't know if I'll see the movie, but I really, really enjoyed the book.

As a "good girl" who struggled to break out of that shell for a really long time, I could relate to Rachel, who spent her life trying to do the right thing (good college, law degree, career), only to end up sleeping with Dex, a fellow law school alum and the fiance of her childhood best friend Darcy.  Sure, Darcy's bitchiness comes off as cartoonish at times, but there's also so much of a history between the two women that I understood why Rachel still considered Darcy her best friend, and vice versa.  What I loved best about Something Borrowed was Rachel's palpable struggle with the whole situation.  She had, in fact, introduced Darcy to Dex when she herself didn't feel worthy of such a great guy.  She knew falling for him in the months before his wedding to Darcy was all kinds of ill-advised.  She had a believable mix of love, loyalty and loathing for her best friend.  This angst, combined with Giffin's breezy writing style, is why I'm currently rereading Something Borrowed.

(Plus, Rachel quotes Creedence Clearwater Revival, one of my favorite bands because I think I'm actually a 50-year-old man.)

Growing up, we're often inundated with "girl code"--you don't go near your friends' boys, even after they've broken it off.  As grown-ups, however, many of us realize that people often meet and fall in love under less than ideal circumstances.  A good love triangle book reminds its readers that what sounds so black and white when you're a kid morphs into shades of gray when you're a teen or an adult.  Either way, there will be tears and scars, but the lucky and genuine ones can emerge with relationships relatively intact.

Caution, Navel Gazing Ahead: NaNoWriMo Reflections

So I won.

For the second November in a row, I got achy muscles from dragging my laptop everywhere, spent way too much money at Starbucks and Borders (the latter's spinach omelet sandwiches are like crack.  Delicious, eggy crack), listened to sixties and seventies rock almost exclusively, and cranked out prose that was, more often than not, total and utter shit.

And 65,000 words later, I emerged with a first draft.

If you've read this blog in the past month, you know about my involvement in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and my NaNoWriRant against certain Salon.com writers who think people such as I are deluded chumps.

However, when I started writing, I WAS, in fact, somewhat of a deluded chump.  I really, really wondered why the manuscript I rewrote TWO WHOLE TIMES wasn't, in fact, getting me an agent.  I totally thought I was better than most YA writers out there, more original, funnier.

Then I started taking classes and going to workshops and applying for residencies.  In doing all this, I learned that not only are there a plethora of highly gifted folks out there, most of them worked way harder than I to perfect their craft.

I learned to identify my own issues with plotting, character development, just plain ideas.  I learned to listen to critiques--even if I didn't always agree, there was usually something in there that was helpful.  I learned that in classroom exercises, I should stop trying to impress everyone and just. freaking. WRITE.

It was during one of these freewriting prompts that I got an idea.  An idea that became last year's NaNo.  My third full manuscript, and the first one that I honestly believe has potential (and before you call me "deluded chump," I've had other non-family members say it too).  One year, one writing residency, and a gazillion revisions later, I'm STILL working on the damn thing.  My inner editor is a total bitch now.  And she's not letting me send it out till it shines like the top of the Chrysler building.

But a few months ago, things shifted.

I went through a dark period.  I was constantly sad, angry and stressed.  Things I used to really enjoy--like dance class--started losing their meaning to me, and consequently I stopped going as often.  My writing slipped by the wayside, too.  I felt like I had no capacity for creativity left, not to mention I was bereft of energy.  And when I wasn't writing, I was beating myself up for not writing.

In fact, despite the fact that I had a story I'd been jotting notes for since February (when I wasn't revising my latest project), I almost didn't do NaNo this year.

Then I thought about it.  I needed to get back in the habit of just sitting down and writing.  And this story was calling to me.  Even if I never, ever visited the project again, I had two protagonists talking to me and I wanted to get all of it down on paper.

And I did.

Mind you, November was a big month.  I signed up for another burlesque class, started going to yoga more often.  I have a full-time-plus job.  Mid-month, my best friend Bob moved back from L.A.--a wonderful, emotional experience for me--and crashed on my couch for a couple of weeks while getting his Chicago life together.  I even found time to blog and write film reviews once in a while.

But every day (almost, I think I took a break on Thanksgiving), I sat down and wrote.  And most of it's awful.  There are plot holes, characters who disappear, and inconsistencies galore.  In fact, if and when I revise this thing, I already have a list of stuff that needs to be fixed, which I'm positive is just scratching the surface.

I sat down and wrote.  I got back in the habit, refreshing me for the long process of edits ahead as I rewrite my work in progress for the umpteenth time.

I remembered that writing makes me happy.  Yes, I want to get published.  It scares me how much I want it.  But it's not about that.  It can't be.  I have friends who are published authors struggling to sell their next book.  And brilliant agented YA writers like Natalie Whipple struggle with submission as well.  I can't write to publish.  If it happens, great.  But most of all, writing makes me happy and that's why I do it.  Simplistic?  Yeah.  But totally true.

Now I have two stories I believe in.  And the two manuscripts I wrote before--though I'll never show them to anyone probably--are special to me, because they helped teach me how to write.

My astute and tough-lovey pal Xander Bennett of Screenwriting Tips . . . You Hack said once that the point of a first draft is to exist.  And now my first draft of Satellite exists.  Yay.  Awesome.

But while I'm celebrating, I'm thinking about how to tweak my work in progress, The Kids Don't Stand a Chance, so it's infinitely more readable and doesn't suck.  After spending November telling a completely different story, I'm refreshed and psyched to revise, revise, revise.

Hi, writing!

It's good to be back in the saddle again.