And now, the reason I was in Chapters in the first place...
I mentioned a few weeks ago that my writing group friends keep telling me the Kowalski mystery, by dint of having a lot of very young characters, is more a YA mystery than a general purposes one. I've been resisting that idea mostly because I tend to think of YA novels as fundamentally more serious than my silly little genre murder mystery. However, I have at least started thinking about looking for examples of genre mystery aimed at young adults, and because of this I checked out the "Young Adult Literature" thread on a pop culture message board I frequent.
Which didn't help me at all, given that the first recommendation that caught my interest was one for a book called Hold Still, which begins shortly after the suicide of the narrator's best friend. The book follows the narrator through the next year, as she tries to deal with her grief, anger, and guilt. That last emotion is partly about whether she could have done anything to save her friend, and partly about whether it's okay for her to have other friends and go on living, and is exacerbated by the fact she has the dead girl's last journal, which was left for her to find just before her friend killed herself. The main character is surrounded by good people who mean well--even though at least one of them lets her down flat and she's very angry about that betrayal--and I liked everyone in her orbit.
Also, the book is set just outside San Francisco and little bits of the action take place in and around Dolores Park, about which place Matt Mays has written a song, so there's that.
I believe the person who recommended the book is also an LJ friend, and I invite her to drop in and take a bow for the rec, because I went to Amazon and read the first few pages... then borrowed the book from the library... and then when I finished reading it I realized I didn't want to give it back, so I went out and bought a copy for myself. (And while I was keying in the details of my debit card, the cashier was looking over the book so I told her how I came to be buying it, and she seemed interested and thanked me for the recommendation.) I know, I'm supposed to think big box stores are evil, but the one I shop at seems to employ quite a lot of people who like books.
Anyway. As I say, this didn't do much in terms of finding me an example of straightforward YA mystery with no redeeming social value, but oh well. It was certainly an overall win anyway, and I'll be very interested in seeing what the author, Nina Lacour, comes up with next. This was a stunner of a first book.
Which didn't help me at all, given that the first recommendation that caught my interest was one for a book called Hold Still, which begins shortly after the suicide of the narrator's best friend. The book follows the narrator through the next year, as she tries to deal with her grief, anger, and guilt. That last emotion is partly about whether she could have done anything to save her friend, and partly about whether it's okay for her to have other friends and go on living, and is exacerbated by the fact she has the dead girl's last journal, which was left for her to find just before her friend killed herself. The main character is surrounded by good people who mean well--even though at least one of them lets her down flat and she's very angry about that betrayal--and I liked everyone in her orbit.
Also, the book is set just outside San Francisco and little bits of the action take place in and around Dolores Park, about which place Matt Mays has written a song, so there's that.
I believe the person who recommended the book is also an LJ friend, and I invite her to drop in and take a bow for the rec, because I went to Amazon and read the first few pages... then borrowed the book from the library... and then when I finished reading it I realized I didn't want to give it back, so I went out and bought a copy for myself. (And while I was keying in the details of my debit card, the cashier was looking over the book so I told her how I came to be buying it, and she seemed interested and thanked me for the recommendation.) I know, I'm supposed to think big box stores are evil, but the one I shop at seems to employ quite a lot of people who like books.
Anyway. As I say, this didn't do much in terms of finding me an example of straightforward YA mystery with no redeeming social value, but oh well. It was certainly an overall win anyway, and I'll be very interested in seeing what the author, Nina Lacour, comes up with next. This was a stunner of a first book.