(Image from Barnes & Noble)

Jane Taylor's used to living an unconventional life.  It's all the 16-year-old's ever known, thanks to her mother's (self-proclaimed) calling as a psychic.  But it's not all she wants.  Jane would love to trade tiny Spirit Vale—a community of mystics near Niagra Falls—for the bustle of the big city.  There, she could be a real journalist, hobnobbing with real people, not watching her mother charm customers out of their hard-earned dollars.  Little does Jane know just how far fate will take her.

When an admirer of Jane's mother sends the family tickets to cross the Atlantic in order to attend a spiritualist convention in London, Jane can hardly believe it.  She has little interest in spiritualism, the value of which she doubts very highly, but a great desire to converse with interesting people, of which she meets many.  Among them are several with uneasy feelings about the maiden voyage of the R.M.S. Titanic, which will be occurring in a few days.  Jane doesn't believe in such mumbo jumbo.  At least she doesn't think she does.  But, with two of her sister aboard the ship, can she afford to take the chance?  If Nikola Tesla—a famed, if eccentric scientist—is to be believed, something is terribly wrong with Titanic.  What, if anything, can she do?  And what does Tesla have to do with the fate of the ship? 

It's been awhile since I read Distant Waves by Suzanne Weyn and I'm still not quite sure what to make of it. This plot of this genre-bender shoots off in all kinds of directions, making it a disjointed and sometimes confusing tale.  While I loved the very ending of the story, other parts of it had me yawning.  I felt the same way about the characters—while they were intriguing, none of them really, really spoke to me.  On the whole, then, I'm kind of ambivalent about this one.  In the end, I found it just okay.  

(Readalikes:  It's like a lot of other Titanic novels, just with a twist.)

Grade:  C

If this were a movie, it would be rated:  PG for scenes of peril

To the FTC, with love:  I received a finished copy of Distant Waves from the generous folks at Scholastic.  Thank you!

(Image from Indiebound)

Gwen Jones has never been afraid of the dark or the quiet - until they become permanent conditions in her little town of Sage Valley, New York. As the world's supply of fossil fuels dwindles to nothing, cities all over the globe are running out of gas, food, clean water, medicine, and other necessities. Without electricity, people are cold, bored, and panicked. Gwen didn't have much to begin with, but she's never felt this deprived. Even with her brother's black market connections, she wonders how she'll survive.

Tom Harris knows he needs to get antibiotics for his mother, who's getting sicker by the day. The question is where to find them. He can't locate the medication in Sage Valley and his old truck's already running on fumes. His only hope lies in his family's sailboat. If he can successfully sail it down the Hudson, he just might be able to help his mom, not to mention his elderly neighbors. It's his only hope - well, that and Gwen, the weird Goth girl who just might hold the secret to saving them all.

Niki Barton's never gone without a thing - until the world starts collapsing around her. Suddenly, her stock broker father's out of a job, her family can't pay for electricity to heat their gigantic lake house, and, worst of all, contact lenses are no longer available. Used to getting whatever they want whenever they want it, her parents are paralyzed by the situation. It's up to Niki to make sure they all survive. The world may be ending, but Niki's still got two boys fighting for her attention. If she has to use them both to save her family, she'll do it in a heartbeat.

In this strange, new world, three teenagers will have to put aside their differences and work as a team to save their small town - and themselves - from extinction. Goths, cheerleaders, football players, none of that means anything anymore. Survival is all that matters now.

Empty, Suzanne Weyn's newest, is yet another book that grabbed me with its premise, but disappointed me with its execution. It's not the idea behind the book - a worldwide oil shortage sets a convincing stage for what could have been a truly compelling dystopian story. It's the characters (flat as pancakes), the dialogue (can you say stiff?), the plot (contrived), and the prose (completely overwritten). What results is a story that never achieves the kind of chilling believability that makes dystopian novels like Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life As We Knew It or Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker so fun to read. Unlike other books of this type, Empty actually ends on a positive note, something I would have really liked if it had been at all persuasive. Instead, the whole story comes off as fabricated. I've said this before about other books, but Empty feels more like a rough draft than a completed novel. With a little bit more effort, it could have been a whole lot better. I wanted so much more from it. Oh well, it's not the end of the world ... or is it?

(Readalikes: similar to The Last Survivors series by Susan Beth Pfeffer)

Grade: D

If this were a movie, it would be rated: PG for intense situations

To the FTC, with love: I received a finished copy of Empty from the generous folks at Scholastic. Thank you!