(Image from Barnes & Noble)

Despite Kläre Ente Kohler's Jewish ancestry, she's never been a particularly devoted practitioner of Judaism.  Her Jewishness exists mainly in fond memories of sumptuous Sabbath dinners with her extended family at her grandparents' luxurious home.  As an adult, her connection to the Jewish community has been tenuous at best.  With the Nazis rising to power in her homeland, however, Kläre has reason to worry.  All around her, Jewish businesses are being ransacked, their proprietors beaten in the streets.  The worse things get, the more terrified she becomes.  Many Jews are fleeing Germany.  Kläre knows her ailing husband and elderly mother can't make such an arduous journey, even if they did have visas.  But what of her two sons?  Can she find a way to keep them safe?  Unable to leave, Kläre must do what she can to help her children, her friends, and herself stay alive.  With Nazi brutality against the Jews growing more deadly every day, that will not be an easy task.  It will take every ounce of strength, courage, and tenacity Kläre possesses just to survive.  

Having grown up hearing dramatic tales about her grandfather's family's former lives in Europe, Barbara Stark-Nemon became especially fascinated by the experiences of her great aunt, Kläre.  Her debut novel, Even in Darkness, is based on the life of this indomitable Jewess who lived through the horrors of the Holocaust, after which she spent many years as the unlikely companion to a much younger Catholic priest.  While Kläre's war story is (unfortunately) not all that unique, it definitely has potential to be the stuff of good fiction.  Unfortunately, Stark-Nemon bogs the story down with so much extraneous detail that the action in the novel feels anticlimactic and dull.  The characters never felt real to me, so I had trouble immersing myself in their conflicts.  Lacking a real plot, Even in Darkness seems aimless and unstructured.  While I appreciated Stark-Nemon's quietly assured prose, I also longed for more dynamic storytelling.  For me, Even in Darkness has the stiffer, more distancing feel of non-fiction instead of the enveloping warmth of a well-constructed novel.  Overall, then, this was a plodding, difficult read for me.  I enjoyed the book's message (beauty and love can be found even in the ugliness of war), but found the novel itself not to be my particular cup of tea.

(Readalikes:  Reminded me of other WWII novels, although no specific title comes to mind)

Grade:

(Image from Barnes & Noble)

Thanks to an athletic scholarship, Shahid Satar has been in the U.S. for three years studying business at a college in Massachusetts.  A starter on Enright's men's squash team, the Pakistani knows the importance of bonding with the other players, most of whom hail from countries as foreign as his.  He's also learned to tune out the jeers and racist slurs often hurled at himself and his mostly dark-skinned teammates.  It's all part of the culture clash he experiences every day as an international student at a liberal American school.  He's used to it by now.

The experience, however, is all new for Afia Satar, Shahid's 19-year-old sister.  Because of Shahid's promise to guard her honor, the young Pashtun woman has been allowed to study in the U.S. as well, although she attends a nearby women's college instead of her brother's co-ed school.  Despite the wild Western ways she encounters daily, Afia remains as she always has been—shy, studious, modest and mostly obedient to the traditional rules of her religion and culture.  She's not without her secrets, however.  Her brother does not know—cannot ever know—about Afia's shameful grocery store job or about her increasingly intimate relationship with his redheaded American teammate.  The latter is dangerous, much more so than earnest Gus Schnieder realizes.

When an innocent photo of Afia and Gus turns up on the Internet, it sets off a series of explosive reactions, especially from Afia's jihad-obsessed stepbrother.  Embarrassed and furious by his sister's betrayal of his trust, Shahid worries how far his family in Pakistan will require him to go to avenge Afia's honor.  Afia fears not just for Gus, but also for her own life—and rightly so.  As events come to a terrifying head, she must face the deadly consequences of falling in love with the wrong man, in the wrong country, in the wrong way.  Will things ever be right for her again?

A Sister to Honor by Lucy Ferriss is a heartbreaking novel about the often violent clash between Eastern and Western cultures.  It's a book about honor, with all its various definitions.  Mostly, though, it's a story about family, friendship, and giving up everything for a chance to live a different kind of life.  Although the tension builds slowly, the tale soon becomes a taut thriller, as horrifying as it is pulse-pounding.  Told from various viewpoints, A Sister to Honor is a compelling novel with intriguing, sympathetic characters; a timely, complex conflict; and an engrossing, well-crafted plot.  My only complaint is that the characters' roles/actions seemed to reinforce all the common clichés about Pakistani and Islamic culture.  I don't pretend to know anything about either, but I still would have liked a broader perspective on both.  Despite that, I enjoyed this thrilling, thought-provoking read.

(Readalikes:  Reminded me a little of Skunk Girl by Sheba Karim)

Grade:

Best friends aren't supposed to die.  Especially when they're beautiful, vibrant and only 14 years old.  Elderly people have trouble with their hearts, not teenagers.  That's why it's still so hard for Emmy Anderson to believe her BFF Kim Porter is dead.  Kim, on the other hand, embraced her impending demise, even making vehement promises to visit Emmy from beyond the grave.  Emmy has clung to those vows, but apparently, Kim has forgotten her.  Aching with grief and loneliness, Emmy can't let her friend go.  She has to find a way to talk to Kim.

Then, Emmy—who assumed she just sucked at communicating with departed souls—gets a shock: she can see dead people.  She spies her nasty science teacher, Emmy's uncle (who is thankfully not naked), even a teenage boy who perished in a tragic roller coaster accident.  It seems the only ghost she can't see is the one she desperately needs to find.  As Emmy comes to term with her new talent as well as her old pain, she finally realizes that the only way to move forward might be to let Kim go.  If only it were that easy ...

Kids-dealing-with-the-loss-of-a-loved-one books are a dime a dozen.  Thus, it takes a lot to make one stand out.  With her newest, The End Or Something Like That, Ann Dee Ellis succeeds in creating a grief novel that's both memorable and affecting.  I've thought a lot about why this one stands out; I think it boils down to three things: writing style, setting, and an overall quirkiness.  Although The End or Something Like That is billed as a YA book, it's got more of a middle grade tone.  Emmy's clipped, choppy narration makes her seem younger than her years, while at the same time giving her a more realistically teenage thought process than is usually found in YA novels.  This, coupled with the intensity of her pain, makes her a wholly sympathetic (although not always likable) heroine.  As for setting, there's just nowhere quite like Las Vegas.  Its boisterous falsity provides the perfect backdrop for this story about what is real and what is truly important.  The unique setting gives The End Or Something Like That part of its quirkiness, but the rest of it comes from larger-than-life characters and the oddball situations they find themselves in.  Although the novel deals with familiar themes, it's these three things, coupled with Ellis' strong prose, that makes this story stand out.  While it didn't blow my mind, I definitely enjoyed this quick, quirky read.    

(Readalikes:  I can't think of anything.  Can you?)

(Image from Barnes & Noble)

For 17-year-old Ashe Douglas, 1968 is a year of confusion, fear, and anxiety.  With war raging in Vietnam, killing hundreds of U.S. soldiers every day, it's difficult to feel hope about the country's future.  At home, his parents' constant battles are escalating.  Ashe's mother is a peace-loving protester, while his father's fierce patriotism manifests itself in hot-blooded, racist outbursts.  They're opposites, still married for the sake of their only child.  Not only does Ashe worry about their increasing eruptions at home, but he's terrified of being drafted into a violent conflict of which he wants no part.

When a pretty new girl walks into Ashe's Tempe, Arizona, high school, things start looking up.  The blonde "goddess" has her own war woes, but together, she and Ashe might be able to make it through their challenges.

Then, a new crisis bombs Ashe's family.  This time, he fears total destruction.  With things coming to a head both at home and abroad, Ashe will have to make some very, very tough decisions about life, love, and what it truly means to be a hero.

By all rights, Death Coming Up the Hill, a new YA novel by Chris Crowe, should feel gimmicky.  The entire thing is, after all, written in haiku, with each  poetic syllable representing one of the 16, 592 American soldiers who died in the Vietnam War during 1968, its deadliest year.  The book really should feel gimmicky.  And yet it doesn't.  The story's unique format gives it a clean freshness that makes it both impacting and memorable.  Maybe it's because of my uncle, Joe Whitby (pictured at left), who was killed in Quang Tri Province in 1967, but I really felt each of those syllables.  In addition to the book's format, I liked its sympathetic characters, its plot surprises, and its setting.  It was fun for me to read about local hot spots like Pete's Fish and Chips (I was just at the Mesa location a few hours ago!).  Overall, the book's pretty depressing (especially the last two lines, which were taken from a real Vietnam soldier's letters home), but its authenticity touched me.  Deeply.  Death Coming Up the Hill is a quick, compelling read, one I highly recommend.       

(Readalikes:  Hm, I can't really think of anything.  Can you?)

Grade:

If this were a movie, it would be rated:

for language (no F-bombs), violence, and references to sex and illegal drug use

To the FTC, with love:  I received a finished copy of Death Coming Up the Hill from the generous folks at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.  Thank you!