Panic

I thought I'd read a few books by Lauren Oliver but didn't double check until after I'd read Panic. The author seems to be fairly popular, and her name was familiar to me. I'm not sure if that's why I picked up Panic or if I thought the premise was kind of interesting, probably a little of both. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten my review of the first young adult book of hers that I read, Delirium. I liked her grade school fiction book The Spindlers a little better. The thing is, she does have great ideas. I'm just not so fond of her delivery and style. I'm sure that's a personal preference thing, so readers, please take this review as one person's opinion, and get another before you dismiss this book.

Panic is contemporary young adult fiction set in a small New York town where life is ho-hum and never changes...until, that is, summer rolls around and the game begins. Every summer, the graduated seniors play Panic, a game of dangerous dares and higher and higher stakes with the winner taking home at least $50,000, collected from the student population over the year. The adults know it's played and try to stop it. The risk of arrest is just part of the game. The two judges are a total secret, even to the players themselves, and the locations and dares are kept secret until the last minute.

Money is big incentive to play, but Heather and Dodge have their own reasons on the side. Dodge's sister was injured in last year's game, and he has an opportunity to even the score. Heather will do anything to get her and her sister away from their addicted mom. Heather didn't mean to play, but her options have run out. One way or another, she will escape.

What I like least about this book is the sense of hopelessness and unhappiness that permeates the setting and the plot. The characters are really in a bad place emotionally, and it's no wonder. They live in broken, dysfunctional families in rundown homes. I suppose it is the perfect setting for this kind of book. Who else would be desperate enough to risk their lives for money? But it's so depressing.

I didn't grow up in that kind of environment, and though I know it exists, it's kind of hard to look at. I keep asking myself if I'm just stuck-up and selfish and would avoid that kind of environment if I knew it existed in my neighborhood. I'm trying to be honest here. I would certainly feel out of my element and completely uncomfortable, but I know that's not a reason to turn a blind eye to need. I won't lie and say that I would jump at the opportunity to help people like this; I don't know what I would do. If the opportunity presented itself, I want to believe my heartstrings would be pulled, just as they are for one exemplary adult in the novel. But what complicates the issue a bit here is that this is fiction (based on reality, as it undoubtedly is). I know the world is broken, but I don't go to fiction to remind myself of it. I go to fiction to escape it.

(Minor SPOILERS follow.) Now, books like this can be a great help to teens struggling with the same things, but here's where I have further issues with the book. I'm not sure it offers a way out. In the end, despite everything, the game is played and the game wins. The characters don't learn that they can live without the game. Rather, they benefit from it. It's not that they don't grow, but it doesn't seem like they learn from their mistakes. They just make the best of what they're given, and they learn to live despite the crap. That message is too hopeless for me. As a Christian, I know there is so much more to life, and even though I can't hold a non-Christian author to the standards I hold myself to, the difference in our beliefs is so glaringly obvious it can't be ignored. For me, this book didn't work because it didn't match my values. I'm not talking about the inclusion of dysfunction; I'm talking about the road out of it. The author's answer was an answer for her characters, but it was lacking some things, and it was a temporary fix. It certainly wasn't a universal fix for anyone dealing with the same problems. If I'm going to read a book about hard issues, I want to see light at the end of the tunnel. The light here is faint and doesn't make the read worth the trouble.

Aside from the thematic issues above, there are a few other scenes of moral degradation to be aware of, not deal-breakers, but they do add to the general dark feel of the book. There is some swearing, including the F-word. There are no sex scenes, though there's the implication of past sex and some sexuality. There is a lot of teenage drinking, and some characters deal with addiction.

For me, this book is two stars. It had some potential but didn't realize it. I can't recommend it, even for teens going through similar circumstances. Instead, I recommend Christian author Melody Carlson's True Colors series about teens struggling with various issues. I've read only one, Blade Silver: Color Me Scarred, dealing with cutting, but that was what I was looking for in a book dealing with such depressing but very real problems.

Such a Rush

Occasionally I come across books that are interesting and read fast, but I still don't like them. Usually, that's because my complaints with the book are on moral grounds. In the case of this month's release Such a Rush, a young adult novel by Jennifer Echols, I am torn about what rating to give. I liked it enough to read it quickly and finish it. I liked certain aspects of it, like the fact that a teenager learns to fly airplanes. That's just different than a lot of other stuff out there right now. It's not paranormal or futuristic or post-apocalyptic. It's contemporary but unique.

The parts I didn't like were those where the girl dressed inappropriately (yes, it matters even in a book; I can still visualize it, and it still sends a message) or where teenagers had sex or even just groped each other. Whenever I come across that in a book, I will always red flag it, particularly in young adult fiction. I'm not naive. I know young adults are having sex. It doesn't mean I agree with it, and it doesn't mean their books should be filled with it.

In this case, there's more to it than a girl just throwing her body around carelessly. She comes from a dysfunctional family, has lived in poverty all her life, and has developed a way to cope with her situation. She's not promiscuous, though you might at first think that from the way she dresses and talks. She's only ever slept with one person once, and because she doesn't want to get pregnant, she's concerned about condoms and safety. I wish the emphasis was on abstinence rather than protection. Showing concern that the teenage protagonist has only protected sex seems like pandering to the audience to me. What it looks like is that the author wanted to write about teenage sex to impress her readers, but because she didn't want to send the wrong message, she had to be sure she put it in the "right way."

I'm not saying that was the author's primary goal. If the author had an agenda here (besides just telling a good story), I don't think it was to promote or emphasize sex. She was simply being realistic as she presented a message of hope, showing that circumstances can be overcome. I, however, would still have liked to see less sexuality, or if it had to be there to make a point, it could have been less graphic. (SPOILERS to follow.) But some of the sex definitely seems to be there just because the author knows that's what people want to read. There are sex scenes between the girl and the nice, upstanding love interest of the story. Sex scenes that are there for pure sensationalism bother me. They send a message that teenage sex or sex outside of marriage is okay, and though I know I'm in the minority here, I don't agree. (If you've read previous reviews from me, you've heard this many times.) My objections are about more than teenage pregnancy. They are about a person's spiritual and emotional health. (But I've talked about this before and won't go into it at length now.)

Besides the sex, there's a lot of language. Leah and her best friend call each other "b----," and though I know that goes with the territory in a novel about dysfunctionality and poverty, reading that kind of thing is not for everyone. There is also the use of synonyms for female prostitutes, among other scattered uses of foul language.

What this book does well, though, is tell a story. A girl pursues her dream, and through hard work, she lifts herself out of her circumstances. At fourteen, after a recent move (one of many in her life throughout South Carolina but never out of the state), Leah gets a job as a secretary of sorts at the small local airport. There she meets a man who sees the spark and potential in her and teaches her to fly. From afar, she falls in love with one of his twin sons. When disaster strikes three years later, she must decide how high a price she's willing to pay to keep her dream alive.

Although it's an intriguing story, my qualms about the lack of morality in the book allow me to give it only two and a half stars. In other words, I enjoyed parts of it, but I can't recommend it.

The Descendants on DVD

I promise I am not on a mission (yet) to watch all the 2012 Oscar Best Picture nominees, as I was last year. Nonetheless, several of them sparked my interest before they were on that list, The Descendants being one of them. It just looked like one of those tear-jerker, heartfelt dramas I occasionally go for. And it was, painfully so.

George Clooney plays a man in the midst of a family crisis as his cheating wife lies dying in a hospital bed while his two daughters seem determined to live destructive lives. Complicating an already hectic week, as he attempts to tell family and friends of his wife's wish to be taken off life support, he must also decide whether or not to sell some virgin Hawaiian land entrusted to his family.

Did I mention it was painful?

I cried so much watching this movie, and at the end, I couldn't decide whether it was a cathartic experience or just unnecessary torture. There's a LOT of heartache. This isn't a movie about a woman who miraculously recovers from a coma. It's about a family saying good-bye to Mom and dealing with anger over her betrayal with another man. But it's also about that family turning from a splintered wreck into a self-comforting unit, and for that alone, it is beautiful.

Emotion, however, isn't the only thing making or breaking this movie. Clooney and the two actresses who play his 10-year-old and 17-year-old are brilliant. And care was taken to make the minor characters multi-dimensional, too. The setting is Hawaii, but as Clooney's character makes clear in the opening lines, that doesn't mean they get to be on a constant vacation from life.

The movie is rated R, mostly for being sporadically peppered with uses of the F-word. I don't normally go for that type of thing, but if any situation might call for it (and I'm not sure any situation does), it's this one. I can take it in this setting, as an adult viewer. I'll even admit, the language provides some much-needed humor in the story, for example when Clooney's character keeps ineffectually telling his daughters to stop the bad language when the audience knows it's right on the tip of his tongue, too.

The Descendants is not a family movie, despite the family message at the end...unless you have this type of family yourself. But it's more hopeful than it could have been, and for that I can give it a higher rating than I might have otherwise. Three stars.