Guest Post: Chanda: My Sister, My Soul by Allan Stratton

Allan Stratton is the author of Chanda's Secrets, a really powerful novel about HIV/AIDS in Africa and about humanity and the strength of the human spirit. It's about friendship and family and admitting and facing the truth.

When I approached Allan to write a guest post on the theme of death and bereavement, he very kindly sent me this.

Chanda's Secrets has been made into a film called Life Above All. Here is the film trailer.

If you'd like to know more about Allan Stratton or about his books, please do visit his website and his blog. Thank you Allan. Over to you...




I love to travel. Experiencing the diversity of world cultures is humbling and liberating. But no matter how different the surface of things, I’m always struck by the similarities that lie just under the skin. Our shared humanity was driven home to me as I worked on CHANDA'S SECRETS.

Throughout the mid-nineteen-eighties, I lived in Manhattan’s gay community. It was a time, a place and a culture so far removed from contemporary sub-Saharan Africa that it might have existed in a faraway galaxy. Yet the parallels between the early days of the pandemic here/then, there/now are striking.

In both times, in both places: A third of the community was infected. There was no treatment. Discrimination was rampant. Most politicians were silent. Many religious leaders claimed AIDS was God’s curse on the afflicted. And the stigma that resulted, discouraged testing, encouraged denial, and left the sick and vulnerable to die alone in fear and shame with a lie. (Incidentally, although muted, that stigma lives on in North America today. Recently, a friend died of AIDS; his father and brothers refused to go to his funeral. And even in big-city obituary columns, AIDS remains, for the most part, the disease that dare not speak its name.)

My experience within my community taught me the psychological, as well as the physical, horrors of the pandemic. But I also knew that its effects in sub-Saharan Africa were far worse than in the West, set, as they are, against a continental context of poverty, decimated civil societies, and a generation of orphans. So, before writing a word of CHANDA'S SECRETS, I traveled to Zimbabwe and Botswana to visit front line African HIV/AIDS workers, and to meet those in their care.

I’d like to share with you a few of the people whose lives moved and inspired me in the writing of my book.

In Monarch, a slum district on the outskirts of Francistown, I met an eighteen-year-old whom I’ll call Sara. Sara had become pregnant, and infected, at fifteen; her son, age two, was infected at birth. Aside from the woman who ran the AIDS awareness center where she volunteered, I was the only one she trusted with her diagnosis; she was silenced by the same terror that affects so many worldwide -- that if her status was disclosed, she and her son would be shunned, and left to die alone. We sat with the center's director in Sara’s one-room hut, the shutters closed, her son’s crayon drawings nailed to the mud wall. “I am my parents’ only child,” she said. “How do I tell them I will be dead soon? How do I tell them their only grandchild will be dead soon too?” She didn’t want to think about her son dying before her, but she was afraid of what would happen to him if she died first. That’s why she’d volunteered at the center: so that, just in case, there’d be people who’d know him and might look after him. There was a silence. Then she said: “If I can live four more years, he will be six. If he is six, maybe he will be old enough to survive without me.”

I remember the mother, a few streets over from Sara, with the yard full of kids. Miriam’s husband had died of “pneumonia” -- or so she told the neighbors. But she wanted me to see his medical records. She studied my face as I read: “Bloody diarrhea. Night sweats. Swollen glands.” We looked at each other. We didn’t have to say anything. The whites of her eyes were yellow, and her body skeletal, but she still chopped firewood, waited in line at the standpipe for water to bathe her babies, and somehow kept a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. Before I left Francistown, Miriam asked me to take a photograph of her and her kids in their Sunday clothes, so that there’d be a picture of them together.

My mind is full of other pictures, other people: a young man, Pako, raising his even younger brothers. Pako was thirteen when his papa died, officially of “tuberculosis”. Within the year, his mama was in hospital dying too. His aunties and uncles came by his home; they wanted to sell it and divide him and his brothers among them. They weren’t trying to be cruel. It’s just that none of them had the money to provide for all three. Pako told me how he went to his mama’s deathbed. “Please mama,” he said, “me and my brothers, we want to be together. In case anything happens, please make a will. Please leave us the home. ” His mama made the will that night; by morning she’d passed. When I met him, Pako had been raising his kid brothers, alone, for four years.

Downtown, a small cinderblock building houses the Coping Center for People Living with HIV/AIDS. Those who are brave enough are brought on visits by unmarked van to an entrance off the back alley. Inside, in a main room lined with folding chairs and lumpy sofas, they sit, talk, hold hands, or simply stare into the middle-distance, an ever-present pot of tea and a plate of biscuits on the battered card table by the piano. There is pain in this room, but there is also a palpable grace. A white bed sheet hangs on the far wall, beside a magic marker on a string; people are asked to write what's on their minds. Among the many words that remain with me: "We cannot change the past, but we can change the future", "Where there is love there is life; where there is life there is hope"; and "Live now."

We, in North America, avoid issues. Perhaps it’s self-preservation, given that our culture reduces the greatest issues of our day to sound bites and partisan political rhetoric. But the lives of the people I met in Botswana compel attention. Issues, such as the AIDS pandemic, are more than dry polemic. They are issues because they affect us, both as individuals and as members of a global community. How we respond to issues speaks to our values, defines who we are, and expresses our understanding of what it is to be human.

Those of us love literature -- as readers, writers, bloggers, librarians, and teachers -- have a long history of engaging issues. We do it through stories. Whether it’s Oliver Twist alerting Victorian England to child sweatshops and street gangs, or Huck Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird confronting America with racism, stories put us readers into the shoes of ‘The Other’. Once there, we’re never quite the same again. We realize that in another life, we could be ‘The Other’. That jolt of recognition is how stories change lives.

Stories get under our skin and into our viscera -- not by stating their issues, but by revealing the universal humanity at the heart of the issues. This human bond is what allows us to empathize with others, no matter how radical our differences, or unique our circumstances. It’s why we respond to stories, no matter the ‘who’, the ‘when’, the ‘where’, or the ‘why’ of their telling.

Early on, when people asked what CHANDA'S SECRETS was about, I’d say, “The African AIDS pandemic.” That was only superficially true. The more I worked, the more I saw myself in Chanda, and her family and community in my own. At once, I realized that while CHANDA'S SECRETS is set against the backdrop of the African AIDS pandemic, what it’s really about, at heart, is people like us: people who love their family and friends, who fear shame and stigma, who feel the pain of bereavement, and who struggle for the courage to live with truth.

REVIEW: Chanda's Secrets by Allan Stratton

A huge thank you to Caroline of Portrait of A Woman, for sending this book for me to read. This review was originally posted on Caroline's blog for her HIV/Aids in Teen Lit event back in December.

Chanda's Secrets was the only YA book I knew of before her event that dealt with HIV/AIDS and I'm so glad to have read it. I knew beforehand that this book would be difficult to read, and it was. But it also highlighted a lot of the issues surrounding HIV and AIDS.

Chanda is a bright 16 year old girl living in (a fictional sub-Saharan country in) Africa - she hopes to do well in school and maybe get a scholarship and make something of her life. As the novel opens, she's on her way to make the arrangements for her little sister's funeral and burial. At just 18 months, Sara didn't have much of a life. Crying constantly and always poorly, Chanda feels guilty for all those horrible things that she used to think about her little sister. But Chanda soon realises that it wasn't bad thoughts that caused Sara's death but something much bigger and more dangerous. And it won't stop with just poor Sara. Chanda is an amazing character, smart and observant and really brave. She has to grow up very quickly dealing with Sara's death and her mother depends on her a great deal to keep the family together and to get what needs to be done.

Sara's death affects everyone. Sara's mother is depressed and doesn't want to get out of bed, Sara's father goes off on drunken benders. Chanda's little sister, Iris, believes Sara is her imaginary friend and stops listening to Chanda or her mother, skipping school and playing in dangerous places. All around her, Chanda witnesses the effects of AIDS on her community and the shame that it is wrapped up in. It is never spoken of however, but covered up in so many ways. Causes of death are lied about and hidden and the nearby AIDS clinic is avoided at all costs. Nobody wants to own up to having AIDS or having a loved one with AIDS, believing it a curse of God. Everyone keeps their family's secrets. When Chanda's mother continues to worsen, Chanda must keep another secret. She must face the reality that her mother might die of AIDS as well.

Alongside Chanda's ongoing problems with her family, times are also tough for Chanda's best friend, Esther. After her parents died (of AIDS), Esther and her younger brothers and sisters are separated from each other and in order to save up money to bring her family back together, Esther turns to prostitution. Beaten and cast out of her aunt's house for shaming the family, Esther has no where to go and no one to turn to other than Chanda. I thought the friendship between Chanda and Esther was really sweet. And it's mirrored with Mama's friendship with her neighbour, Mrs Tafa. Mrs Tafa seems quite outspoken and controlling and a busybody, but she's still always there for Chanda's family.

It's an absolutely heartbreaking book, this one. Reading of the make-shift coffins especially for children at the funeral home. You'll be angry at the doctor who claims multiple medical diplomas and that his medicines will cure even AIDS and taking advantage of his ignorant and illiterate patients. There's previous little running water and lots of work involved in order to get water for cooking and cleaning. Through poverty and general hard times, Chanda's mother has had several different relationships borne of a need to provide for her family, some of which left permanent scars.

This was a very complex novel which touches on some really huge concerns facing the epidemic of AIDS in Africa. The lack of accurate information of it's treatment and prevention coupled with the traditional beliefs of spirit doctors and a lack of trust towards medical doctors. The shame and prejudices that surround the disease which prevent people from stepping forward and seeking help. The levels of poverty which mean that paying for legitimate medicines is out of the question.

But it's still also the story of Chanda and her family, and most readers will be able to connect in a very personal and emotional way to the journey of Chanda through this difficult time. Chanda's Secrets is about family and friendship. It's about shame and having the courage to stand up and against the stigma of such an evasive issue facing Africa.

Allan Stratton's website

REVIEW: Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

"What do you want from me?" he asks. What I want from every person in my life, I want to tell him. More.

Melina Marchetta is one of my favourite authors ever. With each book she just amazes me more and more. If I'm honest, Jellicoe Road really intimidated me. I put off reading it for such a long time because I'd read that the story is a little confusing and a bit hard to get into. People also rave about it and I didn't want to let my really expectations get in the way of my enjoyment of reading one of my favourite authors. Instead, I waited. And I waited.

And finally, while on holiday, with plenty of time to relax and to sink into a fabulous book, I started it. And I loved the story immediately. And Jellicoe Road seems very different to the other books I've read by Melina Marchetta. It feels like the story goes deeper and darker than her other books. The story is told in two different parts at the same time. One part focusing on a group of students at this school on the Jellicoe Road in the present day - three different warring factions with all of these rules of interaction as they're fighting for control of different surrounding areas. And the second part tells a story of a similar group of students twenty years previously. How and why the two stories are connected is at the heart of the novel and it was an incredible journey solving that mystery.

We begin Jellicoe Road with this really dramatic opening of a car crash that throws the reader and our characters into this awful situation where lives have been lost. I think that death and grief is a huge aspect of the novel and it really permeates both of the parallel stories. There's a lot of grim subject matter that was quite difficult to read, death, suicide, child abuse, neglect.

Taylor Markham, main character in the current day storyline, is a student at the school. She's led a very difficult life, one that, as we learn more details, becomes more and more heartwrenching. She's tough though, and while she would like to remain distant and seperate from all in her life, it just isn't possible. When caretaker and surrogate-mother, Hannah, mysteriously leaves with barely any notice, Taylor feels incredibly lost. She's determined to learn more about Hannah and Hannah's history in order to find out where and why she's left.

Being elected leader of one of the three warring groups, Taylor must also come into contact with Jonah Griggs, one of the cadets that she's had this emotional history with. Together with a surprising cast of new friends, they discover their own personal histories as well as the school's history and the intersection between both sets of stories of students current and past.

Jellicoe Road is a beautiful story which is constructed and written amazingly well. It's so emotional and sad and hopeful. There's moments of absolute beauty and tenderness and romance. There's so many different themes to the story, that of friendship and family, grief and loss, secrets and truth. It brings tears to my eyes even now just thinking about this book.

Jellicoe Road is a masterpiece of storytelling and it will stay with me for a very long time.

Guest Post: On death and bereavement in Hate List by Jennifer Brown

Earlier on in the month, I reviewed the absolutely incredible Hate List by Jennifer Brown. Hate List is one of those books that will stay with me for a long time, a book about a girl trying to come to terms with the school shooting that her boyfriend Nick carried out. Val is dealing with her role in creating this 'Hate List' from which he targeted victims as well as the death of the person she knew and loved. Really wonderful book.

Jennifer Brown is the author of both Hate List and Bitter End. Please do visit www.jenniferbrownya.com to find out more about her and her books!

I'm absolutely thrilled and honoured that Jennifer Brown is on my blog today discussing Nick's death and Val's bereavement! Thank you so much Jennifer, and welcome!


All too often we look at death and loss as a “scenario.” We see it on the news, but it’s not happening to us. We go to our grandfather’s funeral, but he was old. We hear about acquaintances who’ve lost someone too soon, and it’s horrible and makes us cold, but it’s their bad luck. A fluke, really. We’ll be spared.

In Hate List, Valerie and Nick “scenario’d” death constantly. They talked about suicide and homicide with the same lightness that they talked about going to the movies or grabbing a burger. Sometimes they even glamorized it, made it seem exciting and beautiful and romantic.

But Valerie learned on that horrible day at school that she was the only one who’d been seeing death as just a scenario. To Nick, death was the only way, and in the end their “scenario” was not just a scenario at all, but was real, and was all wrong. Death was ugly and horrifying and terrible.

In an instant, Valerie’s new scenario would be living…and trying to do it without Nick.

But how do you do that? How do you go on walking through the world when the person you loved most is gone? How do you untangle the knot of what-ifs and I-should-haves and maybes and coulds and open your eyes each morning and blink in this empty space and have it be your new normal?

Valerie’s love for Nick changed on the day he died. To be expected when she learned he’d kept such a huge secret from her, but really to be expected even if he hadn’t. Love is an ever-evolving emotion, shaped by both people in the relationship. When one is gone, of course the love can stay…but of course it’s also going to change. You have to learn to accept this new version of your love with this person—the version where you’re the only one living, the only one loving, and you have to be okay with that.

Valerie did just that. She learned to accept what Nick had done. She learned to accept that she couldn’t go back and change her part in what happened. She couldn’t make him come back or make any of the others come back. She learned that she could still love him, but also open herself up to love other people, to move on. His death didn’t have to equal her emotional death, and in some ways Valerie’s most important lesson was that untying that knot of what-ifs and living was possible, and even preferable.

It was important to me to give Valerie hope in the midst of this horrible tragedy. To see her realign her life. To make her re-evaluate her goals and desires. To not let Nick’s death, and the others’ deaths, slip by in vain.

She loved Nick far too much to just crumple after he was gone. Because if what they say is true…that the best way to honor someone you love who has died is to celebrate the life you still have and live it to the fullest…then Valerie had a lot of living to do, because she had so much love for Nick.

REVIEW: Fall For Anything by Courtney Summers

From the author of Cracked Up to Be and Some Girls Are comes a gripping story about one girl’s search for clues into the mysterious death of her father.

When Eddie Reeves’s father commits suicide her life is consumed by the nagging question of why? Why when he was a legendary photographer and a brilliant teacher? Why when he seemed to find inspiration in everything he saw? And, most important, why when he had a daughter who loved him more than anyone else in the world? When she meets Culler Evans, a former student of her father’s and a photographer himself, an instant and dangerous attraction begins. Culler seems to know more about her father than she does and could possibly hold the key to the mystery surrounding his death. But Eddie’s vulnerability has weakened her and Culler Evans is getting too close. Her need for the truth keeps her hanging on...but are some questions better left unanswered?

I really adore Courtney Summers. I've read her previous two books, Cracked Up To Be and Some Girls Are and I absolutely adored them both (but especially Some Girls Are). I think she writes really emotional, if slightly gritty contemporary fiction amazingly well and I think I will always be excited to read any new books that come out from her.

And Fall For Anything was no exception. While not as emotionally moving as Some Girls Are was for me (and I think that would be incredibly hard to do), I was still immediately hooked into the more subtle and haunting story and into the characters of Fall For Anything. Everything about Courtney Summers' stories feels like it's written with jagged edges and broken glass. Witnessing Eddie Reeves' grief over the death of her father was almost painful to witness. All of the confusion and despair that Eddie feels is so realistic and believeable that I began to feel sad and confused and frustrated and angry, just like Eddie. I think Courtney Summers is incredibly talented in order to accomplish that.

When her father commits suicide, it sends Eddie into overdrive trying to fit together the missing pieces of her father's life in order to work out why? Why does a successful photographer with a great amount of talent and a family that adores him take his own life? There must be a reason, and Eddie feels as if she could learn the answers by studying his photographs or visiting the place where it happened. She just can't let go of her burning questions, so consumed she is by her own grief. So when she meets Culler Evans, a charming but off-balance former student of her father's, she's propelled on this crazy mission despite everything.

I couldn't look away from how wild and all-consuming Eddie is in exploring every aspect of her father's life and suicide, searching for answers that aren't there. She becomes obsessed with this, forgetting that other people in her life have lost someone as well. Eddie's mother needs help in order to manage on her own, and Eddie pushes away her best friend, Milo, when he refuses to discuss with her what exactly happened when Eddie found her father's body.

Fall For Anything is such a sad but beautifully written book that will pull readers immediately into the heart of of a girl broken by a huge tragedy. This one comes recommended from me.

Road Trips (Books that make me want to travel)

Sometimes I read a book and whether it's set in another city/country, or the talks about travel to a foreign city/country, something about it just makes me feel itchy to travel and see new things. Hopefully this will be the first of many posts that discuss the book that make me want to travel. Today, I'll be discussing road trips.

I love a good road trip. I'm sure that I've mentioned on this blog before how my earliest and fondest memories of growing were the road trips that our family took on a regular basis. Because my father was afraid to fly after his experiences in Vietnam, our family drove everywhere. Living for many years in Alaska, we took twice-yearly trips down to northern California and back to visit family. I miss the sight of the Pacific Ocean something terrible.

I love my vague memories as one road trip blends into another in my head, of driving along with the windows down and the radio blaring, my dad and I singing loudly and terribly to some rockin' 50s and 60s music. My brother and I would squabble over sweets and who got to use the fluffy pillow for napping and playing I-Spy and the licence plate game. When we were younger, we'd make a cave out of blankets and pretend to be dinosaurs. I've had some very happy memories road-tripping.

So, really, there's nothing I like more (almost) than a good road-trip novel. Something adventurous and exciting, but also something rather emotional. There needs to be lots of mishaps and points for music play-lists and getting lost or with car trouble. I think the interactions between the people on the road trip is also important, otherwise there'd be just people sat in a car driving, so something transformative in the relationships as we reach our destination. Here is a small list of some of the road trip novels I have read recently and absolutely loved. And after I read each of them, I felt the desperate urge to grab some supplies and head off on the road...


Amy and Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson - There's something really wonderful about this book. I love the way the book is put together, with scraps of reciepts and photos that add to the narrative. I love the playlists and the maps in which give a really interactive feel to the novel. Wonderfully done. And also a really excellent story. Amy is a bit fragile and mixed up after the death of her father, so when her mom decides to move the family to another state, Amy is persuaded on this cross-country road trip in order to deliver the car. Roped into doing the driving is Roger, someone Amy used to know but must get to know again. He's going through some stuff too and together this trip does indeed become very transformative. Great fun!


Angel by LA Weatherly - Angel by LA Weatherly that completely took me by surprise. I really love that she took angels who have always been seen as pure and good and she turns them into the bad guys in this book. I adore that. But as exciting as the whole story is, with an angel-hunter and this girl on the run, I think the part that made me fall HARD for this book is that there's this long road trip, in which both Willow and Alex aren't sure about the other. There's misunderstandings and tension and driving across the United States. Brilliant.


Paper Towns by John Green - I love John Green. I know, shocker. I love his sense of humour and the dialogue in his books. I love his characters and especially the friendship between the characters. I love that he adds things to his stories like the poetry of Walt Whitman to make a simple story that much more fun and complex. And of course, I love that the build-up towards solving this mystery that Paper Towns is after takes place with a road trip. A road trip with a van full of friends, with every stop for gas and snacks and bathroom breaks is timed to the minute in this desperate dash to get to where they need to be. There's so much FUN to the road trip in Paper Towns that it actually makes me YEARN to be a teenager again and do crazy and impulsive things like run out of graduation and go on this epic journey across state lines. It puts a huge cheesy smile on my face just thinking about it.


Two-Way Street by Lauren Barnholdt - Can you even imagine what it would feel like to be forced into a road trip with your ex? To feel hurt or betrayed but to also still feel confused and attracted to them? To have those feelings and to be sat next to them, listening to conversations they have with someone else, wondering, is that who I was replaced with? To be cooped up in a small car, being very physically close to someone else, the whole atmosphere charged with so much feeling and emotion that neither one of you really know what to do with? That's what Two Way Street is about. Together with quirky and fun best friends and a big secret that is keeping these two people apart. A fun book to read.


Going Bovine by Libba Bray - Going Bovine is by far my most favourite road trip novel I've read in a long time, as well as being just a brilliant and a favourite book in general. It has absolutely everything that I'd like in a road trip story and so much more that I never would have thought of in my wildest dreams. It's got mishaps and adventure, wonderful characters and relationships that change over the course of the story and it is packed with so much emotion that I can hardly believe it. A wonderful, beautiful book that is both bizarre and touching. About a boy who is diagnosed with a terminal disease (Mad Cow!) and goes on a road trip in order to find a time-travelling Dr X with a magical cure who travels with a Norse yard gnome and the occasional appearance of a pink-haired angel - it truly is a magnificent book.

There are my favourites. Do you have a favourite road trip novel? And do you ever get inspired to travel after reading a good book?

REVIEW: One Of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies by Sonya Sones

Fifteen-year-old Ruby Milliken leaves her best friend, her boyfriend, her aunt, and her mother's grave in Boston and reluctantly flies to Los Angeles to live with her father, a famous movie star who divorced her mother before Ruby was born.

I am a massive fan of Sonya Sones and I've been waiting to read this book for ages. What I find most appealing about Sonya Sones' verse novels is how much emotion can be packed into these simple poems. Even the very mundane details of Ruby's life are filled with her hurt and anger over moving to California to live with a father that she's never known, the grief she is feeling over her mother's death.

Ruby's mother passed away, and as much as she doesn't want to talk about it, Ruby's thoughts and her poems always seem to come back to her mom. Wanting to hold her hand on the flight to LA, writing her emails discussing heaven, the afterlife. Poems that describe the last time Ruby saw her mother alive. Ruby is in pretty desperate need of her mother now. She's moved from Boston to California, she's started a new school, she's left behind her best friend and her boyfriend. And she's living with a really famous actor father (named 'Whip Logan' of all things!) who seems egotistical and attention-seeking. Ruby sees her father's attempts at buying her things and driving her to school every day as actions of a guilty and controlling father. All Ruby wants to do is yell at him that it's too little, too late. But eventually, she must come to terms with how different her life is now and that her mother is never coming back...

On top of everything, she must deal with fitting in at a new school, the fact that Cameron Diaz lives next door to her (and is possibly dating her father), she has to make new friends at a school where everyone wears designer clothes and takes weird classes like dream interpretation. And she has to deal with yet more loss by leaving her best friend and boyfriend behind. At times, this book can feel a little bit angsty, but it's really understandable with every thing that Ruby is going through. I love that at least Ruby has Max, Whip's personal assistant around to have someone to talk to about her troubles.

I felt Ruby was a teenager that most of us can relate to. Needing her mother, her best friend, in the middle of an intense first relationship, being unsure of herself and awkward at a new school. I really felt her bitterness at Whip for what she believes he did to her mother and her grief at her mother's death pulled at my heartstrings.

Here is one of Ruby's poems on page 4.

My mother hated flying

Especially after September 11th.

She used to squeeze my hand so hard
during takeoffs and landings
that she'd cut off my circulation.

She'd screw her eyes closed
and whisper this silly prayer someone taught her once.
Something about manifold diving blessings
being unto the plane or the universe
or some hippy-dippy thing like that.

And if there was even
a teensy bit of turbulence - forget it.
She'd start apologizing to me
for every mean thing she'd ever said
or done or even thought about doing.

This morning
when the plane was lurching down the runway
and I didn't have Mom's hand to hold,
my heart flung itself up into my throat.
And for a minute there
I couldn't even breathe.

I didn't know how much
I depended on
being depended on

by her.

REVIEW: Going Bovine by Libba Bray

Going Bovine by Libba Bray is absolutely incredible. Seriously one of the funniest and most heart-felt books I've ever read. It's emotional and intelligent and just down-right weird. Before I started, I'd mentioned to a few people that I felt slightly intimidated to start a book that some had found confusing and the advice I was given was to 'just go with the crazy' - so that's what I did. And I'm kicking myself now for waiting so long to get this one. This book is worth buying and reading IMMEDIATELY. I can't stress that enough.

At the start, Cameron didn't come off as a very sympathetic character. He's a teenage boy who doesn't really have any ambitions, he doesn't seem to care about much and he mostly lazes about doing as little as possible. But I definitely believed in his character. It felt realistic, Cameron's attitude towards his surroundings and the people around him in general. Plus Libba Bray is so funny and sarcastic and the observations on life that stream out of Cameron's head make me incredibly jealous of Libba Bray's writing skill. So it didn't take long at all before I really felt for Cameron and really felt emotionally invested in his story and his journey.

This is such a strange story, really reminiscent of Don Quixote. Because when Cameron is diagnosed with a terminal disease (Mad Cow!), he goes off on this crazy road trip because Cameron is visited by a punk rocker angel, Dulcie, and told that if he goes off to find a mysterious Dr X, that he will be cured. Is she a hallucination? What about his travel-mates, the talking yard gnome who is really a Norse god in search of his mythical ship? Or the video gaming hypochondriac dwarf with attachment issues with his mother?

What I love so much, is amidst the humour and the wackiness of this story and the sheer fun of their adventurous road trip with all its mishaps, there is so much that pulls so much at my heart-strings. The transformation of Cameron from uncaring and distant from his life, into someone with friends and appreciates music and small moments and who falls in love is absolutely heart-breaking knowing that he is so close to death.

I really loved the layers to this story, the way in which all aspects of Cameron's life are added into the narrative, from his mother's interest in Norse mytholgy, to snow globes and Coyote and The Roadrunner. There's time travel and jazz music, and it all just fit together so beautifully. I love how Libba Bray's pokes a little fun at society as well as giving us a cracking good story, one that made me think and question and most importantly a book that really made me FEEL.

Going Bovine will stay with me for a very, very long time.

REVIEW: Amy and Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson

Amy Curry thinks her life sucks. Her mom decides to move from California to Connecticut to start anew--just in time for Amy's senior year. Her dad recently died in a car accident. So Amy embarks on a road trip to escape from it all, driving cross-country from the home she's always known toward her new life. Joining Amy on the road trip is Roger, the son of Amy's mother's old friend. Amy hasn't seen him in years, and she is less than thrilled to be driving across the country with a guy she barely knows. So she's surprised to find that she is developing a crush on him. At the same time, she's coming to terms with her father's death and how to put her own life back together after the accident. Told in traditional narrative as well as scraps from the road -- diner napkins, motel receipts, postcards--this is the story of one girl's journey to find herself.

I was so, so excited to read this story. I had an inkling that Amy and Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson would fit in with the theme, Death and Bereavement in Teen Literature (now postponed/cancelled sadly!), but more than that it sounded like a lot of fun. I love books involving road trips and even though I'm not muscially inclined at all, I do also love books that include music, which this one does. And this one IS a lot of fun.

It's the stories of Amy and Roger as they travel cross country together. Amy's mom has already moved the family far away from their home in California and left Amy behind until things are sorted out. She recruits the son of a family friend, Roger to drive Amy to the new place. Virtual strangers beforehand, Amy and Roger really get to know each other over the course of a week as they swap music playlists, share memories of their childhood and learn what snacks and sodas the other picks up at the convenience stores. And they are both going through a lot. Amy Curry is 17 and is afraid to drive again after her father recently died in a car accident. She's still grieving his loss terribly and at the same time is leaving behind all the people and places she's known forever. It was really sad and beautiful, some of Amy's memories of her father before he died. Their shared love of Elvis and her memories from the day her father died. And Roger has his own issues to deal with as their road trip spans Yosemite National Park to Graceland.

I love the characters that we meet on this road trip, and how it seems that each person comes into Amy's life just as she needs something, whether it be someone to listen, a new wardrobe or to boost her self-confidence in some way. We can see a huge transformation from the beginning to end, starting with Amy being at a very low point, grieving and depressed into someone who is more able to face her demons and her fears and doesn't need to hide so much. The addition of the road-trip mementoes into the text - photos, reciepts, music play-lists really made me smile and feel like there was an extra layer to the story.

And of course, there's Amy and Roger together. They are so SWEET. Immediately attracted to Roger, Amy is very self-conscious at first, unsure of herself in relation to Roger. And they're put into some deliciously awkward moments. Sharing beds, spending long, tense hours in the car together, overhearing personal conversations, the pangs of jealousy as they stop at different places and are hit on by other people. Road trips can be so intimate, and Matson does a great job with throwing these two some interesting situations on their trip together. The highlight for me is meeting the Southern gentleman with a passion for topiary. Fantastic.

Amy and Roger's Epic Detour is a really sweet and romantic road trip between two teenagers, but it isn't all sugar and light-heartedness as it touches on some serious topics, from death of a loved one to drug addiction. It does come highly recommended by me! :)

REVIEW: Hate List by Jennifer Brown

Five months ago, Valerie Leftman's boyfriend, Nick, opened fire on their school cafeteria. Shot trying to stop him, Valerie inadvertently saved the life of a classmate, but was implicated in the shootings because of the list she helped create. A list of people and things she and Nick hated. The list he used to pick his targets.

Now, after a summer of seclusion, Val is forced to confront her guilt as she returns to school to complete her senior year. Haunted by the memory of the boyfriend she still loves and navigating rocky relationships with her family, former friends and the girl whose life she saved, Val must come to grips with the tragedy that took place and her role in it, in order to make amends and move on with her life.

When Hate List by Jennifer Brown first came out in hardback, I saw lots and lots of reviews of it on the American blogs I read. I was so intrigued by the plot that I knew that I'd want to read it eventually. I didn't pick the book up for absolutely ages, worried that the story would be too heavy and emotional. While it is emotional, Hate List is really more of a slow build-up as Val comes to terms with the events of that day and her own part in it, and Val not being the most self-aware person in the world, things happen at a much gentler rate. So it wasn't until the last third of the book when I really welled up with the tears. So even though the book really took its time to worm its way into my heart, it did get there in the end and I really felt for Val. She's in a very awkward and difficult position.

Right from the first page, we're aware that there's been a school shooting, in fact we begin Hate List several months afterwards. Throughout the novel we see newspaper clippings reporting the events of the school shooting as well as some articles profiling the victims of the tragedy. At the same time we have our main character, Val. She was a victim of the school shooting as well, having been shot in the leg, and there are some who call her a hero. Val saved another girl's life that day and seems to be the catalyst for the shooter to stop. But the shooter is also Val's boyfriend, Nick. And he chose his targets that day based on the Hate List that Val helped create. The Hate List is a record of all the people who bullied Val and Nick, all the people who called them names and treated them badly, the people who laughed at them and even the people who stood around and let those people get away with it. And Val feels guilty and responsible for her part in that list.

All the blame, all the guilt, all the bad feelings from her old friends, her parents, her classmates and the victims' families are all weighing heavily down on Val. And she's in mourning herself. Seeing things from Val's perspective shows us Nick, the school shooter in a much different light. There was a theme that I noticed while reading, one of seeing people in a more complex way. Val and Nick very easily judged their classmates and teachers as being very one-dimensional. I don't think that trait is specific to these two characters, I think quite a few teenagers and adults are guilty of this. Seeing one aspect of a person and believing that that IS that person entirely. And we see that with Nick's character especially. It'd be easy to see Nick as this horrible, angry person who did this terrible thing and it isn't who he was. We see him with Val as a normal teenage boy who loves spending time with girlfriend, reading Shakespeare. We are able to see a different side to him, and I think that's important. Val is in mourning for that Nick, the one who laughed with her and watched movies.

As Val begins her return back to school-life, we see just how differently she's treated at school. The principal is keen to stress to the public and the media how the school shooting has transformed the school into one that's united and supportive, but Val still feels those walls and boundaries between cliques. Between outsiders like her and Nick and the popular people. But she does have someone on her side, whether Val wants it or not. The mean girl who constantly picked on Val before, now wants to be friends, wants Val to join in.

Hate List was a very interesting novel to read, one which covers lots of areas. The bullying of Nick and Val. Nick's anger, hate and resentment. The school shooting and the aftermath of that, from the school dealing with their grief at the loss of students and teachers. Val's personal grief over her-Nick. Val's changing relationships with those close to her. Seeing others as they are and not just one aspect of their personalities or behaviours. And the slow transformation of Val from mixed up teenager unsure of her feelings and the part she played in the shooting to one of acceptance and in a place where she can begin to move on.

This book was read for the purpose of joining in with the Death and Bereavement in Teen Lit event hosted by Jo of Once Upon a Bookcase (though the event has now been postponed). This book obviously deals with many deaths due to the school shooting that occurs in a high school and these deaths are mourned and grieved by a lot of people as the school begins their memorial tribute. However, Nick's death is the one closest to Val and is the death that Val focuses on.