The Sparkle Project

“Ice”

Author: Sarah Beth Durst.

Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry.

Pages: 308.

Synopsis (taken from GoodReads): When Cassie was a little girl, her grandmother told her a fairy tale about her mother, who made a deal with the Polar Bear King and was swept away to the ends of the earth. Now that Cassie is older, she knows the story was a nice way of saying her mother had died. Cassie lives with her father at an Arctic research station, is determined to become a scientist, and has no time for make-believe.

Then, on her eighteenth birthday, Cassie comes face-to-face with a polar bear who speaks to her. He tells her that her mother is alive, imprisoned at the ends of the earth. And he can bring her back — if Cassie will agree to be his bride.

That is the beginning of Cassie's own real-life fairy tale, one that sends her on an unbelievable journey across the brutal Arctic, through the Canadian boreal forest, and on the back of the North Wind to the land east of the sun and west of the moon. Before it is over, the world she knows will be swept away, and everything she holds dear will be taken from her — until she discovers the true meaning of love and family in the magical realm of Ice.

Cover impressions: I’ve changed a lot as a reviewer since I started blogging about YA almost a year ago. I’ve matured my writing style, I’ve learned more about the publishing business, I’ve started to ask more questions and I’ve even made a few friends. I don’t regret my snarky sparkly beginnings because I had a lot of fun and sometimes you have to make a few mistakes to learn from. Nowadays I think I’m a much stronger reviewer and pick my reading choices based upon a more varied selection of reasons beyond snark material. This is why I am glad I didn’t know about “Ice” until I saw it recently. Had I read this last year, I would have blown a gasket and written a review to rival the abusive angels. Now, all I can hope to do is articulately explain why this book made my skin crawl. For this reason, there will be major spoilers.

My interest in “Ice” was peaked when I saw that it was a retelling of “East of the Sun and West of the Moon”, a lesser known fairytale, and was intrigued to see how a YA retelling of a potentially highly problematic tale would work in a contemporary context. Unfortunately, “Ice” seems to be stuck in the Stone Age on so many issues, something that’s made all the more bitter by the fact that the book gets off to such a strong start. Cassie, at first, is a strong minded, hard working and intelligent young woman with high ambitions and an inquisitive nature. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long for her to slide into a state of uncharacteristic stupidity, occasionally relieved with moments of clarity. However, it wouldn’t be fair to blame Cassie’s decisions for all the book’s wrongdoings, especially since she’s so often left without any real options. She’s practically forced into marrying the Polar Bear King in exchange for her mother’s safe return. Later on, she’s treated even worse, even by the man/bear who supposedly loves her.

There are elements of “Beauty and the Beast” in this tale and it does feel as is “Ice” is trying to replicate the Disney film’s romantic feel (many of the things Cassie says about Bear feel inspired by Belle), but Durst completely skips over any romantic development. There’s a jump in time and all of a sudden, a few weeks later, they’re apparently in love. It further weakens a story that desperately needs a strong author’s hand to make it convincing. Bear may be many generations old with equally archaic ideals but this didn’t adequately justify his actions towards Cassie.

There are certain things a romantic hero should never do. Tampering with a woman’s birth control is one of them. Cassie, who has been on the pill, finds herself pregnant because Bear used his magical powers to fix the chemical imbalance in her that was preventing a pregnancy. He didn’t discuss this with her, there is no instance of a conversation taking place between the two that discusses such matters, and he doesn’t even tell her she’s pregnant until she’s 3 months gone. I do not care how gracious or kind Bear was to Cassie earlier on (her words, not mine), you DO NOT DO THAT! True relationships are built on trust and mutual understanding. He never even talks to her about this. What makes it even more blood curdling is that Cassie forgives him. She kicks up a completely justifiable fuss beforehand, but in the end, she’s completely willing to give up all her future ambitions of university, a career and a life with her family, including her mother who she hasn’t seen for most of her life, to be a teenage wife and mother with a talking polar bear.

Sadly, this isn’t the worst part. After Cassie has to go on a quest to retrieve Bear, who has to swear himself to the Troll Princess due to a rather convoluted loophole that I won’t explain here because it’s inconsequential, everyone she meets is obsessed with the safety of her unborn child. Not her, just her unborn child. Every other spirit, creature and guardian that she meets, of varying species and ages, cares not for her but for the fetus she just happens to be in charge of for the next few months. One character, who is thankfully painted as something of a villain, keeps her captive and indirectly harms her in an effort to stop her saving Bear because the life inside her is more important than her own. Cassie is also given the nickname “Little mother” by these creatures. Her entire worth is based on the fact that she has a functioning uterus and that’s a hell of a lot more important than her own mind and decisions. Cassie doesn’t like this attitude, it angers her, and rightly so. But why doesn’t she display this anger towards Bear, who admitted that he wanted a wife to bear his children, a task he decrees to be the most important purpose of the marriage? Cassie isn’t stupid, yet she is completely willing to let the designated love interest make these decisions for her, even if they involve lying, and in the end it’s okay? Bear says he loves Cassie but for me, all I could see was a liar who was willing to sabotage a young woman’s life in order to get what he wanted. Cassie was left to be nothing but a breeding specimen with one use.

To be truthful, this is a well written book that is generally well paced and has an interesting mythology throughout the story. The action scenes are well done and when Cassie was an active heroine, I really appreciated. But I would be lying if I gave this book anything more than 1 star. I can’t get behind a romance built upon a much older man using an 18 year old girl in that way. Tampering with birth control and essentially trapping the wife you forced into marriage doesn’t not make you the romantic ideal, it makes you sick. Just because the original source material is old, that doesn’t mean one is obligated to keep the retelling stuck in the 1950s. Cassie was much more than a “little mother”, so to see her happily accept the fate she was forced into as the ideal life made me so sad. She was worth more than that. We all are.

1/5.

“Crescendo”

Author: Becca Fitzpatrick.

Publisher: Simon and Schuster.

Pages: 427.

Synopsis (taken from GoodReads): Nora Grey's life is still far from perfect. Surviving an attempt on her life wasn't pleasant, but at least she got a guardian angel out of it: a mysterious, magnetic, gorgeous guardian angel. But, despite his role in her life, Patch has been acting anything but angelic. He's more elusive than ever and even worse, he's started spending time with Nora's arch-enemy, Marcie Millar.

Nora would have hardly noticed Scott Parnell, an old family friend who has moved back to town, if Path hadn’t been acting so distant. Even with Scott's totally infuriating attitude Nora finds herself drawn to him - despite her lingering feeling that he's hiding something.

Haunted by images of her murdered father, and questioning whether her nephilim bloodline has anything to do with his death, Nora puts herself increasingly in dangerous situations as she desperately searches for answers. But maybe some things are better left buried, because the truth could destroy everything - and everyone - she trusts.

Cover impressions: So... I gave in. A little bit of history: my recap/review/exasperated rant of maximum strength of Becca Fitzpatrick’s debut, “Hush, Hush”, the 3^rd book in the original Sparkle Project, is probably the thing I’m most well known for. In short, I hated the book, primarily because I just couldn’t believe that the author was writing a so-called love story where Patch, the designated male love interest’s abhorrent actions, including stalking, sexual harassment, borderline abuse and threats of murder, were considered okay because he was a sexy bad boy. There is a scene in “Hush, Hush” where Patch holds Nora down on a bed and tells her how he has planned to kill her... then he kisses her. And this is all okay. I hated this book so much I threw it against a wall twice and it’s become the marker of comparison for every YA book I read in terms of bad romance. I wasn’t going to review “Crescendo” at first. After all, what would be the point? My view of “Hush, Hush” was never going to change, even if its sequel ended up being the YA equivalent of “The Dark Knight.” But the honest truth is this; I wanted to see if things got better. Or worse. Fitzpatrick has gone on the record as saying it took her 5 years to write her first book and she had no intention of writing a sequel until her agent got her a 2 book deal (she now has a three book deal with “Silence” due out this Autumn) so I wanted to see how everything changed. To be honest, I wanted to see what happened next with Patch and Nora. How exactly does one write a romance that’s so obviously dangerous and messed up and pretend everything’s okay? I saw a copy of the book in my local library and decided just to go for it.

I need to state this up front, since book bloggers are getting a bad name lately and the atmosphere in YA blogging has become really tense lately; I don’t go into books looking to write bad reviews. Even with the original Sparkle Project, my intention was to analyse a genre trend from the point of view of a feminist YA nerd and spot its problems and perils. Yes, I did it in an incredibly snarky manner which has led some people to disregard my reviews, but my intention was and still is to give the genre the analysis it deserves. It’s not a lesser, inferior mode of literature that deserves a lower opinion from readers. I didn’t go into “Crescendo” wanting to hate it. Honestly, I really wanted this to be better because I want to believe so much that one day we can stop bullshitting around and messing up perceptions of romance and relationships for teenagers. But the honest truth is that “Crescendo” is a huge disappointment, depressingly so.

The thing that worried me from the offset in this book, one chapter in (ignoring the prologue that clumsily sets up the intrigue but really gives everything away), is the establishment of Marcie, a flat, incidental character from the first book, as Nora’s ‘nemesis.’ She is immediately set up as the polar opposite of Nora based on her promiscuous dress sense. A former friend of Nora’s, she now apparently loathes her solely because “you were born.” She doesn’t get any deeper level of character development throughout the story. She’s the bad girl, the bully, the slut.

The slut. And she’s shamed at every possible moment for it. Nora, supposedly the good girl and polar opposite of Nora, frequently makes bad handed references to Marcie being a slut or a whore or any variation on that term and this is reason enough to hate her. Her sexuality is used as a reason to dislike Marcie (although, conveniently enough for Nora, it’s okay for her to be sexually suggestive as well as Patch, because bad boys equal sexy while bad girls equal sluts, and Patch and Nora never actually have sex so they’re pure and worthy to mock Marcie). Being sexually active in any sort of way isn’t just bad, it makes you a bad person. It’s also Marcie who’s constantly at fault in these issues, never Nora or Patch. It’s Marcie that steals Patch from Nora, even though Nora broke up with him! Nora’s never the bad person, even when she admits to doing bad things to Marcie (the instance given – Nora deliberately picking an unflattering photo of Marcie for the school magazine – while rather petty, is important to note because Nora is never chastised for these sort of incidents but Marcie constantly is. She also steals Marcie’s diary for further slut-shaming opportunities.)

Marcie isn’t the only one that suffers from weak characterisation. Vee, supposedly Nora’s best friend, is here once again to be fat and a form of comic relief, apparently her only defining traits. Scott, the jerk that isn’t Patch, embodies all of the traits Patch has but because he isn’t the designated love interest, he’s not as sexy (but still aesthetically pleasing of course). Nora and Patch don’t evolve at all. In fact, they become even more annoying. Nora, when she isn’t slut shaming to the maximum, has devolved into vaguely psychotic stalker girlfriend territory and Patch is still an utter creep. The majority of their conversations are made up of supposedly charming innuendo which, if coming out of the mouth of someone who didn’t look like a male model, would be sexual harassment, and arguments over petty nothingness in an attempt to get some plot into this story-less mess. Almost everyone in this story knows that Patch is bad news and often tell Nora this, yet common sense just doesn’t exist to her (although her mother seems adamant on setting her up with an equally big douche-bag with a criminal record who seems to get the free pass Patch doesn’t because he was an old childhood friend of Nora’s.)

She also seems to be obsessively in lust with Patch rather than love. It’s been established that he cannot feel anything for her on a physical level (so I’m guessing his constant creepy sex talk is some form of over-compensation) but he admits to loving her emotionally, but she says, when breaking up with him (probably her smartest moment), “When I kiss my boyfriend, I want to know he feels it.” I tried to find 5 things that Nora and Patch had in common, something for them to discuss as a couple, hobbies to share and the like, and couldn’t find a thing (school activities do not count.) Their obsessive ‘love’ is their only defining trait, although Nora also seems to be make a beeline into the field of amateur stalking and kleptomania. The relationship seems to be following the now standard pattern for YA – book one = establishment of true but oh so forbidden love and book two = circumstances bring love to a temporary end. The male figures are constantly asserting their dominance like it’s a peacock strutting competition; there’s one worrying scene where Scott grabs Nora and she screams for help yet nobody does. Someone even laughs at her. Between this and the horrid biology scene in the first novel, I can’t help but worry about the attitudes towards women in these books, especially when it’s fair to use the word ‘attack.’ The story is so clearly following a derivative pattern that you can practically seen the join-the-dots. While there is less emphasis on the love story – phew – the mystery that makes up the majority of the plot plods along with no real finesse or surprises, with characters doing and saying stupid stuff solely for plot advancement. There are a few interesting moments here and there but it’s all handled so clumsily with inconsistent plotting that it’s difficult to care, a hefty task when this novel is also populated with a cast that varies from the forgettable to the lazily characterized to the downright awful.

It all wraps up with a big cliff hanger that has potential but having been burned so much from this sequel, even my masochistically curious side isn’t very interested in seeing what happens next. “Crescendo” is not a good book in any sense of the word. It suffers from the same problems “Hush, Hush” did – poor plotting and pacing, weak characterisation, lazy mythos, derivative and predictable paranormal romance traits – as well as some elements I just can’t ignore. I hate slut-shaming, everyone should hate it. It’s a false stereotype, it does nothing but label and demeans women and it reinforces old assumptions about women and sex that we just do not need in our world, especially in our teenage world. Marcie Millar is characterised solely on her sexuality and how bad it makes her. She likes sex because she’s bad and she’s bad because she likes sex. It’s unfair, it’s reinforcing stereotypes and it’s just plain lazy characterisation. On top of all this we have Nora Grey who has quickly become one of the most unlikeable, irrational, paranoid, hysterical and downright stupid characters in young adult fiction. I’m pretty offended on behalf of teenage girls everywhere that are supposed to relate to her. Good old Patch is out of the scene for a lot of this book but he remains a jerk. Nice to know some things don’t change. I worried about the reinforcement of rape culture in “Hush, Hush” and now I worry about the perpetuation of slut-shaming and the virgin-whore dichotomy in “Crescendo.” I shudder to think what “Silence” will bring us. Overall, yet again I remain perplexed as to how these books have become as popular as they have. We have to do better than filling books for teenage girls full of the same old falsehood that short skirts and an interest in sex equals a spoiled moral code. Surely we’re better than this?

1/5.

So after the... interesting developments of yesterday's events, in which shit went down, accusations were made and the entire thing got blown so far out of proportion not many people came out of it looking good (I did end up talking to Jackson Pearce on twitter over this. We disagreed, as you can guess, but it went a whole lot better than my last YA author interaction), I think it's time for us to actually debate this issue properly, without cries of censorship (holy false equivalency Batman!), shoddy journalism and just general cliquey behaviour.

Bitch's list was interesting for a number of reasons but ultimately it was a subjective one because the definition of feminist YA has never really been explained at length. One person's Buffy Summers is another's Bella Swan, and as time passes, we bring more issues to the table and everything becomes that much murkier to decipher. So what makes a YA book feminist? To widen the issue, what makes any part of our media feminist?

I went to see two films yesterday - Tangled and Black Swan, both of which I loved (although the latter is going to haunt me for quite sometime. It's much more of a David Cronenberg style body horror movie than I thought it would be.) and both of which had some very interesting female characters. I'm going to discuss feminism in Disney movies at length in another post but I'll quickly note that I loved Rapunzel, thought she was funny, smart and strong and really grew over the course of the film. She's a decidedly more complex Disney princess than what we're used to. With Black Swan, the lead character Nina is, to put it bluntly, incredibly messed up. She's emotionally distant, lonely, suffers from several mental and medical disorders and she's striving so hard for a level of perfection that just doesn't exist that it drives her to the edge. It's a disgusting movie in places and it's often very hard to watch but it's fascinating to see this woman go through hell, since you sort of go through hell with her. Would I define any of these movies and their characters as feminist? It's a tough one to discuss; Black Swan isn't supposed to be a positive movie and I shudder to think that anyone would want to relate to Nina so it's hard to judge it by the standards I judge, say, a YA book to be feminist. For Tangled, I lean towards saying yes. It follows way too many of the typical Disney tropes and ends exactly how you'd imagine it but it's about a young woman striving to be her best who kicks butt and really grows as a character, which isn't really something we associate with Disney princesses.

Back to the topic I'm supposed to be discussing, defining something in YA as feminist sometimes requires a lot of thought. Even the best books can have problematic areas that one person may react more strongly to than another (Sisters Red is actually a pretty good example of this). The one defining trait that I myself require for a feminist YA novel is that the heroine not be completely obsessed with her boyfriend and be stuck in an all consuming love rut. It's dull to read, it's incredibly derivative and frankly it can get a bit cringey. Romance and feminist lit are not mutually exclusive, there are some fab romances out there in YA, I just require that the two romantic leads be equal on every level. No archaic gender stereotypes, no dragging a girl around or making threats and no holding her down against a bed while you tell her how you want to kill her. Pretty simple, right?

What else do I look for? There are a few things: not calling other girls sluts or slut shaming other characters is a bit one. It's got to stop and not just in YA *coughTaylorSwiftcough* With that, a healthy attitude towards sex is also ideal. She doesn't have to be handing out copies of The Purity Myth in the hallways at school but having a smart attitude towards it is pretty crucial for me. Of course, it would be good if she didn't constantly rely on others, mainly men, to save her from tough situations, but it depends on the situation of the character, the story, location, etc.

The example I usually use for a feminist YA is The Ruby In The Smoke by Philip Pullman. Sally Lockhart is smart, uses her initiative, stands up for herself in a predominantly male society, works so hard to not have to rely on others and strives for equality in all areas of life. Even in later books where her situation changes drastically (won't spoil it for you), she still holds her own and refuses to become passive.

Maybe we should make our own feminist YA list, or at least get together some recommendations so we can properly discuss their merits and issues. First, we need a proper definition of feminist YA. An all encompassing one would be impossible and simply not fair but some basic guidelines would be a good starting point. I eagerly await your comments.

“Halo”

Author: Alexandra Adornetto.

Publisher: Feiwel and Friends.

Pages: 496.

Summary (taken from GoodReads): Three angels are sent down to bring good to the world: Gabriel, the warrior; Ivy, the healer; and Bethany, a teenage girl who is the least experienced of the trio. But she is the most
human, and when she is romantically drawn to a mortal boy, the angels fear she will not be strong enough to save anyone—especially herself—from the Dark Forces. Is love a great enough power against evil?

Yeah, it’s awful. (As a brief warning, I sort of went off on a tangent of feminist ranting later on in the review but it is related to the book. If this bothers you somehow then please stop reading my blog.)

From the very first paragraph, Adornetto is trying so hard to be poetic with her prose but it just comes across as incredibly awkward and clumsily written. Everything as narrated by Bethany reminds me of when you write a story and just look up a thesaurus for every fifth word or so; it reads like someone trying to write way beyond their maturity. I think it’s unfair to comment on the author’s age in relation to their work but it’s so noticeable throughout the book. The very beginning of the story, with the three angels adjusting to human life, is a big tell-don’t-show info-dump that drags the story to a halt before it even begins, and this complete lack of pacing continues throughout the 400+ pages. We don’t need to know every single detail of the angel-to-human transition straight away; weave it into the story and let the plot continue. Well, what passes for a plot here.

I’m beginning to think that YA writers have become allergic to plots. The recent bunch of popular ones, anyway. Out of the original Sparkle Project 10, I counted 4 out of 10 as actually having a plot. That’s really not a good statistic. The constant meandering between moping and love and moping and feminist rage inducing love was so incredibly dull. Nothing happens for a huge chunk of this book and when stuff does happen it’s nothing to write home about. The book also suffers from the ever increasing trademark of this genre, as well as all Twilight fanfiction, in that Adornetto spends far too long describing thing that just do not matter. The clothes that Ivy wears are not relevant to the plot. The layout of their house does not further the story. None of these things matter in the slightest and even I, with my kink for lush descriptive scenes (although as I said previously, all the descriptive scenes were trying way too hard), was bored senseless.

Of course it wasn’t just the plotting and info-dump overloads that made this book terrible. Let’s not forget the characters. It’s all too common an occurrence to have the plain, boring girl fall in love with the powerful, enigmatic male creature of power in this genre so I was at least hoping for an interesting take on the gender roles being switched. Boy that was optimistic of me. Bethany makes Bella Swan look like Emmeline Pankhurst. For someone who is supposed to be a messenger of God, one of amazing power and strength, she comes across as a whiny, selfish little girl who is incapable of the most basic actions. She, the angel, is the one that needs saving by the human boy! It doesn’t help that the angels just made the stupidest of decisions (where do you station yourself if you want to fight evil? Of course, a high school!) But Bethany really takes the cake. I try not to let my personal opinion of the author’s life or views get in the way of my reviews but having read ‘Halo’ following that pro-abstinence article Adornetto wrote, I couldn’t help but read this book like some sort of silver ring pamphlet. Its desperation to be emotionally manipulative was infuriating. The characterisation was weak across the board, especially with Bethany and cardboard cut-out love interest Xavier.

But here’s the kicker. The bit that made me do the crinkled face in exasperated feminist rage: