Tag: YA

Family of Liars by E. Lockhart (YA)

Family of Liars by E. Lockhart (YA)

by Stacy ♥ 0 Leave a Comment
family of liars, e lockhart, beach read

Carrie is a Sinclair. This means she has grown up a child of privilege, with the best clothes, schools, and experiences. It also means there is pressure on her to be perfect. To always be an example to her younger sisters and to excel academically, socially, and athletically. To get surgery on her jaw when her father, Harris, worries that her jaw makes her look weak. Being a Sinclair means always keeping a stiff upper lip even when the youngest Sinclair, 10-year-old Rosemary, drowns. “Be a credit to the family,” is Harris and Tipper’s instruction to their daughters. 

Carrie has spent every summer vacationing at her family’s summer home on a private island off of Massachusetts. It is a time for beach days with her sisters and cousins, her mother’s elaborate dinners, ice cream, tennis, and croquet. At seventeen, Carrie is worried about returning to the island as it will be the first summer without Rosemary and the first summer where she has to hide the narcotics addiction she developed after surgery. Carrie is distracted from her fears when her cousin, Yardley, arrives on the island with three handsome eighteen-year-old boys. Carrie, unlike her younger sisters, has never had a boyfriend, but Pfeff, who Yardley has warned her about, seems to like her and she is interested in him. It should be the most exciting summer ever on the island, but the combination of privileged boys, competitive siblings, and geographical isolation turn a promising summer into tragedy and carefully constructed lies.

Family of Liars is the prequel to We Were Liars, which is set in the modern day with Carrie’s and her sisters’ children as the main characters. If you haven’t read We Were Liars, I don’t recommend starting with Family of Liars in spite of it being chronically first as there is a large spoiler for We Were Liars at the beginning. Family of Liars is narrated by an adult Carrie looking back on her 17-year-old self. As she narrates, Carrie mostly taps into her teenage self, but there are times you can sense the adult Carrie. Adult Carrie acknowledges the privilege of generational wealth, while teen Carrie growing up in the wealth-obsessed eighties surrounded by wealthy family members and classmates, would have understood that she was unusually wealthy but not much about how it affected how she related to the world.

Carrie explains her world through fairy tales, the same stories she used to tell her youngest sister, Rosemary. Carrie and those in her life are imprinted onto the fairy tale characters. Sometimes Carrie views herself as the hero and sometimes as the villain. Sometimes she acknowledges that she is both at the same time. She tells these stories to herself, to the reader, and to Rosemary, who visits her on the island as a ghost.

Family of Liars is a perfect beach read. E Lockhart has a gorgeous writing style, and there is a dreamlike nature to the story. The story’s appeal is a combination of well developed characters, a fascination with how the 1% live, the depiction of the best and worst of family life, the slow revelation of secrets, and just a hint of Greek tragedy. Highly recommended for those who enjoy beach reads, family stories, and YA. Readers who are repulsed by overly privileged characters may want to pass on this one. It may not be suitable for younger YA readers due to language, substance abuse, and sexual situations.

Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain (YA): Book Review and Book Club Menu

Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain (YA): Book Review and Book Club Menu

by Stacy ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Seventeen years ago in the tiny Lousiana island of La Cachette, ten children were born in a single summer. They call themselves the Summer Children.

La Cachette is an island so isolated there is no cell service or internet access. The residents make their living from the tourist trade, marketing themselves as the Psychic Capital of the World, selling psychic readings, crystals, and love potions. In addition to the approximately 100 human residents, La Cachette is home to venomous snakes and a 13-foot alligator named Willie Nelson.

Grey, one of the Summer Children, has only spent her summers in La Cachette since the death of her mother nine years before, but she looks forward to her high school graduation, as it will allow to move back to La Cachette full time to spend time with her closest friends, the other Summer Children, especially her best friend, Elora. However, a few months before Grey returns to La Cachette for her seventeenth summer, Elora goes missing.

When Grey returns to the island, she is determined to learn what happened to Elora, but no one in a town of psychics seems to have any insight as to what happened the night her friend went missing. As Grey begins to dig, she starts confronting all of La Cachette’s secrets, such as the death of the twins, Ember and Orli, thirteen years earlier and the legend of the local bogeyman, Dempsey Fontenot.

Ginny Myers Sain’s debut novel is the perfect read for spooky season. I’ve read several books over the last month trying to find the perfect October book to review, discarding many along the way, and this was the only one that wowed me. The appeal is due to several factors: the rich Southern gothic tradition this is part of, the appeal of island fiction, and of course, a well-crafted mystery.

Dark and Shallow Lies is a very atmospheric novel. I have had a soft spot for gothic fiction set in Louisiana ever since my teenage years of binging Anne Rice, and this novel makes the most of its setting. With the very first pages, the reader is given the impression of a wild and dangerous world, endless humidity, and secrets. Beauty and the grotesque live side-by-side in La Cachette. Part of La Cachette’s mystique is that it is an island. Novels set on islands from And Then There None to Lord of the Flies create tension simply through isolation, as each islander lives only at the mercy of the other islanders, with the outside world feeling almost unreal.

The mystery is intricately plotted with many twists and turns along the way. As this is a YA mystery, there are no characters so drunk that they become accidentally unreliable narrators, which is a bonus. (If you have read a lot of mysteries/thrillers marketed for adults, you have stumbled into many an alcoholic narrator along the way.) I’m assuming the missing girl plot gives this away, but in case it doesn’t, this book is definitely for the older end of the YA spectrum, not for your 10-year-old niece. There is violence, drinking, drug references, etc. It’s ideal for teens beginning to age out of YA and for adults. I’m planning to buy a copy for my 17-year-old stepdaughter who reads mostly adult fiction these days.

As La Cachette is an easy day trip from New Orleans, the ideal book club menu would contain New Orleans specialities. This month’s book club menu consists of hot Cajun shrimp dip and muffuletta crostini.

Hot Cajun Shrimp Dip

This is a mash up of three recipes I found, plus it’s slightly lightened up with extra veggies, Greek yogurt in place of mayo, and reduced fat cream cheese. Given that this recipe is pretty much cheese upon cheese, my attempts at lightening it up are probably the equivalent of having Diet Coke with a Big Mac meal to save calories. But I feel like a Louisiana grandmother would still judge me for trying to lighten it up at all. My hypothetical grandma is known as Miss Dominique in her neighborhood and she tells me that when your time is up, your time is up, so just eat the cheese.

This dip can be served with crackers and bread. If you have club members who can’t or don’t eat carbs and/or gluten, raw veggies, plantain chips, and Nut Thins are also good dippers.

  • 1 tablespoon butter
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 red bell pepper, chopped
  • ½ cup celery
  • ½ sweet onion, chopped
  • 4 green onions
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • 1 lb shrimp chopped
  • 1 tb creole seasoning
  • 1 8-oz package cream cheese (⅓ reduced fat)
  • 5 oz nonfat Greek plain yogurt
  • ½ lemon juiced
  • 1 cup pepper jack shredded
  • 1 cup cheddar shredded, divided
  • ¼ cup parmesan shredded
  1. Preheat oven to 375°F.
  2. If you don’t own an oven-safe skillet, spray a medium casserole dish with nonstick baking spray and set aside.
  3. Heat butter and oil in a large skillet over medium heat.
  4. Add the red bell pepper, celery and sweet onion and cook until the onions are translucent.
  5. Add the chopped shrimp, garlic, and creole seasoning and cook until the shrimp are opaque.
  6. Stir in cream cheese, Greek yogurt, scallions, and lemon juice.
  7. Add in the 1 cup of pepper jack and ½ cup of cheddar one handful at a time. Once the cheese is evenly incorporated, add the next handful.
  8. If your skillet is not oven proof, pour the shrimp and cheese mixture into the casserole dish.
  9. Top with remaining ½ cup of cheddar and ¼ cup of parmesan.
  10. Bake for 15 minutes and then broil for an additional two minutes.

Muffuletta Crostini

Muffuletta sandwiches are an Italian contribution to New Orleans cuisine. Full of ham, cheese, and olives, they are the type of sandwich that gets better as it sits. While I don’t doubt the transformative power of marination, I opted to transform it into a crostini here because appetizers are more fun for book club meetings. Plus it gives us an excuse to put the cheese under the broiler because melted cheese > room temperature cheese.

If there are dietary restrictions, just customize your muffuletta. For vegetarians, omit the meat for an olive melt. For lactose intolerant friends, omit the cheese. For keto friends, omit the bread and do a meat, cheese, olive roll up.

  • A baguette
  • Olive oil
  • Garlic powder
  • Thin sliced ham
  • Salami
  • Provolone cheese slices
  • ¾ cup mixed and sliced olives (I used a castelvetrano/kalamata blend)
  • 1/2 cup mild giardiniera
  1. Preheat oven to 425.
  2. Slice baguette and brush each slice with olive oil and top with a light dusting of garlic powder.
  3. Arrange sliced bread on a cookie sheet and bake for 5 to 7 minutes. Meanwhile, mix together sliced olives and giardiniera.
  4. Once you remove the toasted baguette slices from the oven, top each bread slice with a spoon of the olive/giandiniera mixture, a slice of ham, a slice of salami, half a slice of provolone.
  5. Press down on each crostini slightly to smush the olive mixture into the toasted bread.
  6. Turn on broiler. Broil your crostini for 1 to 2 minutes.

Enjoy!

Never Saw You Coming (YA) by Erin Hahn: Book Review

Never Saw You Coming (YA) by Erin Hahn: Book Review

by Stacy ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Meg Hennessey has lived cautiously for all of her eighteen years. She’s never kissed a boy, never cussed, and never drank. She covers her shoulders (sometimes with fairy wings) so boys don’t have impure thoughts, participates in the youth group praise band, and babysits for spending money. When she learns that she has been kept so sheltered because her own mother became pregnant as the result of a one-night stand at a youth group event (not something one hears everyday!), she cancels her gap-year plans to head north to Marquette, Michigan to meet the family of her late birth father.

Micah Allen ended up in the spotlight at age thirteen when his pastor father infamously fell from grace. Viral videos featured Micah insisting on his father’s innocence. He quickly learned that his father was guilty of embezzlement and adultery and that the church that had helped to raise him could quickly turn on his mother, his younger sisters, and on him. At nineteen, Micah has given up on the church but not on God. He has made friends who have helped through hard times, but he still dreads being recognized as “that pastor’s kid.” When Micah meets Meg, he recognizes that same blend of faith and cynicism that he possesses.

There is a lot of contrast in NSYC, in terms of innocence and experience. The love story is very happy and sweet. The only times there is serious angst between Meg and Micah is when there are external forces at work, such a malicious, gossipy church mom. All of their conflict is essentially created for them by the adults in their lives. But the challenges that face both Meg and Micah are anything but simple and easy. Both teens have come to a place where they have decided they love Christ, but they aren’t so sure about the church. As they try to figure out their place in the world, they struggle with who they want to be versus who others want them to be. Meg is told she needs to be the poster child for purity for the teen girls in her uncle’s church, while Micah is urged to forgive his father, who is scheduled to be released on parole. And the scene where Micah finally encounters his father after his release from prison is intense. And infuriating.

This is a great read for current youth group members and youth group alumni, whether they loved their youth group or barely survived it. But while the conflict initially seems specific to church teens, the issues are cultural. The purity culture that Meg struggles with is strongly associated with the evangelical church, but its influence is wider and is reflected in public school dress codes that enforce the notion that developing girls are “distractions.” Micah’s disillusionment with the adults around him is common in teens spotting the human weaknesses in their parents and in adult leaders.

I’m a bit disappointed that this came out during the pandemic as Erin Hahn is a local author (Ann Arbor), and I would have loved to meet her at a book event. Perhaps post-pandemic, I will have a chance.

If you enjoy Never Saw You Coming, here are some other novels about faith that you might like:

YA:

Dress Codes for Small Towns by Courtney Stevens. This one is so good. A smart and thoughtful look at purity culture and homophobia in modern youth groups. I reviewed this in my previous blog.

Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker. A bit more niche than Never Saw You Coming and Dress Codes for Small Towns, this one might be a bit baffling to someone who was not raised fundamentalist. However, if you grew up in a “Purity culture is my secondary religion and Halloween is of the devil” home, you’ll totally get this one.

Adult novels:

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. This story of three generations of ministers, all of them products of their time, might be the most beautiful American novel about Christianity. This is actually the first of a series, but I think this novel is the best one.

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. The simplest description is this is the story of a valuable Jewish volume (the Sarajevo Haggadah) rescued from destruction by a Muslim, but it’s really a multi-century saga of faith and history.

Caleb’s Crossing, also by Geraldine Brooks. A fascinating view of early colonial American thought, Caleb’s Crossing tells the story of those outskirts of Puritan culture and power: Bethia, a minister’s daughter, who is more intellectual than her groomed-for-the-ministry brother but never feels the conviction of her father’s faith and Caleb, the brilliant son of a Wampanoag chieftain, who the Puritans have claimed for both mascot and trophy.

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. This is a vibrant and female-centered telling of the life of Dinah, who is portrayed as merely the disgraced daughter of Jacob in the book of Genesis. It is impossible to neatly sum up the beauty of this book.

And one nonfiction book:

Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free by Linda Kay Klein. Klein conducted a series of interviews with young women who grew up in purity culture about how it continued to affect them in adulthood. I also reviewed this one on my previous blog.