***The Starry-Eyed Revue***: speculative fiction

Title: Down with the Shine
Author: Kate Karyus Quinn
Series: stand-alone
Publisher: HarperTeen
Publication Date: April 26, 2016
Source: received from publisher via Edelweiss
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

There's a reason they say "be careful what you wish for." Just ask the girl who wished to be thinner and ended up smaller than Thumbelina, or the boy who asked for "balls of steel" and got them - literally. And never wish for your party to go on forever. Not unless you want your guests to be struck down by debilitating pain if they try to leave.

These are things Lennie only learns when it's too late - after she brings some of her uncles' moonshine to a party and toasts to dozens of wishes, including a big wish of her own: to bring back her best friend, Dylan, who was abducted and murdered six months ago.

Lennie didn't mean to cause so much chaos. She always thought her uncles' moonshine toast was just a tradition. And when they talked about carrying on their "important family legacy," she thought they meant good old-fashioned bootlegging.

As it turns out, they meant granting wishes. And Lennie has just granted more in one night than her uncles would grant in a year.

Now she has to find a way to undo the damage. But once granted, a wish can't be unmade...

I live in the South and I know people who know people who have friends that brew their own moonshine -- and I freely admit to having partaken in it a time or two. But I'm not one to watch Moonshiners and I've never taken an interest in it, one way or the other. I do, however, love a good dose of magical realism, so it's a good thing the wish-granting aspect took center stage in this book.

Down with the Shine was very...different and weird and I liked it quite a lot. It was darkly humorous, which was actually just what I was in the mood for when I picked this novel up. Lennie is an outcast among her peers, ostracized because of who her daddy is, and the only person who accepted her has been dead six months. In an attempt to honor her friend's memory -- and in a bout of self-pity, let's face it -- she decides to crash the invitation only party of the affluent queen bee, where social pariahs like herself are most unwelcome. That is, unless they come bearing gifts, like the very moonshine Lennie's uncles would disown her for taking.

The hilarity of Lennie's ignorance -- when it comes to the moonshine and her own wish-granting abilities -- is only second to the repercussions of unleashing such a farce on the very kids who have tormented her for years. This book had me cackling one moment and left me thoroughly creeped out the next, from the sheer stupidity of some of the wishes to the hired goons Lennie's fugitive father employed. It was morose at times but also very funny, and me and my dark sense of humor just clicked with it.

The thing is, when dealing with wish-granting or faeries or maybe just life in general, specificity is key. Lennie had a gazillion wishes to undo but she couldn't do so without risking making things even worse. Without any way to completely wipe out all of the wishes she'd granted, Lennie had to get creative, and in doing so, she really surprised me as a character. She was just a naive, woe-is-me heroine when the story began, but she really came into her own by the end.

This novel also had a very clever ending. Honestly, the whole novel was clever, in a facetious, unpretentious manner, and it felt like I was laughing with the story rather than at it. Because of this book, I am more interested than ever to pick up the rest of the author's work. I hope her other books are as weirdly funny as this one. ;0)

GIF it to me straight:

About the author:

Kate Karyus Quinn is a chapstick addict with a love for live theater and a BFA from Niagara University to prove it.

After growing up in the suburbs of Buffalo, NY, Kate left her hometown for Southern California and film school, where she earned an MFA in Film and Television Production from Chapman University.

After finishing her degree, she moved with her husband to Knoxville, Tennessee. However, she recently made the move back home, with her husband and two children in tow. She promised them wonderful people, amazing food, and weather that would... build character.

Kate is first and foremost an avid reader and unapologetic booknerd. Although, she mostly reads YA and romance, she often samples different genres in her constant search for the next great read.

Find Kate:

Website | Twitter | Goodreads

Labels: dark humor, down with the shine, funny, harper-collins, kate karyus quinn, magical realism, reviews, speculative fiction

Title: Places No One Knows
Author: Brenna Yovanoff
Series: stand-alone
Publisher: Delacorte
Publication Date: May 17, 2016
Source: ARC received from publisher
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Waverly Camdenmar spends her nights running until she can’t even think. Then the sun comes up, life goes on, and Waverly goes back to her perfectly hateful best friend, her perfectly dull classes, and the tiny, nagging suspicion that there’s more to life than student council and GPAs.

Marshall Holt is a loser. He drinks on school nights and gets stoned in the park. He is at risk of not graduating, he does not care, he is no one. He is not even close to being in Waverly’s world.

But then one night Waverly falls asleep and dreams herself into Marshall’s bedroom—and when the sun comes up, nothing in her life can ever be the same. In Waverly’s dreams, the rules have changed. But in her days, she’ll have to decide if it’s worth losing everything for a boy who barely exists.

Brenna Yovanoff's novels are very...different...from most YA. They border on the strange and can be utterly compelling or completely off-putting. But whereas I've always been a little hesitant to pick up her previous novels, I was clamoring to get my hands on this one.

Regardless of how I feel about her stories in general, her unique writing style never fails to impress. While Places No One Knows is a bit of a departure from her creepier fare, it does still incorporate elements of imagination and speculation in a more contemporary setting, and it's just the right amount of peculiar to know that you're still reading a book she's written.

The entire novel had a strange, dream-like quality to it, not just the parts where Waverly was projecting herself to Marshall, and I loved that magical quality, even if it never entirely made sense. It was what it was…and it was a story of figuring yourself out and accepting who you are, even if maybe that's not who others expect you to be.

This is definitely my favorite of Brenna Yovanoff's novels thus far. I connected with Waverly on a level that I probably wasn't meant to, but her weird, disinterested behavior felt alarmingly familiar. Her best friend calls her a robot to her face, and she hardly blinks at it. But as a result of the dreams and late-night wanderings that lead her to wherever he is, Marshall sees that there's a real girl hiding under the tough exterior Waverly shows the rest of the world. And she discovers that he's not the loser he's purported to be.

It's a matter of breaking down walls and leaving oneself exposed, one of the most unpleasant aspects of adolescence, but Brenna showcases it so beautifully. The romance between Waverly and Marshall was slightly warped, incongruous with either of their lives heretofore, but it worked because it wasn't perfect. Gods, the mistakes they made...so genuine and reminiscent of my own teenage existence that it was almost painful to read at times. And still I loved it.

GIF it to me straight:

About the author:

Hi, I’m Brenna Yovanoff. I write young adult and speculative fiction.

My young adult fantasy novels The Replacement, The Space Between, Paper Valentine, and Fiendish are available from Razorbill/Penguin Group.

Here are some things about me (not book-related):

I’m good at soccer, violent video games, and making very flaky pie pastry.

I’m bad at dancing, making decisions, and inspiring confidence as an authority figure. I suspect this is because I am short, and also terrible at sounding as though I have any idea what I’m talking about.

Find Brenna:

Website | Twitter | Goodreads | Tumblr