Review: Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley

Title: Where Things Come Back
Author: John Corey Whaley
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Publication date: January 1, 2011
Rating: ★★½

Summary (via Goodreads):

In the remarkable, bizarre, and heart-wrenching summer before Cullen Witter’s senior year of high school, he is forced to examine everything he thinks he understands about his small and painfully dull Arkansas town. His cousin overdoses; his town becomes absurdly obsessed with the alleged reappearance of an extinct woodpecker; and most troubling of all, his sensitive, gifted fifteen-year-old brother, Gabriel, suddenly and inexplicably disappears.

Meanwhile, the crisis of faith spawned by a young missionary’s disillusion in Africa prompts a frantic search for meaning that has far-reaching consequences. As distant as the two stories initially seem, they are woven together through masterful plotting and merge in a surprising and harrowing climax.

Confession: The only reason I was ever remotely interested in this book is because it was inspired by Sufjan Steven's song for the lord god bird, an ivory-billed woodpecker that was rediscovered in Brinkley, Arkansas, in the mid 2000s. I loved that song when it was first released, and when I heard in 2011 that some guy had written a book inspired by it, my attention was piqued.

Where Things Come Back is a slow story. It feels like being outside on a hot summer day: sluggish, dull, you'd rather be anywhere else. There are a few key story lines that weave in and out of the book, and it makes your head spin, trying to figure out how everything comes together. The build-up is tiresome. It moves forward at a snail's pace and the different stories really only gel in the last few pages.

For me, one of the most difficult things about reading this book was that, intentionally or not, Cullen Witter is a condescending asshole. I think he's meant to be witty and clever and sharp-tongued, but he just comes across as a judgmental, pretentious 16-year-old boy with some internalized girl hate that stems from his own insecurity. (Okay, maybe I'm reading into things. My point is that I didn't enjoy reading this book from his perspective.)

The other characters were just not that interesting to me either. I think they could have been. I think if John Corey Whaley had tightened up the story and made all those characters (Ada, Mena, Benton, Cabot – even his brother Gabriel) more relevant, instead of having them pop in and out for no particular reason, I might have enjoyed this book. But that would have been a different book entirely. This story really lacks meaningful character development, so up until the last twenty pages or so, we're just wandering around, feeling like nothing is happening. That, paired with Whaley's writing – which often seems like it's trying hard to be quirky and different – makes the entire story feel stilted.

Where Things Come Back was just not the right book for me. But for what it's worth, it won the William C. Morris YA Debut Award AND the Printz Award in 2012, so clearly others enjoyed it.

Review: The Dream Thieves (The Raven Boys #2) by Maggie Stiefvater

Title: The Dream Thieves (The Raven Boys #2)
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Publisher: Scholastic
Publication date: September 17, 2013
Rating: ★★½

Summary (via Goodreads):

Now that the ley lines around Cabeswater have been woken, nothing for Ronan, Gansey, Blue, and Adam will be the same.

Ronan, for one, is falling more and more deeply into his dreams, and his dreams are intruding more and more into waking life.

Meanwhile, some very sinister people are looking for some of the same pieces of the Cabeswater puzzle that Gansey is after...

To be frank, I couldn't decide if I should just copy my Goodreads status updates here, or if I should write a proper review. I figured the former might be a bit too snarky for this space, as my 31 Goodreads comments can be condensed into a few key sentiments:

"Go away Adam"
"SO HOMOEROTIC ASDFKDSKFJ"
"THIS BOOK IS SO BORING"
"Go away Adam"

Needless to say, I just don't get the hype.

Certainly there's lots of good things about The Dream Thieves. For one, the prose is heavy and sophisticated, at times reminiscent of Neil Gaiman's surreal, hypnotic writing. What works well in The Dream Thieves is this blend of lucid dream (literally) and vague fantasy, mixed with a healthy dose of present-day culture. I mean, the Gray Man grooving to the Kinks? Yes, please.

Several characters also continue to show strong development. Adam becomes infinitely darker and douchier… (Granted, I stopped caring about him precisely because he turned into a blockhead… I mean, his use of feminism as an insult? Have we not moved past that yet?) We also develop a much more complex picture of Gansey. (In fact, I quite like Sad Gansey. I think I prefer him to Upbeat Gansey.) As for Ronan, this whole book might as well be called The Ronan Show. We get reacquainted with Ronan from a multitude of angles and it's really satisfying. (Insert bawdy Kavinsky-esque joke here.)

There are two moments between Blue and Gansey that stand out in my mind. One is a homesick phone call that Gansey makes from his family's mansion in Washington, DC. The other occurs at night, on the side of a mountain. Both are moments that allow you to see a different Gansey – truer, softer, without all the walls up. I wish that version of Gansey had been explored more in this book.

The Gray Man is a compelling character as well – a hit man that we come to sympathize with, somehow. Maybe it's the fact that he has decent taste in music, or the fact that other characters help us see the good in him. It's funny how thin that line is between good and evil. One might even say that the line is… gray.

To me, Joseph Kavinsky is easily the most fascinating character we meet. In The Dream Thieves, his life literally is sex, drugs, and cars. And yet there's so much more to him. He's one of the few characters whose point of view we don't get to explore. All we know about him is filtered through Ronan's eyes – which is not a bad thing, per se. We just don't get to learn as much about him as we do with the other characters. It's a shame, because he seems to have one of the most unexpected backgrounds and definitely one of the most dynamic personalities.

As you can see, this book is filled with all sorts of characters who have such interesting backstories and so much potential. Unfortunately, Maggie Stiefvater seems to overextend herself because we end up with half a dozen story lines that are halfheartedly developed. Most of her characters are totally underutilized (don't even get me started on Noah) and plot lines are dropped off and picked back up and dropped again.

Not to mention, the pacing is so bizarre. The plot is so slow for the majority of the book – and I mean, dull as dishwater, watching grass grow-slow. I'm guessing at least half of the entire book is pure character development, which means we're reading, for example, about Adam feeling sorry for himself, or Adam with a chip on his shoulder, or Adam being an entitled jerk. (GO AWAY ADAM.) I'm a sucker for character development, but when it feels aimless, it gets real old, real fast.

This goes on for a few hundred pages… and then in the last 50 pages or so, everything happens all at once and you're just like, "…what? Where did that come from? Why did this book have to drag on and on for that to occur?" It is very much a slow burn, but the problem is that you feel the heat for 400 pages and eventually all you want to do is go jump in a pool and swim away.

Simply put, this book was not for me. It felt too meandering and stray. Good prose and complex characters do not a strong story make.