Sixth Review - Dooley Takes the Fall

At-A-Glance
Title: Dooley Takes the Fall
Author: Norah McClintock
First Copyright Date: 2008
Genre: Teen Fiction
General Subject Matter: crime, murder, alcohol, drugs, conduct of life, self-acceptance
Interesting Facts: White Pine recipient, soaked with a certain four-letter word
Price: $14.95 CDN, or borrow it from MW’s library!






Dooley Takes the Fall, by Norah McClintock, surprised me. The way it started, I thought I would have to drag myself through it and would probably never finish it for a month. Then things changed for the better a little past the middle of the book. Some things still irked me, but the story line improved and I was more interested in what I was reading. I felt more and more connected to the characters and I realized I did care what happened in the end.

Dooley Takes the Fall is not an amazing book, but it wasn’t horrible either. Dooley has been in a whole lot of trouble before. He knows how it feels to be a suspect, and he knows what will happen if the cops find him guilty. But this time, Dooley didn’t do anything. When a kid’s suicide starts to look like a murder, Dooley becomes the suspect because he was the last person to see him alive. Then, Dooley has a fist fight with a kid who is not seen for days after, then found dead. On top of that, Dooley finds himself falling for the first dead kid’s sister, Beth. The only thing standing between Dooley and total disaster is his uncle, who is also starting to have his doubts.

Now, before you get too excited, Dooley is not the main character’s first name, but rather his surname. His first name is Ryan. Actually, a lot of characters in Dooley Takes the Fall are referred to by their last name. Peter Landers, Eddy Gillette, Winston Rhodes, Marcus Bracey, Mark Everley. I had to wonder why McClintock chose to do that. I also had to wonder about her again when “Sweet ‘n’ Low” was mentioned (Dooley’s uncle had taken his girlfriend’s Sweet ‘n’ Low when he was stressed). It’s become such a staple for old people’s coffee and tea; it’s also on the verge of becoming a cliché. Oh, I learned two new words from this book! Lobotomized (which means to deprive a [person] of energy or vitality) and malingering
(which means effort by an individual to continue to receive disability income benefits by taking a continuing sickness or injury)! Oh, and thanks to Laura, I did not have to wonder why a person being “anal” had something to do with being super-organized and had nothing whatsoever to do with one’s posterior.

Now come the bad parts. Dooley Takes the Fall was extremely slow and quite boring for the first half. I found myself not wanting to read the book at all. I even went straight to sleep one night instead of reading for an hour or two like I usually do. That’s a surprise. My mother asked me if I was okay. That’s how utterly boring it was. I didn’t even know what the setting was until four-fifths of the way through. Even then, it wasn’t exact...Dooley’s uncle had just said he was going “up to Timmins” so I’m guessing the setting is somewhere south of Timmins. There was not much character imagery. I had a small idea of what Beth, Dooley’s uncle, and Warren (another small character) look like. McClintock used the name Dooley way more than necessary. Dooley this, Dooley that...too much Dooley! It got really annoying. For example, “...what are the chances that Gillette would say anything to Dooley if Dooley asked? Mind you, Dooley had a little leverage”. See what I mean? It was also weird how Dooley’s uncle didn’t have a name. He was always referred to as “his uncle” or “Dooley’s uncle”. Then there’s Jeannie and Lorraine, who are minor characters and have no lines but they still have names. It made for very confusing dialogue. Also, Dooley and his uncle kept referring to their lawyer by her full name, Annette Girondin, and that was highly annoying. There was also bad sentence structure at times, so I had to re-read parts of the book over to make sure I read them correctly. There were so many run on sentences! I had to imagine my own periods here and there to take the places of the multitude of commas. I had difficulty reading between Dooley’s spoken words and his thoughts because there was no definite division and they were clustered together. I had to go back and seek out quotation marks and then re-read the paragraph.

Oh dear, when McClintock referred to a USB as a “data storage device” and “USB data device”, I had to laugh. That description made the USB sound like some kind of huge clunky thing from however far back a “data storage device” goes. This is a novel written for teens, we’re going to know what a USB is. “USB data device” is just two words too long. In one paragraph, Dooley had a string of names that I’m pretty sure were important to the story but I didn’t know who they
were. I had to go research them. That was a task I didn’t want to do. Definitions: okay, fine, not a problem; biographies: no, sorry. I didn’t appreciate the discrimination against pit bulls. Not all pit bulls are aggressive, and if they are, it is because their owners/breeders trained them that way...okay, that is all.

Oh, one more thing: THE WORD “CALL” WAS MISSPELLED ON PAGE 217.

There were more cons than pros in Dooley Takes the Fall.In the second half of the book, there were new developments in each chapter. It felt like a CSI episode, the way things just kept piling up and fitting together and falling apart, incriminating different people until you don’t know whodunit. There weren’t many parts that gave me a reaction. However, McClintock was describing the thrill of robbing a house, it really made me want to do it. I know, it’s bad, but the way it was described!!! For a second I had thought, “Seriously, what’s so wrong about it?” But then I decided that I’m an idiot and I shouldn’t listen to myself. Then there was a really sad part. Well, it was sad after I read it twice-over; I didn’t understand it the first time. Then there was this one part that elicited pure disgust and horror from me and was completely heart-wrenching. There was one funny part: proper USB ejection. If you read the book, you will know what I mean. Overall, I’d rate this book a 7 out of 10. The CSI-like plot with its twists and turns made up for some of the bad things like a boring beginning, confusing sentence structure, and a lack of character imagery. I was going to type up the house-robbing scene, but it is way too long. So here’s the sad part which you might not get...so read the book! :

“You should just buy her* that movie,” he [Dooley] said.
“What?”
“The penguin movie. The number of times she’s rented that one, she could have bought it already, plus another one.”
“If she owned it,” Warren said, “she wouldn’t have to come here and rent it every week.”
“My point,” Dooley said.
Warren shook his head. “She likes coming here. She likes to come and see Ryan. That’s you, right?” Like he still couldn’t believe it. “One of the reasons
they** were giving her a hard time,” he said, “is because of me. They told her, no wonder she’s the way she is, she has me for a brother.”

*The girl they are talking about is Warren’s sister Alicia, who has Down’s syndrome.

**”They” are Everett and Landers. They were taunting Alicia one day outside of the store where Dooley works


Norah McClintock is the author of over thirty novels for teens, including three different series. She is the five-time winner of the Crime Writers of

Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award for Best Juvenile Crime Novel. She now lives in Toronto with her family.
Find more about her and her books here: Norah McClintock

Fifth Review - Gotcha!

At-A-Glance

Title: Gotcha!

Author: Shelley Hrdlitschka (pronounced Herda-lich-ka)

First Copyright Date: 2008

Genre: Teen Fiction

General Subject Matter: High school struggle, haze-type games, and relationship

trouble (friends, boyfriend, parents)

Interesting Facts: E-mails are embedded within dialogue, chapters are headed

with a hemp string and a single bead

Price: $9.95 CDN, or borrow it from MW’s library!











is a prime example of teenagers struggling in high school and with their personal lives. It

relates well to the intended audience while being extremely well written. Author

Shelley Hrdlitschka has delved deep into the lives of high school students; it’s

almost scary how accurate she gets. There isn’t much I did not like about

Gotcha!, but for the sake of this book review, I will try to find

something.



This year at Slipper Rock High, the traditional grad game ‘Gotcha’ has been banned

by teachers who think it is too dangerous. The graduating students have decided to

ignore this, and take the game underground, with more grads joining than ever.

Several students begin spiral out of control, and Katie finds her self losing her

friends and falling victim to her classmates’ obsession with the game. How can a

stupid game be so dangerous? Katie finds out soon enough, when her family and

friends are both threatened.



Gotcha! is written in first person, from the perspective of Katie. The

creepy thing here is that the game Gotcha is actually a reality. I didn’t know it

until I had re-read the Acknowledgements, but yes, Gotcha does plague high schools

of North Vancouver. I’ve heard of hazing and even witnessed one account, but I can

definitely see that the harm that could be committed in this game is worse.

Basically, Gotcha is like a game of tag. Each person receives one bead, and

randomly draws the name of another person in the game. You can choose to either

keep your name a secret, or tell someone else. Trading the name you received is not

allowed, but people do it anyway. You have to “tag” the person you drew, and they

must give you their bead (and if they have other beads, those too) and the name of

their next victim. The game cannot be played on school grounds. You have

immunity if you link arms with a person who is also in the game. As soon as you

unlink, you can and will be tagged. If you are tagged, you are out of the

game. The point of Gotcha is to get all the beads, and there is only one winner.

The winner receives a collective sum of money: $10 from every person playing. The

winner may then keep the money for themselves, or split it with someone who helped

them. So, if you have 200 or more grads playing, the prize is over $2, 000. It

sounds like fun, but people can get really into it for the money. That’s

when the fights, breaking and entering, and the crazy stunts begin.



When Facebook was mentioned about a third of the way through the book, I had to

laugh. It’s become such a staple in the life of the young adult, but I was still

surprised to see it there. I was even more surprised when Hrdlitschka properly

named Facebook terms, like wall and group. Then MSN was mentioned.

Oh, Hrdlitschka knows us too well. That’s one of the things I liked about

Gotcha!; it’s just so easy to relate to. The problems between Katie

and her mother, peer pressure at school, exams, graduation coming up, finding a

dress, and getting a scholarship are all problems that many graduating students, including

myself, have to face. Hrdlitschka also captures the beauty of teenage life. It’s a hard thing to

accomplish; many authors have tried to pull it off and have pretty much failed. Not

only that, Hrdlitschka captured the true pettiness of female adolescent squabbles.



The only problem that I encountered was the emails that Katie writes to her

father. They’re filled with MSN lingo, which is hard to understand because I’m not

used to it. However, it is realistic that she used such language because many

teenagers also use the same lingo on MSN. I could say that there should have been

more of a climax...the climax is pretty good as it is but it could have been better

and more epic. Oh, and last thing: character imagery. I had no idea what the

characters looked like, just a vague outline. I like to picture what’s going on in

the book in my head, so character imagery is important for me.



Overall, I’d rate this book a 9 out of 10. It was

really well written, and really captured the essence of teen life. It was

witty and sarcastic, and relatable. It would have been a full 10 if there was more

of a climax and character imagery...but other than that, thumbs up!




Here’s a quote that captures a little bit of what Gotcha is:



How did the party atmosphere turn this mean-spirited so quickly? I know

Paige’s presence has a strong influence, but something else has taken over here. My

classmates have become vulture-like, circling their prey. I force myself to appear

relaxed because I know that instinctively that, just like animals, if they smell my

fear, they’ll grow even more malicious. It’s not so much losing my bead that I’m

worried about, but the pack mentality that has possessed them. Joel must sense it

too. Gotcha has a reputation for turning vicious.




Except for the vicious parts, Gotcha seems like a fun game, don’t you

think?




Shelley Hrdlitschka is the author of many best-selling titles for

teen readers. She is a teacher, a mom, and a full-time writer. Hrdlitschka enjoys:

many kinds of music, browsing at bookstores and libraries, theatre, travelling to

warm places, and hiking. She lives in North Vancouver, British Columbia with her

husband and three daughters.
Find more about her here:
target="_blank">Shelley Hrdlitschka

Fourth Review - Egghead

At-A-Glance
Title: Egghead

Author: Caroline Pignat

First Copyright Date: 2008

Genre: (Teen) Fiction

General Subject Matter: bullying and the confusion that is high school

Interesting Fact: Multiple first-person. Three different people tell it how it is

Price: $11.95 CDN, or borrow it from MW’s library!










Egghead is a book about bad-boy-meets-good-girl, bad-boy-likes-good-girl, bad-boy-becomes-good-boy-for-good-girl, all the while trying to help another

kid from being bullied. Egghead is not a book I would read again, but it was a good enough read. It was not really my type of book; I felt that it was

too juvenile for me. There were a couple of times that I was fully into Egghead/u>, but for the rest of the book I was just reading without feeling.
Will Reid is not a normal kid. Will loves ants, wears fake turtlenecks, and absolutely hates gym. On the first day of high school, he is a flashing target for

school bullies Shane, Devan, and Brad. Katie has been Will’s friend since elementary school, but she’s tired of defending him day in and day out. Since he

first saw Katie defending Will, Devan has slowly come to realize that backing up Shane in his attacks is mindless and nasty. Then Shane does something

horrible to Will, and neither Devan nor Katie could help him.


The author of Egghead, Caroline Pignat, took experiences from her own life. As a young girl, she witnessed a certain boy in her class who was always

bullied. She had wondered about the consequences if she had interfered. Egghead is written in one of my favourite styles: multiple first person. I

don’t even think that’s the correct literary term, I don’t even think that there is a correct literary term. Let me go Google that. Yeah I was right. What

I’m trying to say is that each chapter is from the perspective of Will, Katie, or Devan. This kind of narrative is my favourite because in a single situation,

no one could think the same thoughts. Will relates to the readers with enigmatic poems, rather than dialogue or

anecdotes. It shows how different he is. Will receives the nickname Egghead after yelling at Shane for squishing a pregnant ant and her eggs.


Besides multiples first person, what I liked about Egghead were the chapter headings. They are different fonts, and I think the fonts reflect the

nature of the characters. Will has his full name (William James Reid) in a techy, streamlined kind of font. This tells me that Will is a formal, smart kid,

smarter than people give him credit for. Katie has just her first name, italicized in a cursive kind of font. This shows that she is gentle. Devan’s solid,

bold, block letters show that he is strong and somewhat stubborn. I liked how all strings were ties, and there was not a feeling of something left unfinished

at the end.


What I didn’t like about Egghead was the lack of imagery. Not much about the setting was described or even the appearance of main characters. All I

know is that Will is scrawny, Katie is tiny and has red hair and freckles, and Devan has blue eyes. Also, I didn’t like the awkward use of slang language. I

can see that Pignat wants to portray a teenager but she uses slang that isn’t really used in popular culture like “s’up” and “lid”. Pignat also overuses

“man” and “holy crap”, which ruins scenes for me. There weren’t a lot of highs and lows in Egghead; it was level for a really long time. The only

exciting scene was three quarters of the way through the book. I put the genre of this book as (Teen) Fiction because I think it would be better suited

for preteens and those still in elementary school. Once you reach high school and have passed the first year, you don’t want to read about “niners”.


Overall, I’d rate Egghead a 6.5 out of 10. Although there wasn’t much imagery and terms were overused, there weren’t any questions I had

to ask in the end. Everything was tied up and covered. The point-five is for the multiple first person :)



This is one of my favourite poems from Egghead, written by William James Reid:


No Difference

I am

Not at all that different

From you.

Unless you consider that

I am

The only one

Who isn’t

Trying to be the

Same.





Caroline Pignat was born in Ireland, raised in Ottawa but now lives in Kanata, Ontario, with her husband and their two children. She started writing in

Grade 4, and has kept every diary since. Before becoming an author, she worked as an elementary teacher, a book seller, a grocery store cashier, a medical

transcriptionist, and Santa’s elf (yes, the real Santa). She also worked as a bank teller for six years and was only robbed at gunpoint three times.

Egghead is her first young adult novel.
Find more about her here: Caroline Pignat

Third Review - Tweaked

At-A-Glance

Title: Tweaked

Author: Katherine Holubitsky

First Copyright Date: 2008

Genre: Teen Fiction

General Subject Matter: Drug (crystal meth) abuse and addiction

Interesting Fact: White Pine award-winner

Price: $9.95 CDN, or borrow it from MW’s library!












Tweaked was not what I expected. It’s one of those books that you pick up and go “Oh that sounds interesting, emotional, and intense. I’m going to read it”. Then you read it and when you’re done you feel nothing. Where hard-hitting emotions should be, there aren’t. There were some good parts of the book, but it lacked the cruel sense of reality that comes with a topic as dangerous and real as crystal meth addiction.

Gordie Jessup is a good kid but he’s living in a nightmare. His older brother Chase is a crystal meth addict. His mom cries all the time and just can’t say no to Chase’s demands for money to get his next fix. His dad tries to help Chase but Chase doesn’t want any of it. Their family is going down the drain financially and emotionally. Gordie is fed up of the manipulation, the lies, and the stealing; but when Gordie decided to step in and help his brother, things go wrong.

I would not recommend this book to adults unless they want to frequently visit Urban Dictionary. There are a lot of slang words used periodically through Tweaked, and even I, a semi-social teenager, had to go look up a few words. Words like: bender, cranked, tweaked, rolled, shooting up, ice, and tracks. Not very pleasant definitions to be found in that list of words let me tell you. For the sake of the title, I will tell you what the definitions of tweaked is: to be really high on methamphetamine (meth). Oh! At one point in the story, Gordie was talking about how he is two UNITS behind in Chemistry. I didn’t know that other schools used units! Wow! Tweaked is written in first-person narrative; Gordie Jessup tells the story.

Let’s cut to the chase. There are a lot of big things I didn’t like about Tweaked. There were a lot of confusing flashbacks that I didn’t realize were flashbacks until I read a part that already happened. Then I had to go back a couple of pages and read it over knowing that it’s a flashback. There was really no sense of time. There were also a lot of sentences that were not properly worded and could easily confuse a reader, even a rabid reader like myself. I had to re-read sentences and paragraphs twice over before I understood what the author was trying to convey. There were two or three really intense scenes in the book, that if worded properly, would’ve made my cry for a very long time. But alas, not a tear was shed over Tweaked. You think I would cry, as I cry easily over books and movies (I am SO ashamed to say that), and also because it’s pretty heavy stuff I’m reading. But no, no salty drops of water ran down my cheeks, on the page, blurring words. By the time I got two -thirds of the way into the book, I was really just reading it because I wanted to find out what happens to Chase at the end, not because it was particularly interesting. Then when I reached the end,
there are SO MANY questions in my head that were left unanswered....important things, too! How did Chase even start doing drugs? Why? What happened to Ryan? Did the cops ever catch DC and Ratchet? What about Jade’s mom? Is she okay? It frustrates me that I will never know the answers to these questions. The storyline was not that well developed, and there weren’t any discernable climaxes.

There were three scenes in Tweaked that I did like. When Gordie entered a drug house to look for Chase, the way the scene was described that sent shivers down my spine. That scene was very, very well written. I would be scared out of my mind if I was Gordie, seeing bodies all over the floor passed out, people doing drugs right out in the open, others convulsing and seizing. Right after this scene, was another well-written scene. Gordie discovers that Chase, after promising to come clean, runs off. Gordie’s frustration being described makes me so frustrated that I sped up my reading because I couldn’t deal with it. The last scene was at the very end, and in that single half-page scene, the whole vicious cycle of crystal meth addictions was summed up, and stark realization hit me and made me think about how hard it is to come off an addiction, and what an amazing thing it is when someone does.

Overall, I’d rate this book a 6 out of 10. Tweaked could have been WAY better, but it wasn’t. Sadly, it fell short of my expectations, and maybe that’s my fault. Or maybe it’s just not a great book. Read it yourself and decide...and then come back and tell me what you think!


I will end this with a quote from the book, to give you an idea of what a crystal meth addict looks like:



Over the past two years, there have been many times what I have seen Chase like that. Hyped up, pupils flickering in his head like a pinball machine, skin yellow-gray, sores festering all over his face. Ready to fight anyone who comes near him because he’s suddenly got it in his head that everyone is out to get him: fists clenched, no muscle left in his 130-pound body; but every stringy sinew stretched taut.

Read the book. Tell me your reactions. Prove me wrong.



This is what Laura thinks:

I liked the book, I was able to get into the characters after a while, although it was really short and could have used some more building up to events. I felt that everything happened really fast, one second the brother who is supposed to be in rehab for 3 months is out in the next chapter, but overall I liked it.





Katherine Holubitsky was born in Toronto, Canada. She has won numerous awards over the past ten years, and written several critically-acclaimed teen fiction novels.
Find more about her and her books here: Katherine Holubitsky

Second Review - Frost

At-A-Glance

Title: Frost
Author: Nicole Luiken
First Copyright Date: 2007
Genre: Teen Fiction
General Subject Matter: Supernatural, mystery, and some romance
Price: $14.95 CDN, or borrow it from MW’s library!



Another Canadian-written novel, Frost is a mysterious book that makes you question the novel’s character’s intentions. It is evident that the author, Nicole Luiken, spent some time doing research which makes the book credible and realistic. There isn’t much about this book I didn’t like. The synopsis at the back of Frost didn’t do much justice to the book itself. I would say that it was much better.
Aspiring hockey player Johnny Van Der Zee is a crazy, life-of-the-party kind of guy –on the outside. On the inside, Johnny is plagued by conflict: Frost, a malevolent creature, keeps Johnny distanced from anyone he loves. If Johnny shows too much affection or too much trust in someone, Frost punishes him by hurting the people he loves. So Johnny can’t love, and he can’t trust, and to top it off; he can’t let anyone know about Frost. But now Frost is going too far. He’s making Johnny do something bad, and it could hurt the whole world. The only people who can save Johnny from Frost are his friends and brother, but they don’t know who they’re up against.
Before the story even began, Luiken wrote an Author’s Note, telling her readers the historical background of the book and what “historical” parts were made up by her for the purpose of the storyline, all in the space of two sentences. This was a good idea, so that readers understand which parts were fictionalized and not draw conclusions.
Frost is told in third-person style, although sometimes it feels like first-person because the characters are so developed. The reason why I categorized Frost as Teen Fiction rather than Teen Science Fiction is because it didn’t feel like sci-fi. For the most part, it seemed like a psychological sort of thing rather than a foreign presence. There is some romance in it – well actually not some but I would definitely not call this a romantic novel. Sure, there was a love-triangle thing going, then a love-square...but then Luiken doesn’t dwell on those things for long. Every point regarding some sort of romance strengthened the storyline and gave depth for the climax to come. Frost is set in Iqaluit, Nunavut. This is significant to the nature and character of Frost, for reasons I will not say!
What I liked about Frost is that it was well researched. The Inuktitut language was correct, the building of a snow house (not IGLOO!) was properly described, and airplanes and jets were accurately named. The characters were developed very well. Small histories and anecdotes were given for the characters, but not all at the same time. They were spread out so that each main character could be revealed at a specific time in the story. This way, I could understand what was going on and why this character did that and so on. There were also bits of funniness that lightened the book. Also, the beginning of each chapter had a temperature heading it, in both Celsius and Fahrenheit. I think that it symbolizes Frost the character. For example if it’s -40°C, you know Frost is mad.
What I didn’t like about Frost was the fact that you had no notion of the passing time. The time has to be assumed, gathered by conversation. Two characters would have just started dating and then BAM it’s one month later. The first chapter was kind of confusing because you couldn’t really understand what’s going on, but it got cleared up more or less in the following chapters. Also, the relationship with Johnny’s second girlfriend was more developed than his relationship with his first, so when he [SPOILER ALERT] dumps his second for his first, it makes you kind of sad. In the end, there are one or two strings left hanging, which is sad because they’re kind of important strings.
Overall I’d rate this book an 8 out of 10. Characters were wonderfully developed and there were well-researched descriptions, but the loose strings kept Frost from reaching a 9.

I’ll end this review with this: I am scared to go to Iqaluit after reading this book.



Nicole Luiken grew up in Alberta, Canada, and completed her first novel at the tender age of thirteen. With encouragement from her family, friends and teachers, Nicole began submitting her manuscripts to publishers. By the time she had graduated from high school she had published three young adult novels. She now writes full-time at home.
Find more about her here: Nicole Luiken