Books I've Read: The Vinyl Underground

I really enjoyed this piece of historical fiction.  Set in 1968, Ronnie's brother, Bruce,  has recently been killed in Vietnam.  Now he's about to graduate and the draft hangs over him.  Despite having already lost one son to the war, Ronnie's father is determined to see his second son honor the country with his service too.

When Ronnie meets Hana, the new girl who moves in across the street, his thinking begins to change.  She's half-Japanese and faces daily slurs about her race at the still-segregated school they attend in small-town Florida.  Having come from Chicago, Hana has new ideas about the war and justice and many other things Ronnie has never thought about before.

Along with Ronnie's best friend, Milo, and Bruce's best friend Lewis, Ronnie and Hana start up a club, The Vinyl Underground, as a way to share the music all four kid love.  But their weekly meetings become more politically charged as the conversation flows.  Before too long, the group have come up with an audacious plan to keep Ronnie from being drafted.

Things should calm down for Ronnie once the threat of going to war is lifted from his future, but instead, an act of racially charged violence shatters their tight-knit group and together they plan an act of revenge that may just change the lives of their peers forever.

The characters in this book feel very real and complex.  They are children, yet face the very real possibility of being sent to a foreign country to be killed.  How they are expected to go to school and study the heroics of American politicians in the face of this level of terror is beyond me.  This would have been a very real fear at this time, and I loved how creative these characters are in their planning.

I would definitely recommend this one, even if you're not interested in historical fiction.  The themes explored here are just a relevant today.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a review, so thanks, NetGalley!

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

During the tumultuous year of 1968, four teens are drawn together: Ronnie Bingham, who is grieving his brother’s death in Vietnam; Milo, Ronnie’s bookish best friend; “Ramrod,” a star athlete who is secretly avoiding the draft; and Hana, the new girl, a half-Japanese badass rock-n-roller whose presence doesn’t sit well with their segregated high school.

The four outcasts find sanctuary in “The Vinyl Underground,” a record club where they spin music, joke, debate, and escape the stifling norms of their small southern town. But Ronnie’s eighteenth birthday is looming. Together, they hatch a plan to keep Ronnie from being drafted. But when a horrific act of racial-charged violence rocks the gang to their core, they decide it’s time for an epic act of rebellion.

Weekly Goals 2-3-20

Can you believe it's already March?  The year is spinning away from underneath me!

I had a good weekend, but I didn't get any writing done so it wasn't great.  Standing Too Close still doesn't have its ending written.  So that's my goal for this week.  Get the ending done.  Then my goal for the month is to get the rest of the book finished.   I'm determined to get this one out to readers in April.  It's been far too long to get it to this point.

So that's my goal for both the week and the month.  What are your goals?

Celebrate the Small Things 28-2-20

This post is part of Lexa Cain's blog hop, Celebrate the small things. Head on over there to sign up!

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

It has been one of those weeks that felt really long so I'm grateful for the weekend even though it's going to be a busy one.  My son's band is playing at a street festival and after being away last weekend, my house needs some serious cleaning.  Plus my folks are back from the beach house, so we need to go and catch up with them.

So once again, I'm going to struggle to find any hours in which to write.  I'm so close to the end of this story, it's frustrating not to have the time to sit down and just finish it.  Especially now that I pretty much know how I want to end it.

Maybe next weekend will be the weekend I get that time...

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Read: The Opposite of Falling Apart

As someone who has written a novel about an amputee (Stumped), the description of this book was enough to have me begging NetGalley for the opportunity to read this one. Thankfully they said yes!

Over a year after losing his leg, Jonas still isn't in a good place. He's still angry at the world for allowing this to happen to him and spends most of his time hiding out in his room. His prosthetic leg has been in the closet so long it has dust on it and he quit physical therapy to learn how to use it better months ago. He dragged himself through his last few months at high school on crutches and is preparing to drag himself off to college the same way.

When his mother begs him to run a quick errand, Jonas reluctantly agrees, putting on the now-ill-fitting prosthetic and getting behind the wheel of a car for the first time since the accident. On the way, he freaks out a little at the sight of a truck like the one that ran into him on that terrible day and that moment of distraction sends his vehicle into the back of Brennan's.

Brennan has her own demons. She's struggled with anxiety for years, but has never told anyone quite how crippling it really is. She fights through every day using a mixture of rituals and writing to keep herself together enough to manage a few everyday interactions. She doesn't want to deal with insurance or having to see Jonas again, so tells him not to worry about the dent he's made in her car. He refuses to take no for an answer so they exchange numbers.

Much of Brennan and Jonas' burgeoning relationship develops through the texts they send each other. Both are isolated and largely friendless. Both are dealing with parents who, while well-meaning, are suffocating them. Both are afraid to go to college where things will be unfamiliar, challenging and strange.

Before long, the texts turn into meetings in person. It turns out they are heading to colleges close to each other - so close, one of Jonas' classes is on Brennan's campus. As they struggle through their first semester at college, Jonas and Brennan turn to each other more and more often, finally realizing their friendship is turning into something else, something bigger and far more overwhelming than either are prepared for.

I really enjoyed this book. Both main characters had real problems to deal with and the ways they coped and reacted felt authentic, even when they frustrated me. Jonas and Brennan are sweet kids and I was rooting for them to work out ways to overcome their issues and realize they were better together than they were on their own.

I also liked that their parents were part of the picture and were just as clumsy in the way they dealt with their kids' problems as their kids. It was clear they really loved them and wanted the best for them, but they were no better prepared to deal with these issues.

So I would definitely recommend this one.

But don't just listen to me. Here's the blurb:

After losing his leg in a terrible car accident, Jonas Avery can’t wait to start over and go to college. Brennan Davis would like nothing more than to stay home and go to school, so she can keep her anxiety in check. When the two accidentally meet the summer before they move away, they’ll push each other to come to terms with what’s holding them back, even as they’re pulled closer to taking the biggest leap of all—falling in love. The Opposite of Falling Apart has more than 2.1 million reads on Wattpad.

Weekly Goals 24-2-20

As I suspected, I didn't get a lot of writing done over the weekend.  Any, actually.  Although I had a lot of time in the car to let my imagination roam free, so that was good, to a point.

So this week's goal is to finish sketching in the ending to the book-with-no-ending so it's at least got its shape there for me to play with.  Then I can go and fill in the gaps.

And that's about it for goals this week.  Not huge, I know...

What about you?  Anything big planned?

Celebrate the Small Things 21-2-20

This post is part of Lexa Cain's blog hop, Celebrate the small things. Head on over there to sign up!

What am I celebrating this week?

I'm going away for the weekend!  My bestie is singing in an opera and my partner and I are going to go and see her perform.  I haven't seen her in over a year, so I'm very excited to catch up, not to mention seeing her sing.  It's the first time she's done opera, but I have no doubt she will be incredible.

Unfortunately going away means I'll get little to no writing time this weekend, so once again, the book-without-an-ending will not get finished.  I've done some work on it this week, but not nearly as much as I would have liked.  Maybe I'll take another day off soon to spend a day writing....

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Read: Snowflake, AZ

This was an interesting book, but not one I enjoyed an enormous amount.  It's about environmental illness and a community built in the desert for those suffering from these illnesses to live without the chemicals and disturbances of the modern world.

The main character is Ash, an eighteen-year-old who stumbles upon Snowflake, Arizona while searching for his step-brother, Bly.  He finds Bly, but also finds much more.

Not long after arriving in Snowflake, Ash succumbs to the illness the other residents suffer from and finds himself seriously debilitated by it.  When he goes to a doctor, she tells him it's all in his mind, that there is nothing physically wrong with him.  Yet any time Ash ventures away from Snowflake with its specially built houses, his illness worsens.

So he stays in Snowflake, learning all he can from the eccentric group of residents scattered through the high-altitude desert.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is imploding in some mysterious way, but cloistered away in the safety of this community, Ash is unaware.

I found this book a frustrating read.  I found the concept interesting, but something about the way it was written felt really distancing and I never really warmed to any of the characters, especially Ash, the narrator.  A lot of things happened to him, but I never felt like he had any real agency or did anything to change or drive his own destiny.  He just drifted through the story, absorbing things other people told him or that he read in a way that made me feel like he was being constantly manipulated by everyone around him.

I wasn't even convinced that his illness wasn't something he picked up from one of the others in the desert community.  I wanted to believe he was genuinely ill and that this environmentally caused illness was real, but because he seemed so suggestible, it was difficult not to believe he was made ill because he heard about these illnesses from the people around him.  Ash needed somewhere to belong, and by becoming sick like the others, he became a part of the community.

So this is one of those books that doesn't quite manage to execute its ideas as well as I might have hoped.  That said, it's still interesting and there are some ideas in there that will probably stick with me for a while.

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

Ash gets on a Greyhound bus to the place Bly was last seen: Snowflake, Arizona. Six thousand feet up in the wide red desert, Ash meets Mona; her goat, Socrates; her dog, Cooper; and finds stepbrother Bly, too.

In their ramshackle homes, the walls lined with tinfoil, Mona and her neighbors are all sick. But this isn’t any ordinary sickness: modern life has poisoned them, and when Ash too falls ill, the doctor’s response is, “It’s all in your mind.” Meanwhile, as Ash lives through a cycle of illness and recovery and loss, the world beyond is succumbing to its own affliction: a breakdown of civilization only distantly perceived by Ash and the isolated residents of Snowflake, from which there may or may not be a chance for recovery. This humane and thoughtful novel is about resilience, trust, family, and love, when all seems lost.