Title: Wild Awake

Author: Hilary T. Smith

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books

Release Date: May 28th, 2013

When Kiri’s parents leave her home alone for a few weeks she’s ready for the freedom it gives her. She’ll spend the summer practicing for her piano showcase, rehearsing for Battle of the Bands, and trying to turn her bandmate Lukas into her boyfriend. When a man calls her house and says he has things belonging to Kiri’s sister who died several years ago she can’t stop herself from going to meet him. Learning the truth about her sister and falling for a guy she never expected are just the first steps of Kiri’s summer spiraling out of control.

Wild Awake is another title to add to the list of strong 2013 debuts. One of the book’s strengths is Kiri’s voice and characterization. When we first met Kiri she is a talented and mostly focused teenager, the kind of girl with a color coded practice schedule whose parents don’t hesitate to leave her on her own.

As Kiri learns the truth about not only her sister’s life and death the grief triggers some mental health problems for her. Smith does an amazing job of making Kiri’s slide into mania believable from attempts at self-medication with drugs to the deteriorating grasp she has on her music.

We can feel Kiri losing herself to her illness in passages like:

“I feel like a tire rolling down a hill, heavy and fast and completely indestructible, and if there was ever a point when I could have slowed down, that point is teensy tiny far behind me now. ”

“My thoughts feel like a TV with the volume all messed up: one moment, everything sounds normal, then suddenly it’s BLARING LOUD, then normal again before I can be totally sure the loud part even happened. I pinch myself on the leg, annoyed. Just quit it.”

I struggle sometimes to talk about the strength of the writing itself, but I do feel that it’s particularly strong here.

Another strength of Wild Awake is how the author resists telling us about the secondary characters via Kiri’s opinions of them and shows us things about them instead. Details like Kiri’s parents’ behavior at Sukey’s art opening, Skunks’s radio collection and the way he opens his door, and the piano teacher sitting on her exercise ball tell us more about them than Kiri could directly.

This is not meant as an actual serious critique of the book, but is totally a personal idiosyncrasy: I like more Canada in my books set in Canada.  You didn’t stop at a coffee shop, you stopped at Tim Horton’s. It wasn’t seventh grade, it’s grade seven. A lot of the setting details were there, except for actually telling us it’s Vancouver. I wonder if editors think Americans will be turned off by it?

I have to admit I don’t really have any good read-a-likes for this one. It’s so different in tone from 17 and Gone despite somewhat similar subjects. If you know of any please share them in the comments.

*Digital ARC provided by publisher

Title: Transparent

Author: Natalie Whipple

Publisher: HarperTeen

Release Date:  May 21, 2013

Fiona is invisible, which makes her the perfect tool for her father’s organized crime ring. She can spy, steal, and if her father gets his way even kill without anyone even knowing she was there. This is not the life she wants for herself, so she and her mother go on the run from her father and cruel older brother. It’s never worked before, but this time Fiona actually has friends. Can they help her avoid a life as her father’s invisible assassin?

The premise of Transparent is really interesting, unfortunately the book itself doesn’t quite live up to it’s potential. A drug meant to protect earlier generations has left mutations that give some humans special powers. The same drug is now illegal and valuable on the black market because it enhances those powers. It’s unclear if the crime syndicates exist because of this or are just a result of the decline of civilization in general.

Transparent starts off really strong with Fiona and her mother on a mission to spy on her father’s competition. If the entire book had been action packed like that, even if Fiona was set on using her situation for good, this would be a much different review. Even parts that should be exciting, like Fiona hiding in the desert lack the necessary tension.

Sadly, once Fiona and her mother skip town what we get is mostly a high school story about a girl trying to fit in and settle on the right guy. We spend a lot of time on Fiona’s lack of math ability, to the point this reader assumed it was something her father caused in some way.  This doesn’t really go anywhere other than Fiona’s barely developed romance with her tutor.

Despite the idea that Fiona wants to to take control of her own life she doesn’t starve or dehydrate after running off because the big strong boys leave her food.  In fact, Fiona never really saves herself but relies on the boys and her brother Miles to make the ultimate move.

This does have some reluctant reader potential, but I’m uncertain how many would stick around to the end. Readers who are interested in the unusual abilities of the characters should try Pivot Point by Kasie West.