Okay, these two books have nothing in common except that I read them back-to-back-ish in my quest to read all the Mass. Teen Choice book award nominees. But now that I think about it, they share a thread of the eternal teenage struggle of maintaining one's individuality and identity in the face of near-constant observation. It might be a stretch, but hear me out.
TRUTH IS is the story of Truth Bangura who is the daughter of a distant and controlling mother who reminds Truth frequently that giving birth at 17 ruined her life. Truth's dad has never been in the picture. When Truth is 17 she finds herself pregnant and has an abortion. But this is not the whole story. Truth is a poet, a talented and devoted poet who is part of a slam poetry team. When one of her performances is recorded, a performance that contains the story of her complicated relationship with her mother as well as her choice to terminate her pregnancy, it goes viral. Everyone now knows her biggest secrets.
This is a novel in verse that reads like a novel in VERSE. It is not one of those books that claims to be, but really just leaves out the descriptions and character development to have fewer words. Truth contains multitudes, as do the secondary characters - her parents, her teammates and her shitty school friend. Her anguish and her victories feel earned and I closed the book feeling like I knew Truth.
THE BEST OF ALL WORLDS is a bit sci-fi, a bit dystopia and compulsively readable. Xavier goes to sleep at his parents' lakeside cabin one night only to find that in the morning the lake has disappeared, along with the lake, the car, the wifi and every other person on the planet. He, his dad and his pregnant step-mom figure out that they are stuck in a bubble with seemingly no escape. There is a time jump and we see the family, now with a little bother. Soon another family shows up with a completely different perspective on their situation and, well, they have some problematic politics. (That's a nice way of saying they are southern conservative racists. At least the parents.
So I read some Goodreads reviews to try to find the little brother's name and it seems like lots of people have a problem with the fact that the Canadian liberals vs. American conservatives set up is anti-American. To which I would reply not all Americans! But still people like that exist in both camps and I think Oppel is going for the conflict, not for a nuanced commentary on our relationship with our neighbors to the north. Also, there are complaints that the female characters are not a fully developed as the male ones. My thought is that since it is a male protagonist and the secondary characters are SECONDARY, this makes sense. I read it for the story - How will they get along? Will they escape? Both of these questions were answered satisfactorily in my estimation. Yep, no one is perfect, but they did the job for me. I whipped through this book and found it to be an interesting ride.
The more I think about it, the more I think this should have been two separate posts, but it's too late now!
