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Summary
Summary
When Suzette comes home to Los Angeles from her boarding school in New England, she isn't sure if she'll ever want to go back. LA is where her friends and family are (along with her crush, Emil). And her stepbrother, Lionel, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, needs her emotional support.But as she settles into her old life, Suzette finds herself falling for someone new ... the same girl her brother is in love with. When Lionel's disorder spirals out of control, Suzette is forced to confront her past mistakes and find a way to help her brother before he hurts himself--or worse.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 10 Up-Suzette has been devoted to Lionel from an early age, and vice versa. At first glance, they don't look like siblings-a black girl and white boy barely a year apart in age-but their blended family is closely knit. At her parents' insistence, Suzette has been away at boarding school since Lionel's mental health began to deteriorate and he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Now she's back in L.A. for the summer, and she finds more complications waiting. Suzette is dealing with the aftermath of a secret relationship with her roommate at school, new feelings for her childhood friend Emil, and an attraction to the same girl her brother likes, and the secrets Lionel wants her to keep are the last thing she needs. Intersectional and honest, this book covers topics of mental health, sexuality, and family without sugarcoating or melodrama. The supporting characters are just as vivid as the leads, with full personalities and backgrounds of their own (for instance, Emil is black and Korean and wears hearing aids) that are never a cheap plot point. Suzette is a sympathetic and flawed character, struggling to overcome her own fears to do right by the people she cares about. VERDICT A moving, diverse exploration of the challenges of growing up and the complicated nature of loyalty. Recommended for all YA collections.-Amy Diegelman, formerly at Vineyard Haven Public Library, MA © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
After a year at boarding school, 16-year-old Suzette is happy to be home for the summer, but that doesn't mean life is simple. Her stepbrother, Lionel, has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder; Suzette has just had her first same-sex relationship (and first encounter with homophobia); and she's attracted to both her longtime friend Emil and her flirtatious coworker Rafaela-whom Lionel also likes. Although love and sexuality are important to the story, its core is Suzette's feelings of responsibility for Lionel and uncertainty about how to help him. Colbert (Pointe) powerfully depicts the difficulties that mental illness presents not just for those diagnosed but for the people around them, and her characters reflect the diversity of Los Angeles. Suzette and her mother are black, Lionel and his father are white, and Suzette's friends and love interests are ethnically and sexually varied. While the characters occasionally feel slightly idealized-Suzette always tries to do the right thing, her parents are unfailingly accepting, and her friends have an impressive ability to articulate what they feel and why-it's a moving and well-realized examination of secrecy, trust, and intimacy. Ages 15-up. Agent: Tina Wexler, ICM. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Sixteen-year-old Suzette was sent to boarding school when her bookish older brother, Lionel, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but now she's back in Los Angeles for the summer.Despite the strange looks their family attractsSuzette and her mom are black, while Lionel and his dad are whiteLionel and Suzette were always close before Lionel's diagnosis. With Suzette back home, Lionel confides in her that he's going off his medication. Fearing that to divulge his secret will ruin any chance of rebuilding their bond, Suzette keeps quiet even though she feels responsible for her brother's well-being. Simultaneously, Suzette balances her blooming feelings for Emil Choi, a sunny, biracial (black/Korean) boy with Mnire's disease, and for Rafaela, a pansexual Latinawhom, disastrously, Lionel is also falling for. To make matters worse, Suzette is still grappling with a homophobic act that exposed her relationship with her white boarding school roommate, Iris. Suzette's engrossing present-tense narration intertwines with sporadicbut pertinentflashback chapters. Colbert (Pointe, 2014) sensitively confronts misconceptions about mental illness, bisexuality, and intersectional identity ("people have too many questions when you're black and Jewish," thinks Suzette). A vibrantly depicted Los Angeles and a rich, though at-times unwieldy cast of characters create a convincing world. Readers will empathize with Suzette as she explores both her sexuality and the tricky line between honesty and betrayal. (Fiction. 14-18) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Suzette's back in California for the summer after spending the year at boarding school in New England, and she's looking forward to being back home, though she's nervous about reuniting with her stepbrother, Lion. Before she left for school, she broke a promise to Lion and told their parents his bipolar disorder was getting out of control. Now that she's back, she's worried she irrevocably altered their relationship, and while she's trying to rebuild it, Lion starts to spiral again. Meanwhile, Suzette is facing some new truths about herself, too. At boarding school, she was surprised to fall hard for her roommate, Iris, and back home, she's even more surprised to discover feelings for her old friend Emil, her mother's best friend's son. As the plot bounces back and forth in time, Colbert juggles all the moving parts expertly, handily untangling Suzette's complicated feelings about herself and her relationships and gradually illuminating pithy moments of discovery. One of many notable strengths here is Colbert's subtle, neatly interwoven exploration of intersectionality: Lion is desperate to be defined by something other than his bipolar disorder, and Suzette learns to navigate key elements of her identity black, Jewish, bisexual in a world that seems to want her to be only one thing. This superbly written novel teems with meaningful depth, which is perfectly balanced by romance and the languid freedom of summer.--Hunter, Sarah Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
We've heard all the sayings: Family comes first. Family is forever. You can't choose your family! But the reality isn't always so simple. Benway's unforgettable novel explores the paradoxes and entanglements of unconventional families through the story of three biological half-siblings who don't meet until their teens. When 16-year-old Grace - A.P. chem student, cross-country runner and allaround good girl - gets pregnant and gives up her infant for adoption, it leaves her both emotionally shattered and motivated to find her own biological family, whom she knows nothing about. Enter Maya and Joachim, who have been growing up in neighboring towns but in very different circumstances. Fifteen-year-old Maya was also adopted as a baby, but has always felt the odd one out in her wealthy family. Lately, her mom's drinking is out of control and her parents are splitting up. Seventeen-year-old Joaquin, meanwhile, never even got adopted; still in foster care, he has been bumped around the system "like a set of keys someone had misplaced." As the three gradually bond over shared quirks and feelings of abandonment, Grace convinces the other two that they need to find their birth mother. It's a melodrama, to be sure, but with as much brain as heart. Benway ("Emmy & Oliver") writes with remarkable control and has the rare talent of almost vanishing as an author as she inhabits each character's perspective. Grace, Maya and Joaquin leap off the page as living, breathing teenagers, individual down to their fingerprints. The novel is also a brilliant exercise in empathy: As the siblings share their secret stories, we see them develop outrage, love, tenderness and sympathy for each other. As readers, we can't help doing the same. DEAR MARTIN By Nie Stone 210 pp. Crown Books for Young Readers. $17.99. (Ages 14 and up) As the success of Angie Thomas's "The Hate U Give" makes clear, Y.A. readers have a hunger for stories dramatizing racial profiling and the quest for social justice. Nie Stone's powerful debut about a striving black teenager trying his hardest to play by society's rules introduces Justyce McAllister, a scholarship student at an elite private school in Atlanta. Ranked fourth in his senior class, he's captain of the debate team and a contender for Yale. But when he's roughed up by the police who assume he was trying to steal his ex-girlfriend's Mercedes he realizes that he'll never stop being judged by his skin color. Tensions rise when one classmate accuses him of unfairly benefiting from affirmative action and another dresses as a Klansman for Halloween. (It's a "massive political statement about racial equality and broken barriers," explains the privileged bro.) All hell breaks loose when Justyce and his best friend get into a deadly altercation with an off-duty police officer. Stone packs an impressive spectrum of characters and viewpoints into 210 fastpaced pages: from Manny, the son of wealthy black professionals who tells Justyce he's being overly "sensitive" and confesses that he's "scared of black girls," to SJ, Justyce's civil rights-crusading Jewish debate partner (and guilty crush). While not all the characters are well developed, the smart, soul-searching Justyce is a hero readers will enjoy rooting for. "I thought if I made sure to be an upstanding member of society, I'd be exempt from the stuff THOSE black guys deal with, you know?" he writes. (The novel's title come from his journal entries, which are written in the form of letters to Martin Luther King Jr.) "Really hard to swallow that I was wrong." I AM NOT YOUR PERFECT MEXICAN DAUGHTER By Erika L. Sánchez 344 pp. Knopf. $17.99. (Ages 14 and up) Don't be fooled by the dreary title. This gripping debut about a Mexican-American misfit is alive and crackling - a gritty tale wrapped in a page-turner. The story begins when Olga, the seemingly "perfect" older sister of 15-year-old Chicagoan Julia Reyes, is killed in a bus accident. Olga was quiet, modest and infuriatingly devoted to their traditionbound parents - the opposite of Julia, an aspiring writer and rebellious smartmouth whose worst fear is that she'll "end up working in a factory, marry some loser, and have his ugly children." After Julia finds evidence that "Saint Olga" may have had a less-than-holy double life, she becomes obsessed with uncovering her dead sister's secrets. Part detective story, part coming-ofage tale, Sanchez's novel doesn't shy from heavy subject matter. Julia lives in a world where teenagers are no strangers to poverty, sexual assault,, domestic violence and fear of deportation. And Julia's relationship with her mother, who calls her a "huevona" and a "malcriada" (bonus: readers get a crash course in Spanish insults) is a sticky stew of anger, love, guilt and resentment. The story spirals into dark territory when Julia begins to suffer from clinical depression. But she's so blunt, funny and brave that she never becomes an object of our pity. And her moments of joy - as during a visit to her parents' hometown in Mexico, when she sits under the stars while her aunt braids her hair, "her fingers cool against the back of my neck" - are transcendent. LITTLE & LION By Brandy Colbert 327 pp. Little, Brown. $17.99. (Ages 14 and up) Set in the privileged climes of boho Los Angeles, Colbert's novel depicts the type of America that keeps hard-core traditionalists up at night. The central family consists of a black mom (a screenwriter), a white dad (an artisanal woodworker), and their two kids from previous relationships : 15-year-old Suzette and 16-year-old Lionel. Suzette (aka Little) is black and just figuring out she's bisexual. Lionel is white, bipolar and a fan of The New Yorker. And oh yeah, the parents aren't married and the whole family is Jewish. Arriving home for the summer after her first year at boarding school, Suzette is desperate to regain her old closeness with Lion, who's been keeping her at arm's length since his diagnosis. She's also racked with guilt about something that happened back at school between her and Iris, the first girl she's ever slept with. Suzette doesn't even know if she's 100 percent gay; she finds herself equally attracted to a guy (Emil, a half-black, half-Korean childhood pal) and a new girl (Rafaela, a sexy-tough Texan). Adding to the hot mess, Lionel falls for the same girl as his sister. Colbert writes about physical attraction with a real sizzle and she has concocted her bizarre love rectangle so ingeniously, readers will be dying to know - on the most basic level - who will end up with whom. And though its prose can be a bit stilted (Suzette says things like, "We hustle to our respective sides of the car") the book feels urgent and true. NOTHING By Annie Barrows 212 pp. Greenwillow Books. $17.99. (Ages 14 and up) Fans of the beloved middle grade series "Ivy + Bean" may feel a flush of familiarity upon meeting the 15-year-old bestfriend duo at the center of Barrow's first Y.A. novel. Charlotte is light-brownhaired and introspective, with literary aspirations; Frankie is a dark-haired, impulsive go-getter. Think: Ivy and Bean, now with angst and four-letter words. The novel's name comes from Charlotte's assertion that "nothing" happens in their safe, dull lives. And so she decides to write a book called "Nothing," tracing the course of her and Frankie's year: "It'll be, like, a searing document of today's youth and how incredibly boring our lives are!" In chapters that bounce between thirdperson perspective and Charlotte's confessional pages, the best friends gab, text, do homework, get high, buy burritos and mascara, humor their parents and obsess over their love lives (or lack thereof). Frankie considers applying to private school and learns to drive. Charlotte develops an intense textual relationship with a boy she's never met named Sid (she doesn't know what he looks like because Sid has a "no-picture rule"). But just because the stakes are low doesn't mean the book lacks depth. Barrows captures the highs and lows of her characters' emotional lives with remarkable feeling, revealing how even the most joined-at-the-hip BFFs inevitably have secrets and resentments. Best of all is Charlotte's voice, a hyperactive streamof-consciousness gush . Spending time with these two is a lovely, low-key pleasure. CATHERINE HONG, a contributing editor at Elle Decor, blogs about children's books at mrslittle.com.
