Available:*
Library | Collection | Collection | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Beale Memorial Library (Kern Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Teen Fiction | YA FIC NESS PAT | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Dinuba Library (Tulare Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Young Adult Area | YA FIC NESS PATRICK | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Easton Branch Library (Fresno Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Teen Fiction Area | NESS PA Release | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Huron Branch Library (Coalinga-Huron) | Searching... Unknown | Young Adult Fiction | YA F NES | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Madera County Library (Madera Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Young Adult Section | NESS | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Mariposa Branch Library (Mariposa Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Young Adult Fiction | YA NES | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Mariposa Branch Library (Mariposa Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Young Adult Fiction | YA NES | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Strathmore Library (Tulare Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Young Adult Area | NESS PATRICK | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Tehachapi Branch Library (Kern Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Teen Fiction | YA FIC NESS PAT | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Visalia Library (Tulare Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Young Adult Area | YA FIC NESS PATRICK | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Wasco Branch Library (Kern Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Teen Fiction | YA FIC NESS PAT | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... West Fresno Branch (Fresno Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Teen Fiction Area | NESS PA Release | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Wilson Road Branch (Kern Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Teen Fiction | YA FIC NESS PAT | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Woodward Park Library (Fresno Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Teen Fiction Area | NESS PA Release | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Inspired by Judy Blume's Forever and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, this novel that Andrew Smith calls "beautiful, enchanting, [and] exquisitely written" is a new classic about teenage relationships, self-acceptance--and what happens when the walls we build start coming down. A Kirkus Best Book of 2017!
Adam Thorn doesn't know it yet, but today will change his life.
Between his religious family, a deeply unpleasant ultimatum from his boss, and his own unrequited love for his sort-of ex, Enzo, it seems as though Adam's life is falling apart. At least he has two people to keep him sane: his new boyfriend (he does love Linus, doesn't he?) and his best friend, Angela.
But all day long, old memories and new heartaches come crashing together, throwing Adam's life into chaos. The bindings of his world are coming untied one by o≠ yet in spite of everything he has to let go, he may also find freedom in the release.
From the New York Times bestselling author of A Monster Calls comes a raw, darkly funny, and deeply affecting story about the courage it takes to live your truth.
Author Notes
Patrick Ness was born on October 17, 1971 near Fort Belvoir, Virginia. He studied English Literature and is a graduate of the University of Southern California. He was a corporate writer before moving to London in 1999. He taught creative writing at Oxford University and is a literary critic and reviewer for the Guardian and other major newspapers. He is the author of eight novels including The Rest of Us Just Live Here and a short story collection entitled Topics About Which I Know Nothing. His young adult novels include the Chaos Walking trilogy, More Than This, and Monsters of Men, which won the Carnegie Medal. A Monster Calls won the Kate Greenaway Medal for illustration, the Carnegie Medal, and was made into a movie and released in October 2016.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-Adam, a rising senior with complex social and familial relationships, experiences the worst day of his life to date. The former boyfriend for whom he still has romantic feelings, and his BFF-witty and wise Korean adoptee Angela who might be into both guys and girls-are both going away; his older brother, a seminary student, has gotten a new girlfriend pregnant and turns to Adam to help smooth the way for breaking the news to their fundamentalist preacher father; and Adam's boss fires him when the boy won't accept his sexual advances. Ness manages to pack all this drama into a coherent and compulsively readable story line peopled with credible, rounded characters among the teens and the adults. A secondary plot thread involves a supernatural event unfolding in the same small town, but this extra layer doesn't adhere to Adam's story in any manner that enriches either. Adam's emotional geography is fully stripped and revealed through his conversations with those in his life and his actions. He feels rejected by his parents for his gay identity, which they refuse to acknowledge, and worries about whether he is capable of treating his new boyfriend fairly in light of his lingering feelings for his former one. While there is explicit sex depicted here, it falls well within the bounds of YA and is important in building plot and characters. Discussions revolving around a repressive version of fundamentalist Christianity are also relevant and realistic. VERDICT An excellent choice for all teen collections.-Francisca Goldsmith, Library Ronin, Worcester, MA © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
A heartbreaking dual narrative follows Adam, a gay teenager with homophobic parents, and the ghost of a classmate murdered by her meth-addicted boyfriend, over the course of one, defining day. In the hours before a going-away party for his first love, Adam Thorn has fateful confrontations with his evangelical pastor father and with the creepy boss who has been sexually harassing him. But the real bombshell is dropped when Angela, a friend Adam relies on, announces that she's moving from Washington State to the Netherlands for senior year. Ness (The Rest of Us Just Live Here) interleaves Adam's multipronged crisis with a strand tracking the murdered girl's spirit as it seeks revenge (in the company of a seven-foot-tall faun) against her killer. Adam's story dominates the narrative and provides a frank, riveting portrayal of a gay teenager's sexual awakening (an endnote acknowledges the influence of both Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and Blume's Forever). The paranormal storyline isn't quite as affecting as the plotline that follows Adam, but it conveys a sense of the mystery that can infuse ordinary lives. Ages 14-up. Agent: Michelle Kass, Michelle Kass Associates. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
An extraordinary, ordinary day in the life of Adam Thorn.Seventeen-year-old, tall, white, blond, evangelical-raised Adam begins his day buying chrysanthemums for his overbearing, guilt-inducing mother. From the get-go, some readers may recognize one of many deliberate, well-placed Virginia Woolf references throughout the narrative. He goes on a long run. He has lunch with his bright, smart-alecky best friend, Angela Darlington, who was born in Korea and adopted by her white parents. In a particularly uncomfortable scene, he is sexually harassed by his boss. He also partakes in a 30-plus-page act of intimacy that leaves little to the imagination with his new boyfriend, Linus, also white. The scene is fairly educational, but it's also full of laughter, true intimacy, discomfort, mixed feelings, and more that elevate it far beyond pure physicality. Meanwhile, in parallel vignettes, the ghost of a murdered teenage girl armed with more Woolf references eerily haunts the streets and lake where she was killed. Her story permeates the entire narrative and adds a supernatural, creepy context to the otherwise small town. What makes these scenes rise about the mundane is Ness' ability to drop highly charged emotion bombs in the least expected places and infuse each of them with poignant memories, sharp emotions, and beautifully rendered scenes that are so moving it may cause readers to pause and reflect. Literary, illuminating, and stunningly told. (Fiction. 14-18) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and Judy Blume's Forever: strange bedfellows, yes, but nevertheless the twin inspirations for Ness' introspective latest. In past works, Ness has gone big in scope: the distant dystopian planet of Chaos Walking; the apocalypse in The Rest of Us Just Live Here (2015). Unlikely, then, that this cautiously paced cross section of a life would be his most ambitious yet: it's just one ordinary day for teenager Adam Thorn. In one day, he runs, sees his boyfriend and his best friend, and works at a store. But it's also the day he deals with an inappropriate advance, goes to a farewell party for his ex, and deals with devastating news; it's the day his relationship with his religious family comes to a head. In real time and in memories, Adam fights to connect through walls and to let go of what needs to be released. Meanwhile, the ghost of a murdered girl walks his town, and in the space of one day, her life will change as surely as Adam's. Themes of grief, choice, and resurrection are all at play here, and sex is frankly depicted sometimes as experience, sometimes as intimacy. Part character study, part reckoning, this is a painful, magical gem of a novel that, even when it perplexes, will rip the hearts right out of its readers. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Ness has already collected a hefty international fan base, and a novel partially influenced by the seminal Forever is bound to break barriers for a new generation.--Reagan, Maggie Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Emika Chen is a rainbow-haired, electric skateboarding teenage bounty hunter in a futuristic New York City who, on the verge of getting evicted from her ratty apartment, glitches her way into a massively popular virtual reality game to steal a valuable power-up. The book opens with a mock news story about the game's 21-year-old creator, the mysterious Hideo Tanaka; an appended correction notes: "An earlier version of this story mistakenly described Hideo Tanaka as a millionaire. He is a billionaire." Whoops. Hideo, impressed that Emika has managed to breach his system (this is also a metaphor), flies her to Tokyo in his private jet to compete as a wild card in the international Warcross championships and figure out the identity of a certain nefarious cybercriminal. The book is as visual, kinetic and furiously paced as any video game; Lu, a former art director for video games as well as the author of the best-selling Legend series, has quite the way with otherworldly action scenes. Each round of the game is played in a different immersive environment; special NeuroLink glasses allow the real and virtual worlds to mesh. One particularly vivid round takes place in an icy wilderness filled with glaciers, "shifting and cracking under their own weight," with monstrous animals frozen inside them - a white wolf with a missing eye, a snakelike dragon, a woolly mammoth. There's romance, a lost sibling, spying, a diverse cast of gamers, and nifty tattoos. It's "Gleaming the Cube" meets "Strange Days" meets "Blade Runner," and it's a lot of fun. If the Cliffhanger ending seems irksome, never fear, this one's a series opener. RENEGADES By Marissa Meyer 556 pp. Feiwel and Friends. $19.99. So much cool stuff but, alas, so little editing. Set in the Gothamesque Gation City, this first in a series introduces powerful superheroes and their down-but-not-out nemeses. Years ago, the Renegades (the good guys - or are they?) defeated the Anarchists, who have retreated to crumbling subway tunnels. Teenage Anarchist Nova (villain name: Nightmare), who blames the Renegades and their governing Council for her parents' murder, goes undercover to infiltrate them. But she doesn't count on an attraction to the enigmatic and hot Adrian, whose two dads are Renegade royalty, Captain Chromium and the Dread Warden. He and Nova debate the idea of vigilante justice and question whether Renegades allow regular people to shrug off responsibility for creating an ethical society There are dozens of characters and secret identities, and awkward phrases like "his pallor was ghastly pale" and "his face took on a look of exultation." It can feel like a too-long X-Men movie. But some of the characters' powers are superfun (creating tattoos and drawings that become real, controlling an army of bees) and when everyone learns everyone else's identities and secret pasts - presumably in the next book - well, Holy Surprise Party, Batman. WONDER WOMAN: WARBRINGER By Leigh Bardugo 369 pp. Random House. $18.99 Feminism is the invisible jet powering this literary revamp of the Amazon princess. Bardugo's version offers a new explanation for Princess Diana's departure from Themyscira. A young woman named Alia Mayeux Keralis is shipwrecked off the coast, and Diana rescues her. But Alia is a Warbringer, a descendant of Helen of Troy whose very presence causes conflict and chaos. If Diana can help Alia get to Helen's final resting place before time runs out, she can change Alia's destiny... and the world's. After a slow start (the somber Themysciran scene-setting and stilted, formal way the Amazons speak aren't much fun), the plot takes off, with a lot of action and humor. Alia, who is half Greek-American and half black, brings Diana to her country (When the duo magically land in New York Harbor, Diana looks up to see "a vibrant yellow torch held aloft by the statue of an Amazon, her stern face framed by a crown like a sunburst.") They team up with Alia's older brother Jason, crush object Theo and best friend Nim, racing to change the course of history Meanwhile, terrifying gods of war and chaos, as well as human soldiers, keep attacking. Nim is a delicious character - an asymmetrical-haircut-sporting IndianAmerican girl with multiple piercings and a wicked sense of humor. Bardugo makes her both fat and hot, describing her as a "sparkly, round-cheeked sparrow." As always, Diana's interactions with the Western world are a good time ("Is Google one of your gods?" she asks). And it's lovely that this is a hero's journey times two. Alia taps into her own bravery and Diana learns about sexism, racism and something the Amazons have always dismissed: the courage, resilience and ingenuity of mere mortals. RELEASE By Patrick Ness 277 pp. HarperTeen. $17.99. Every sentence in this gorgeous little novel feels perfect and necessary Ness, a Carnegie Medal winner, has said that "Release" is influenced by two classics: Virginia Woolf's "Mrs Dalloway" and Judy Blume's "Forever." (I know, right?) The book has the structure of the former - a vast amount of emotional action packed into a single day - and the hyperintensity, sexual heat and empathy for teenagers of the latter. Adam Thorn is 17 and gay, a conservative preacher's son trapped in rural Washington State. He wants to love and be loved, and he wants to feel understood. He picks up a rose at a flower shop (who will he give it to? His best friend, Angela? His ex, Enzo? His current boyfriend, Linus?) and pricks his thumb ... and as the drop of blood falls we're suddenly in a different world. There's a Queen, a faun, a vengeful spirit, a murder and a sense of encroaching doom. The action switches back and forth between the two worlds, both filled with grief and loss and mistakes. Gradually, it becomes clear that both narratives are about the power of a single moment to change everything. It sounds heavy, but it isn't - Adam and his friends are very funny, and seeing flawed characters trying their hardest to forgive and to grow is truly touching. Also, the sex scenes are so hot they practically set the pages on fire. Ness's writing is lush without seeming to strain: A bad boyfriend is "all neck and rage," Mount Rainier at sunset turns "an unseemly, intimate pink." In an era when young adult books often feel bloated and meandering, this focused, humane book is a joy IN OTHER LANDS By Sarah Rees Brennan 437 pp. Big Mouth House. $19.95. "In Other Lands" is at once a classic school story, a coming-of-age story and a parody of Harry Potter. It's hilarious and sneakily moving. Elliot Schafer is Harry Potter if Harry had been abandoned instead of merely orphaned. Convinced of his unlovability, he wields sarcasm and braininess as weapons. As the book opens, Elliot is 13. On a field trip to Devon, England, he sees a wall few other kids can see. On the other side: the otherlands. Elliot, a huge reader of fantasy novels, is thrilled. Alas, the humans and harpies and trolls and elves and mermaids and vicious red-eyed, virginity-obsessed unicorns populating the otherlands turn out to be perpetually at war, and Elliot is a pacifist. "Oh no," he moans, as a dagger flies by his head. "This is magic Sparta." But he has no reason to go home, so he enters the Border camp's councilor-in-training program. And he makes two non-nerd friends: A gorgeous elf named Serene-Heart-in-theChaos-of-Battle and a perfect-seeming blond human jock. Brennan subverts the familiar Y.A. love triangle in uproarious, touching, unexpected ways, and her commentaries on gender roles, sexual identity and toxic masculinity are very witty Elven culture, for instance, views men as the weaker sex. "A true gentleman's heart is as sacred as a temple, and as easily crushed as a flower," Serene informs Elliot. When another elf tells him, "I was saddened to hear Serene had launched a successful attack on the citadel of your virtue," Elliot assures her, "The citadel was totally into surrendering." Best of all, over four years in the otherlands, Elliot grows from a defensive, furious, grieving child into a diplomatic, kind, menschy hero. MARJORiE ingall is a columnist for Tablet and the author of "Mamaleh Knows Best: What Jewish Mothers Do to Raise Successful, Creative, Empathetic, Independent Children."