The Probability of Miracles by Wendy Wunder

Review: The Probability of Miracles explores what’s in a life. Who defines it, and, if you only had one summer to live your life, what would you fit into it?

The Probability of Miracles is heartbreakingly sad. And for that I commend Wendy Wunder, because very few authors are brave enough to end a story on a sad note. Many authors feel that a fairy tale ending is the key

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to a good story, but after reading this book, I think that the opposite may be true.

I know a lot of people who are scared of dying. And that fear stems from the scary invisibility of death. It comes from the idea that you may lose yourself, or someone you love. But for many people,  they are not as scared for themselves as they are for other people. And I think that this holds true and is exemplified in The Probability of Miracles.

This book is full of joy, fear, and a tangible ache as Cam makes her way through what she is sure will be a very short life.

I would give this book to my best friend, or my mother. I would give this to my Aunt, or my fifteen year old cousin.

Summary:

SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!

Campbell Cooper is living with a disease that is beyond curing; neuroblastoma. Neuroblastoma is typically identified as a baby cancer, and in babies, it can be fairly harmless. But in adolescents, it is very difficult to treat, and has a very low rate of successful remissions.

She doesn’t believe in Miracles.

Cam finds a list that she had written with her best friend Lily, a fellow cancer patient. They had called it the Flamingo List, because neither of them liked “Bucket List”. Supposedly, just by writing it down, the list was supposed to come true.

The last item on the list, experiment in petty shoplifting, is the one Cam chooses. She calls Lily from the Dollar Store and asks her what she should steal. They decide on a plastic Flamingo. Having safely escaped the store, however, Cam has a seizure in the parking lot. After narrowly avoiding the manager of the store calling an ambulance, Cam goes home to tell her mother the news.

Her mother can’t accept it. Cam refuses to be treated. One of Cam’s mother’s friends suggests the town of Promise, Maine, as a miracle cure. Without telling Cam, her mother packs them up, and forces Cam to move to Promise, where fields of electric purple dandelions grow on the hills, and flamingos come to nest in February.

On the way, Cam insists on stopping to visit Lily, who has gotten a boyfriend. While she’s there, they get into a fight, and Cam leaves in a huff.

When Cam, her mother Alicia, and her younger sister, Perry, arrive in Promise, they discover that the hotel they had been planning to stay in is closed.

They stop at the lobster pound for dinner, and there they meet Asher, who offers to let them stay at his house. Cam insists that this is a terrible idea, but Alicia decides that this is a town of miracles, and it’s a very kind offer.

They stay at Asher’s. His “house” turns out to be a mansion, called Avalon by the Sea. In her first couple days, Cam manages to cross dabble in some innocent stalking behavior, lose my virginity at a keg party, have my heart broken by an asshole, and crush my little sisters dreams off her Flamingo list.

She gets a job at the vet’s office. The vet, who turns out to be a relative of Asher’s, tells Cam the story of Asher’s family. Cam, who is a hula dancer, improvises a dance as the vet talks.

Cam decides that she has to make miracles for her sister and her mother, who deserve to believe. (what Cam doesn’t see is that the miracles are happening right before her eyes; her
“blueberry spots” (dark spots across the inner side of her arms) have disappeared. She’s living in a house offered to her by a cute boy. She’s got more energy than ever.) Cam’s mother plants a garden. Cam goes out and gets full grown tomato plants and replaces the dying ones with those. Cam’s sister believes in unicorns. Cam convinces Asher to help her steal a donkey from the vet, and ties a unicorn horn to it. Unfortunately, her plan unravels when the “unicorn” runs into the sea and almost drowns.

Cam falls in love with Asher. Asher falls in love with Cam. Cam gets a letter from Lily. It’s Lily’s Flamingo list. Cam calls Lily’s parents. Lily has died.

Cam takes the “Make a Wish” Lily got for her, and kidnaps her little sister in order to take her with her to the wish; Disney Land. She takes Asher and a few friends, and brings her mothers boyfriend home to Promise, where he proposes to Alicia, who accepts.

Cam gets a high fever. She convinces Asher to help her finish Lily’s Flamingo List. They do it. They have a fight. Asher goes out on his boat, and is caught in the perfect storm. Cam’s mother discovers that she’s dying and rushes her to the hospital. The doctor tells them that she’s too far gone. Cam’s mother falls asleep. Asher arrives.

Cam looks out the window.

Before I Fall – Lauren Oliver

Review:

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Before I Fall gives a remarkable sense of the transience of human life, and how precious and unappreciated it is. As much as the main character, Sam, can make you want to slap her, she also makes you want to understand her. But it’s a double edged sword; some people will empathize with Sam. Some will find it hard to feel for her. But Lauren Oliver, master of character development, lets you see through her eyes as much as your own.

Summary:

Sam Kingston and her three best friends rule the school. And I do mean rule (think Mean Girls). The night Sam dies, she and her best friends had been at a party. Drinking. And being cruel to a girl from school, Juliet. They hit something on the road and Sam feels herself dying, and simultaneously waking up again, to the same morning of the day of the accident. At first, she is reckless. She lives with the kind of abandonment that you might have too, if you thought nothing worse could happen to you. But eventually, she decides that she wants to make the world better, and therein is the drive of the plot.

She is determined to save herself. But as she repeats the day of her death six times, she discovers things she never knew before: Juliet is going to commit suicide that night. Anna Cartullo, who is having sex with another girls boyfriend, is a really kind, funny person. That her best friend, Lindsay, is hiding dark secrets and a past with Juliet. That she herself doesn’t really like the person she is. That she’s falling in love, over and over, with a childhood friend, Kent.

And on the seventh day, Sam finds a way to change everything- for better or worse.

If You Liked: If I Stay, Thirteen Reasons Why, Mean Girls (movie), The Running Dream, Uglies, Something Like Fate, Hunger Games

Never Sit Down in a Hoopskirt and Other Things I Learned in Southern Belle Hell – Crickett Rumley

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Review:                                                                          In Never Sit Down in a Hoopskirt, I found that both humor and sadness were a common element found in every chapter. They were intermingled together in a way that way satisfying and amusing both, and the main character, Jane, is just the sort of person everyone envies for their witty remarks and clever comebacks. Jane makes you wish that she was a real person, that she was your best friend, sitting next to you and saying things like “Great thorn on a thornbush!”, as many great characters do.The whole book comes across with a very genuine, sarcastic tone that sets the stage for Jane and the Magnolias.

Summary:

When Jane gets kicked out of her thirteenth boarding school, her grandmother convinces Jane’s father, who she calls Cosmo, to let her come back to Bienville and finish senior year with a tutor. When Jane arrives, she is harangued into competing to be one of the “Magnolias” – a group of five girls and an alternate who dress up in “antebellum dresses” (think Scarlett O’Hara), and talk to people about the “rich history of Bienville”.

To her horror, Jane is selected to be a Magnolia, and begins the rigorous process of Magnolia training. She soon finds that her un-southern-belle-like attitude will get her in trouble, and when she and another girl, Brandi Lyn, who cannot afford to buy the Magnolia dress are given the suggestion that they quit the Magnolias, Jane refuses for both of them and decides to find a way for them to stay in the Magnolias. And she does- in the form of an old friend, Teddy Mac, whose mother is the richest woman in Bienville. Teddy, who Jane determines is gay, agrees to help both Jane and Brandi Lyn find a more Magnolia appropriate style.

Jane and Brandi Lyn discover that the change of style and attitude are somewhat interesting changes. They make quick work of the snobby Magnolia girls and even discover that most of them are not so snobby. Brandi Lyn and another Magnolia named Mallory become fast friends, and Jane finds a kindred spirit and ally in Zara, the first African  American girl to make Magnolia Court.

The Magnolia’s decide that their fundraiser should be to help clean up the Bienville coastline from the oil spill that happened a couple days ago. After their first session, the Magnolia’s go to a party and one of them, Ashley, discovers that her boyfriend has been cheating on her.

A couple weeks later, the Magnolia’s have a Mizz Upton (leader of the organization) imposed sleepover, and get drunk. They decide to go give their boyfriends and boy friends a piece of their minds, and Zara, the least intoxicated, drives. However, they go in Magnolia dress, and when a hoopskirt turns on Zara and they get pulled over (driving blind) and arrested (Jane’s big mouth), they have a big fight.

But a couple days later, when Jane and Ashley, the most estranged of the Magnolia’s, become friends, Jane decides it’s time to repare the friendships of the Magnolia court, after which it’s time for the first Magnolia event. Jane pulls a few strings… and saves that too.

If You Like: Beauty Queens, Libba Bray(author), Lauren Myracle(author), E. Lockhart(author)

Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares – Rachel Cohn & David Levithan

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Review:

Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares is one of those that makes you long for romance, and wish you had someone with whom you could pass back and forth a red moleskine notebook. Honestly, it makes everyone wish for something different, which is truly special.  Some people might wish for someone who knows what the word “philatelist” means. Some people might wish for someone who loves to think, or to read. Some people might wish for someone who would choose lebkuchen over rice krispies.

But in the end, what really matters, is that it makes you wish. Makes you ponder and think, and draws you in so completely that when it’s over you wish there was more. You wish that you could follow Lily and Dash through their lives, wish to be as daring, as kind, as brave. But in the end, what it shows you is that, inevitably, wishing just doesn’t measure up.

Summary:

When Lily’s parents decide they are going to Fiji during Christmas, Lily is shocked and horrified. She may have said it would be okay with her… but that doesn’t mean it is! Her older brother Langston, proposes that in order to find herself a boyfriend, she go the conventional path and find the as-yet-found boyfriend through a notebook. She writes a series of Dares to the yet to be discovered boy, and supplies many dares  some of which involve the books French Pianism, the Joys of Gay Sex, and Fat Hoochie Prom Queen. She had to choose unusual titles in order to scare off any boys who wouldn’t be worth dating.

Dash (short for Dashiell, as he will tell you), takes up Lily’s challenge. His ex-girlfriend, Sophia, has recently moved to Spain and while he never really liked Sophia so much, and certainly didn’t love her, he finds himself missing Sophia more than he would’ve expected. So Dash takes Lily’s notebook, and soon enough Lily and Dash find themselves daring each other into places they never would’ve expected to go.

If You Like: The Indigo Notebook, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (book or movie), How to be Bad, Will Grayson, Will Grayson, Mean Girls (the movie)

Will Grayson, Will Grayson – John Green and David Levithan

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Review:

Will Grayson, Will Grayson is one of those rare books you find in which you become convinced throughout the course that it was written just. for. you. And the reason for this could be attributed to several different things: the fact that the book is written by two different but still fantastic authors, the idea that true love conquers all, or, if you dig a little deeper, you can look and see that Will Grayson, Will Grayson is a book about epiphanies. It’s about letting life change you. About letting other people let you. But most of all, it’s about acceptance of you and everything you are and want to be. It’s about truth. Lies. Love. Hate. Anger. Fear. Wisdom. Naivety. Trust. Doubts. It’s about the inumerable things that make you you and how every single one of them is the truth.

Summary:

Will Grayson, Will Grayson is about two teenage boys, both named Will Grayson, who cross paths through a twist of fate late one night, when both of them have plans that fall through and wind up in the same unlikely place.

In order to somewhat de-confuse this summary, I would like to give it from the point of only one of the Will’s, the one who starts the book.

Will’s best friend, Tiny, who is “not the world’s gayest person, or the world’s largest person, but possibly the largest gay person” is a very enthusiastic person, to an extreme that I can only say is remarkable. He is joyful, and exuberant, and it is around Tiny that the plot revolves.

Tiny decides to put on  a play, written by himself, entitled Tiny Dancer, which is pretty much entirely fact based. In the midst of this brilliant idea, Will Grayson goes with Tiny and his friends Jane and Gary to a show which is supposed to be from the band Neutral Milk Hotel, but instead winds up being from Ashland Avenue. Tiny proceeds to attempt to force Jane and Will together, but Will, having decided long ago that caring, in general, is a bad idea, insists that he shall not care. But when Will starts falling for Jane he agrees to go to another show with Jane and Tiny, this one from the Maybe Dead Cats. When his fake ID turns out not to work, Will tells Jane and Tiny to go on. After they leave, Will decides to show them that he can have fun by himself. He goes to a porn shop, insisting on using his new fake ID at least once that evening. There he meets the Other Will Grayson, and discovers that they have the same name, and also that OWG is gay. Will, being the good and honorable friend that he is, decides to set Tiny up with OWG, and from that point on, everything is about falling in love, falling-outs, and just plain falling, in inumerable ways.

If You Like: An abundance of Katherines, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, It’s Kind of A Funny Story, Boy meets Boy

Sold – by Patricia McCormick

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Review:       Sold is a book that puts you into  perspective. In a world where having hope can be hopeless, the main character, a thirteen year old named Lakshmi holds on to the only things that you can hold onto; promises to herself, and the                     hope that someday she will be able to change her own fate for the better. Lakshmi is a character who shows us that having hope is as important as fighting back; in the end, they both do the same things; they are truthful, and constant. And when a person is their own constant, they develop a strength unmatched by anything in the natural world.

Summary:

Lakshmi lives in a very poor village in Nepal. Despite the poverty in which she lives, Lakshmi has her small pleasures, until a monsoon sweeps away her family’s crops. Her stepfather tells her she must take a job to help the family, and he introduces her to a glamorous woman, who is known as Auntie. Auntie offers to take Lakshmi to the city and get her a job as a maid, and Lakshmi, not knowing any better, accepts. Arriving in the city, Lakshmi discovers that she has been sold into prostitution when she is passed off to a man she knows as Uncle Husband, who then sells her to the old woman who runs the brothel. He gets ten thousand for Lakshmi, and leaves her with Mumtaz, the woman who runs the brothel. Mumtaz asks Lakshmi if she is ready to go to work, and Lakshmi answers yes. But when she discovers what she is expected to do, she refuses. Mumtaz is furious. She cuts off Lakshmi’s hair, marking her as a brothel girl. She beats her. She starves her. Eventually, frustrated, Mumtaz drugs her, and sends a man in to be with her. He rapes her. Lakshmi, too depressed and too young to know what to do, does nothing. She discovers that with each man that comes to her room, her debt to Mumtaz grows smaller and smaller. Lakshmi meets a boy she calls the David Beckham boy. He brings her sweets and tea, and eventually, Lakshmi starts to get better. Happier. Never safer, because she can’t feel safe here. But knowing she has friends in this horrible place is an improvement. One day, a man comes to Lakshmi’s room. An American man. He asks her if she wants to leave this place. He tells her he will take her to someplace clean and safe.

If You Like: Free Verse genre, Esperanza Rising, Cut (Patricia McCormick

Suite Scarlett – by Maureen Johnson

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Review:                                                         Suite Scarlett was a surprising book.The content, of course, contributed to that, but more surprising was the issues that arose from between the lines; growing up to fast, wanting things too much and getting more than you bargained for are all central themes. Scarlett is a character with a lot of empathy; even when you want to slap her across the face, you feel very sympathetic towards whatever plight is currently going on in her life. Suite Scarlett is a book worth reading.

Summary:

Fifteen year old Scarlett’s family runs the Hopewell Hotel, in New York. Having grown up in a hotel, Scarlett is not a typical teenager. When her fifteenth birthday comes, she gets a couple of things from her parents: a key to the Empire Suite (it is now her room to care for), a cell phone, and the news that the hotel is not doing well. Scarlett is going to have to work at the hotel, mostly for free. Her older sister Lola is taking a year off college to work at a boutique and help out around the hotel and with Scarlett’s irritable little sister Marlene, whose life revolves around the Powerkids, a group for cancer victims and survivors (Marlene is a survivor). Her brother, Spencer, is in the worst spot of all. Throughout the book, he wants to be an actor. His parents had given him one year to find work, but the year is up, and Spencer hasn’t found anything significant.

When an old friend of Spencer’s comes into town bearing news of a show and the need for an actor, Spencer jumps into position. It’s not on Broadway… well, technically it is, the street is names Broadway. But it’s being held in a parking garage, and a four dollar a day salary is not exactly what he was aspiring to. It’s a job though, so by stretching the truth, Spencer convinces him parents to let him do it, partially due to a new guest at the Hopewell… Mrs. Amberson.

Mrs. Amberson arrives suddenly and announces she’ll be there the whole summer. She takes the Empire Suite, and decides that she wants Scarlett to be her assistant. She’ll pay Scarlett 500 dollars a week. The best way to describe Mrs. Amberson would be nosy, which is shown by the fact that when Spencer’s theater company loses its very little funding, Mrs. Amberson steps in to be the director and to fund the show.

But when an old frenemy of Mrs. Amberson’s steps into the picture, and the frame gets even more twisted, no one knows where Mrs. Amberson will lead them.

If You Like: Lola and the Boy Next Door, Beauty Queens, Just Listen, E. Lockhart (author)

Please Ignore Vera Dietz – A.S. King

Review:

Please Ignore Vera Dietz is heartbreaking.

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The beauty in this story is that while Vera Dietz is swimming in her grief, she still seems to pull you out of your own. This book makes you sit up and pay attention. Because really, who can’t sympathize with losing someone? Who can’t relate to a person who made bad choices? Who doesn’t know how to mess themselves up so brutally? Who doesn’t know that rhetorical questions are often the mark of someone who doesn’t know what to say?

Well, as far as the rhetorical questions question goes, I think that rhetorical questions are sometimes useful. I don’t like reading books that don’t make me think. And the theme of Vera’s story could be a million different questions. Will you change your life? Will you change someone else’s life? Will you make a choice that will affect the rest of your life? Will you write Zen quotes on post-its and leave them lying around their house?

In the end, you have to answer your own questions. There is only really one question someone else can answer for you, and that is whether or not you should read this book. And the answer, according to me, is yes.

Summary:

Vera Dietz is still trying to recover from her mother leaving her when she was twelve. On top of this, her best friend has just died and been wrongfully convicted, and though she feels guilty about hating him, she hates him, for multiple reasons. Charlie, the best friend, had enough problems to last a lifetime, and Vera, too headstrong and brave to get sucked up in Charlie’s life, starts maintaining a certain level of distance from Charlie, who was maintaining a certain level of distance from her. At the time Charlie died, he and Vera weren’t friends anymore, in the literal sense.

After Charlie dies, Vera tries to go on. She keeps going to work, full time, on top of school, and maintains straight A’s. One of the boys who work with Vera at the Pagoda Pizza shop, James, starts making out with Vera. One night after work, she agrees to go for a ride with him. They pull over. Vera, who was drunk prior to this, is now really drunk, and when James drives Vera home, the cops stop them. Vera doesn’t get her license taken away, but she gets in trouble with her Dad.

A couple weeks later, at a company party, Vera falls and hits her head. She gets a concussion, which results in both a hospital visit and therapy for Vera and her dad. Four visits later, the insurance company stops paying for therapy, and Vera and her dad stop going.

The whole book, the narrators view switches from Vera to Charlie to Vera’s dad to the Pagoda (an old landmark). And in the end, when Vera decides that it’s time to clear Charlie’s name, both Vera and the reader know that it wasn’t just Vera’s decision – it was also Charlie’s.

If You Like: Everybody Sees the Ants, Hate List, Beauty Queens, Before I Fall

Pigs In Heaven – Barbara Kingsolver

Review:

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I was really surprised to see the story come back in such a poignant, interesting way. I loved getting to know more about the minor characters, especially Alice, who had such a refreshing view.                                      Often, series books tha are not what the reader wants. And that is true of Pigs in Heaven. But one of the many gifts bestowed upon Barbara Kingsolver has the gift to convince a reader that her ending is better than the ending you had in mind.

Summary: In the sequel to The Bean Trees, Taylor and Turtle are living with Taylor’s boyfriend, Jax. When Taylor decides to go on a trip with Turtle, they visit Hoover’s Dam. While they’re there, Turtle sees a mentally disabled man fall down a “big hole”. Taylor, naturally, is the only one who believes her, and the next few hours are a wild goose chase to find someone who has the power to do something. They do, and not too long afterwards, Taylor gets a call from Oprah, asking her and Turtle to come on the show. Annawake Fourkiller is a young Cherokee lawyer. One day, watching Oprah, she hears Taylor’s story about how Turtle was adopted, and some things don’t add up. Trying to protect her tribe, and the child, she goes down to visit Taylor, who has returned home. The fear of losing Turtle drives Taylor to take her and run. They drive for a while, and one day Taylor’s mother flies out to meet them. They stop in Vegas, and while they’re there, they pick up a girl who’s literally trying to live the life of Barbie. Eventually Alice goes to visit her cousin Sugar, who claimed her blood rights to being Cherokee long ago. Alice falls in love, and decides to claim her blood rights as well so she can get married. Taylor and Turtle, who have been having a hard time, decide to face the music and go talk to Annawake before she subpoenas them. Once at the reservation, Taylor and Turtle discover that they have more things in common with this small town than they could ever imagine.

If You Like: The Bean Trees, A tree grows in Brooklyn, the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, Barbara Kingsolver

The Running Dream – Wendelin Van Draanen

Review:

I’ve read a lot of Wendelin Van Draanen. I loved her Sammy Keyes books, and I’ve read them all at least once. So when I started The Running Dream, I was surprised to discover a completely different author between the pages of the book; to me, it was like opening a storybook only to find something quite different from what I was expecting – something I didn’t even know I wanted. I’m not a crier. I read sad books a lot. True stories, and memoirs. But I haven’t really experienced this kind of sadness before, while I was reading. I found that I often wanted to put down the book and imagine the perfect ending for Jessica. Always at the most inopportune moments, of course, because when is sadness ever convenient? Jessica’s story is a sad one. But it is also a story about rising to a level that wasn’t there before. About how a single second can change a lifetime, about how truth and miracles aren’t something to be taken for granted.

Summary:

Jessica is a runner. It’s not a part of her; it’s all of her. As far as Jessica knows, anyways. But when she loses a leg in a terrible accident, Jessica will discover there’s much more to her than she thought before. When Jessica wakes up in the hospital, having lost her right leg (she’s a BK amputee), she doesn’t know how to go on, or even if she wants to. Her parents are struggling with medical bills, and Jessica is struggling to be herself, to try to remember who that is. Jessica’s best friend Fiona visits her in the hospital, telling her all the news, including that of Jessica’s classmate Lucy, who died in the accident which took place on a school bus. Jessica recovers very quickly and is discharged from the hospital. At home, she finds that her upstairs bedroom is impossible for her to get to. Fiona comes over on Jessica’s third day home, bringing her piles of homework and a promise to return to school that Friday. In returning to school, Jessica’s friends are all very supportive, but she finds that with her wheelchair, she can’t sit in her regular seat anymore. She winds up sitting in the back with a Rosa, a girl with Cerebral Palsy. Jessica discovers that Rosa, who has been overlooked because of her disability, is a good friend, and a remarkable person. But what Jessica wants, more than anything, is to run again. And her friends come up with a plan to make that happen.

If You Like: Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children, Izzy, Sammy Keyes