Bookami

Identical by Ellen Hopkins

Reading copious amounts of YA as I do, I often find myself thinking that teens are just so shallow and clueless.  With all of the information and resources available today, how can so many of them choose to have unsafe sex, do drugs, drink while driving?  Then I read an Ellen Hopkins' novel, and I feel over-whelming amounts of sympathy for today's young adults.  Yes, I suppose many of them do make unwise choices when it comes to their well-being, but I can't help but wonder if this is because so many decisions are not yet left to them.  When you're 16 or 17, adults still decide what it is best for you, and often it's an adult's harmful actions that lead a teen down the wrong path.

Before the accident, Kaeleigh and Raeanne were the identical twin daughters in an all-American family.  Kaeleigh and Raeanne took care of each other, and their loving parents took care of them. 

After the accident, each sister finds herself having to live with a terrible, dark secret.  Secrets too horrible to be shared even with your mirror image.  For Kaeleigh, she's her mother's substitute.  Politician Mom is always on the campaign trail, and Daddy is lonely.  For Raeanne, she is the forgotten daughter and left to herself, she chooses pot, alcohol and sex to dull her pain.  The girls can't hold these secrets inside forever.  One sister will have to save the other, and in the process, hope she saves herself.

In gritty, engrossing, elegant verse, in Identical Ellen Hopkins has given readers another mesmerizing tale about a life out of control and the long path back to redemption. 

Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall by Wendy Mass

Synopsis: High school junior, Tessa Reynolds, suffers a head injury at the hands of a dodgeball only to discover that her version of heaven looks a lot like the mall where both her parents work and where she has spent many hours of her life.  By reviewing various purchases that she has made at the mall, Tessa relives her life so far, discovering some things about herself that she would rather not know.

Review: Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall is a teen girl's version of It's a Wonderful Life or A Christmas  Carol.  Written in verse, it chronicles the life of slightly over-weight, misunderstood, but still not so nice Tessa Reynolds.  Tessa's parents both work at the mall, which means it is her home away from home so to speak.  By reliving some life events that took place at the mall or reviewing purchases she made there, Tessa is forced to find the answer to the big question.  Now, if she only knew what the big question was.

Tessa certainly faces many of the issues that all kids face.  She's a bit over-weight, which is tough since her anal-retentive, harsh Mom works at the makeup counter at Lord & Taylors.  She doesn't have many friends, and the ones she does have are only willing to do things with her if none of their other friends are around.  She's not the brightest girl in school so she isn't beloved by her teachers.  All in all, Tessa has few talents.  So you would think I would feel sorry for her, right?  But I didn't.  Tessa just isn't all that likeable.  She's actually kind of mean.  In the fourth grade her science project is to see if an egg can bounce if left in vinegar for a week.  She realizes that her egg is not going to bounce but another boy in the class has done the same project, and his egg looks rubbery enough to work:

"I glance once at the door, / then I lift the egg out of his bowl / and switch it with mine. / I have long ago accepted the fact / that I am the kind of person / who does things like this, / so in a very real way, / it doesn't even feel wrong."

How does a girl in the fourth grade accept such a character flaw about herself?  The whole book is filled with examples of her doing dishonest, attention-grabbing acts.  Her friend Eliza drops her barrette, and Tessa drops it in a trash can so that she can be the hero who finds it.  Of course, the trash gets emptied and the barrette is lost.  She memorizes the answers to a test that all seventh graders must take, getting herself placed in honors classes the next year. In high school she lies to this guy Lucas about his girlfriend making out with a guy who works at Spencer's so she can try to go out with him.  And because the novel is filled with acts like this, how is the reader supposed to believe that Tessa has learned anything from her near death adventure in the mall?

Tessa knows from her earliest years that, "good people don't lie and cheat and steal."  At the end of the novel she notes:

"Someone forgot / to teach me / there are consequences / for my actions, / even if I never get caught." / He smiles. "You even blame someone else / for not teaching you about consequences."   

If 12 pages before the novel ends, she is still blaming other people for her actions, she hasn't learned a whole heck of a lot.  Maybe she is a better person, but since the reader isn't shown even the tiniest glimpse of this new life, we'll never know.  I think that is the ultimate flaw with this novel.  In movies like It's a Wonderful Life or novels like A Christmas Carol, the audience is allowed a peak of George Bailey's or Ebenezer Scrooge's changed life.  We don't get to view the new and improved Tessa, and the novel is weaker for it.