Throwback Thursday: Old-School YA: Virginia Nielsen's Mirror, Mirror

Super-mysterious!

Hey All!

Thanks for hanging with me thus far! I've got a ton of exciting things planned for this blog in the weeks ahead, but my schedule has gotten CRAZY. I hope to be posting at least once a week once September hits, but you never know! And now, on to the review...

This week, we'll be taking a look at Virginia Nielsen's Mirror Mirror, published in 1983 by Scholastic's Windswept imprint.

When a friend of mine dug this out of an old box, I really wanted to get excited about this book. But while reading this, I couldn't help but compare it to a Lifetime channel movie. This book has: twins separated at birth, secrets, freak accidents, a psycho murderer, and forbidden, but chaste love. The story moved at a good pace, so there wasn't much time to be bored, but at 155 pages, there wasn't much time to be engaged. The main character, Gillian Topper was a little bit too lovesick lapdog for my taste, and I didn't care enough for the other characters, either. I kept wondering how a book like this would be written in 2013, and perhaps that also contributed to my displeasure. There were some lovely descriptions of Gillian's Valley and Gerry's San Francisco, however, but other than that, this book fell flat.

If you're curious about old-school YA, I would pick this up just for fun. The book is peppered with old-fashioned expressions like "going steady" and "that's neat!" that are sure to make you giggle! When writing descriptions of setting, Ms. Nielsen's writing is tops. But other than the fact they are twins, the main characters are just not that interesting.

My unofficial rating: for teens ages 13 and up, due to adult themes and violence.

Photo Credits

The cover photo of Mirror, Mirror was taken from here. Thank you!

International Friday: Sara Farizan's If You Could Be Mine

I'd been hearing a lot of buzz about Sara Farizan's If You Could Be Mine in the Twitterverse for awhile now. If You Could Be Mine is a YA novel about a seventeen-year-old girl Sahar, and how far she would go for the love of her best friend, Nasrin (also a girl, for those of you not familiar with Persian names)...in the Islamic Republic of Iran. *Cue dramatic music* And you thought you had problems!

I'll admit I was excited when I read blurbs about the book online, but I was also a little worried. As a person of color living in the United States, I am always conscious of media representations of non-Anglo cultures. Would this book resort to stereotyping? Tokenism? Preachiness about the evils of living in Iran?

Much to Ms. Farizan's credit, the answer to those questions is a resounding no. While some of the foods, culture, and words might be unfamiliar to some American readers, somehow, by using Sahar's voice to tell the story, it makes the story feel more immediate. It makes me feel like it is happening to a close friend, and not a random girl in a country I know nothing about.

I only read the first five chapters from the digital preview on Amazon, but I can't wait to see what happens next. The official release for the book is August 20, 2013. Pre-order it from your favorite bookseller today!

Check out morethanjustmagic's interview with Sara Farizan here.