WPL Reads

So.  I liked Katniss and her love for Peeta and Gale in the Hunger Games series.  I really did care for her and I was rooting for her through all three of those books!  Then I was very fond of Triss (but secretly preferred Tobias and his Divergent story) and I was, for a while, a big fan of June (Marie Lu writes such a wonderful half boy’s-half girl’s perspective tale with that trilogy).  I took a tiny trip down a side street to really appreciate Kasta and all things medieval in Graceling and Bitterblue.  Then I read about Cassia Maria Reyes and her mixed up Dystopian world, where the government decides everything, including who will be your ‘match’ for life.  The story contained in those three books became my absolute favourite.  In all library and non-library conversations about trilogies with strong female characters I would talk about Ally Condie’s world and the characters she created.

Weeks went by and I still felt that I was sure I knew what was my favourite in all I had read on our shelves until I chatted with a library patron about our favourite books.  This library patron had also loved the Matched, Crossed and Reached books but had a suggestion for me – a book trilogy with a strong female main character that reminded her of Cassia.  Encouraged, I took the first one home that evening and was instantly hooked.  This girl is just 16 years old, with a younger sister, a severely injured older brother, a slowly dying grandmother AND she is an orphan (one parent was a police officer and the other was the head of an organized crime family).  Anya Pavlova Balanchine is a girl with a lot to worry about but she is going about her daily life with high school classes, friendships, boyfriends and thoughts about her future.  Everything else continues to swirl around her and she falls for the son of the ambitious DA.  With a star-crossed lovers kind of twist she can’t continue her relationship with the lovely Goodwin Delacroix and takes the first of so many steps she feels she has to take as the heir to an empire which deals in the sale of black market chocolate.

That’s right.  In the New York city of 2083 it is illegal to have chocolate and caffeine.  The parks are too dangerous to cross alone and water is so scarce that the lake in Central Park is just a big dust bowl.  Paper books are considered rare and people line up each market day to try and find enough food to eat.  Anya is an incredibly smart and loyal friend and sister and these qualities take her on an gripping path through a few prison stays, long trips to Mexico and Japan, multiple marriage proposals, the deaths of family members and close friends, poisonings and a serious attempt to end her life and starts a successful business that she feels might have made her parents proud.  In just three books.

Three solid books with rollicking action that I couldn’t stop reading.  Gabrielle Zevin lets the reader into Anya’s thoughts with clever asides in each chapter but they are never annoying -they seem like bonus material that we are lucky to know about her main character, like a little gift from a generous author.  There is humour in the book and the chapter titles alone are worth your time but there is so much more than that in her books.  Her Anya is a fully fleshed out high school student and she gives the reader a chance to feel like you are in her head.  It’s one of the most interesting stories I’ve ever read and right now Ms. Balanchine has risen to the top of my list for inspiring Dystopian heroines.

- – Penny M.