The Ethan I Was Before by Ali Standish

Ethan Truitt, 12, and his best friend Kacey Reid used to have all kinds of adventures together, until one night Ethan dares Kacey to do something and, though it ends in a tragic accident, Ethan can't help but blame himself for causing it. 

Now, his parents are moving from Boston to Palm Knot, a coastal town in Georgia, using the excuse that they need to take care of his elderly grandfather, but in reality, Ethan knows it is an attempt to help him come to terms with his overwhelming grief and his all-consuming guilt.

At first, living with his grumpy grandpa Ike in a somewhat dumpy, dilapidated house, and with an angry older brother who resents him because of the move, really isn’t helpful. At school, Suzanne, who seems to have a little crush on Ethan, wants him to hang around with her and her friends, the “cool kids,” but Ethan isn’t very inclined to do that. Instead, he starts hanging around with the intrepid Coralee Jessup, a smart, talkative black girl who claims to be violin prodigy, and who is not much liked by the “cool kids.” 

Coralee also introduces Ethan to the unofficial library in the back of the hardware store, both run by Mack, a woman who has been collecting books for decades and who always has some salt water taffy for her patrons. And maybe grandpa Ike isn’t so bad after all, especially when he decides to teach Ethan how to drive his pickup truck. 

As Ethan adjusts to life in Palm Knot, the circumstances of Kacey’s accident are slowly revealed in flashbacks. The reader knows that Kacey is still alive because Ethan has run away a few times to try and see her. She is in a nursing home, in a coma and on life support. When Ethan is told that her parents have decided to take her off life support, Ethan’s pain is intense and palpable. His pain is compounded by the fact that when he finds out that Coralee has betrayed his confidence about what happened to Kacey to Suzanne, Suzanne also makes it a point to tell him the truth about Coralee’s life with the result that Ethan begins to believe that everything Coralee has told him about herself is a lie. 

Everything comes to a dramatic climax and denouement when a hurricane hits Palm Knot and Coralee goes missing. Ethan couldn’t help Kacey when she was hurt, but can he redeem himself and help save the new friend he turned his back on?

The Ethan I Was Before couldn’t be a more appropriate title for Ethan’s story. No one remains unchanged after going through a trauma that literally shatters the innocence of childhood, and the intense feelings that follow.  

This coming of age novel is written in the first person from Ethan’s point of view, so that the reader journeys with him through all his turmoil and agony as he finally attempts to come to terms with Kacey’s accident and his part in it, and begins to discover who he is now. Besides his narration, there are, throughout the book, lists that Ethan makes at the suggestion of his therapist in Boston just before he moved, thinking it might help him make sense of his world and who he is now, ”The Ethan you were before may be gone, but now you have the chance to get to know the new Ethan.” 

This is a debut novel for Ali Standish, and while I thought there was just a little too much going on at the end of the story, I also felt that she really understood what Ethan was going through and conveys it to her readers quite well and with a great deal of empathy. Ethan’s story is very moving and will have readers riveted, I know I was. And while it is an emotionally charged novel about guilt, grief, the possibility of healing, it is ultimately a novel about the importance of family,  friendship, honesty, and most importantly, hope.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was an EARC received from Edelweiss+

Cyclone by Doreen Cronin

Nora couldn’t wait to be tall enough to ride the Coney Island Cyclone, and now, at age 12, she is about to achieve her dream. It wasn’t easy talking her cousin Riley, 13, into going on the Cyclone with her, but Nora finally managed to do it, not really hearing Riley’s protestations and brushing aside her clearly apparent fear. And that ride was everything Nora dreamt it would be, right up until she and Riley were walking away and Riley collapsed on the sidewalk.

Rushed to a nearby hospital, Riley is treated for a stroke caused by an undiagnosed heart condition. Nora is riddled with guilt, convinced that she was the cause of Riley’s stroke with the ride on the Cyclone. After all, she did finally have to resort to blackmail to convince her cousin to get on the ride. Luckily, Riley is young and got to the hospital quickly, so her prognosis is somewhat hopeful that she will recover her speech and use of her paralyzed right arm and leg.

Riley’s mother Maureen, and Nora’s mother Paige are soon joined by their sister Elayne, but not Riley’s father. When he left, Riley had told Nora, he was as good as dead to her. But, as the family gathers at the hospital to support Riley, as Riley struggles to recover her ability to communicate, old family tensions mount as new ones are created, and secrets and truths are revealed. 

One of the things Cronin does really well in this novel is to look at problems of communication within this family’s dynamics, a dynamic Nora is just becoming part of when she uses blackmail to get Riley on the Cyclone. I liked that way she used Riley’s stroke to take them all back to square one and begin to learn how to communicate with each other openly and honestly. And it is through this process that Nora realizes the she needs to start listening to what people are saying to her and not be so wrapped up in herself. A case in point is Jack, a boy Nora meets in the CICU (Children's Intensive Care Unit) family room. Jack tells her he is there for his brother Colin, who has leukemia. But Jack is a boy she never really listened to until she is forced to learn his truth.

I did find the many, many footnotes a little annoying and a lot pedantic. But our narrator is Nora, a 12 year old, who tells the story of what happens in her youthful way. So, while I was able to skip most of them, I realize Nora, like most of her readers, would not have the experiential knowledge an older person has. And, the footnotes do serve to let readers appreciate the seriousness of what happens to Riley (and other hospitalized kids). 

Cyclone is Doreen Cronin’s debut middle grade novel. I found her writing to be clear and straight forward, her characters are believable, and her plot well constructed, so much so, that I read the novel in one sitting. I also thought that using the Cyclone as a symbol for the ups and downs of family relationships was brilliant. This is a book I would recommend to young readers who are looking for good realistic fiction.

This book is recommended for readers age 10+
This book was an EARC received from EdelweissPlus

PS - if you like roller coasters, the Cyclone is one you shouldn't miss, if possible. It's not the biggest, but it is 90 years old, and made of wood, so it really does make the click clack sound as the cars go over the wooden track ties. I have ridden it three times in my life as a child while my mother was in the hospital giving birth to my brother. Years later, my brother proposed to his wife at the summit of the first drop. 

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, illustrated by Jim Kay

***Contains Spoilers***

Set in a small English town, Conor O'Malley, 13, is a boy with a recurring nightmare. Each night, he dreams of trying to save his mother, he loses his grip and she slips away from him. The dream is a reflection of his waking life - his mother is ill with terminal cancer, and she is slipping away from Conor day by day. But Conor refuses to believe that she won't get better, no matter what is said to him or what he sees happening to his mum.

And it doesn't help that at school, ever since his mother's illness began, former friends avoid Conor, teachers overlook him and the school bully isolates him, leaving Conor to feel alienated, invisible and abandoned by everyone.

One night, as Conor wakes from his nightmare, at precisely 12:07, he hears someone calling his name outside. Getting up, Conor sees the giant Yew tree that has been overlooking the graves in the churchyard for hundreds of years, outside his window. Once outside, the monster-sized tree is surprised that Conor isn't afraid of him, but assures him that he will be. But how could this monster possibly scare a boy who knows worse monsters already?

The next day, convinced it was all a dream, Conor is surprised to find leaves and twigs on his bedroom floor. But that night, at exactly 12:07, the monster is once again outside Conor's window. Insisting that it was Conor calling him that made him go walking again, the monster also tells Conor that he will tell him three parables, and when he is finished, Conor will tell a fourth story, his own story, and that it must be the truth or he will eat Conor alive.

The very next day, Conor's cold, disagreeable, overbearing grandmother arrives at the house to take care of his mum. That night the monster returns, and tells Conor the first parable about a prince, the prince's love and the queen, his stepmother. Not liking the way the parable end, Conor discounts it. The next day, when he is bullied again, Conor turns on the girl who tries to help him, and lets her take the fall for trying to help him.

As his mother's cancer gets worse, and it becomes clear that the new round of chemotherapy isn't helping, she is hospitalized and Conor's grandmother insists he come live with her, since Conor's parents are divorced and his father is living in the United States with his new family.

Not happy at his grandmother's, Conor arrives home from school angry and destroys his grandmother's clock, a family heirloom, and everything else in the room. That night at 12:07, the monster appears in his grandmother's backyard and tells Conor his second parable about an apothecary who refuses to help save a parson's daughters who are ill. Not liking the ending, Conor again discounts the parable. When his grandmother sees the ruined room, instead of punishing him, she stops speaking to Conor, rendering him invisible.

The next night the monster returns at 12:07 and tells Conor his third parable, about a man who was invisible because people refused to see him. At school the next day, Conor confronts to boy who has been bullying him and beats him up.

In fact, each time the monster tells a parable, Conor disagrees with the ending, and yet, he acts them out the next day. And it is only after he has caused pain and destruction, that he realizes what he has done. And true to his promise, the monster returns for the fourth story, Conor's truth. And, as difficult as his truth is for Conor to speak, it will no doubt surprise you.

Patrick Ness has done something really different in A Monster Calls; in the parables, he has the monster tell them in such a way, that the characters aren't either good or bad, but a combination of both, just as what Conor is struggling with in his nightmare is a combination of grief and guilt.

A Monster Calls is one of the most honest books I have ever read. It is difficult to recognize Conor's pain, but it soon becomes obvious that no one, not even his mother, wants Conor to know how bad things are. What is really sad, is that the well-intentioned people around Conor are the ones who created the nightmare but not addressing his mother's illness honestly. Only his assertive grandmother is willing to address what will happen to him when his mother is gone (not a spoiler, it's clear from the start mom is dying). And it is the job of the monster to help Conor find and admit his truth, so that the business of healing can begin, allowing the story to end on a hopeful note.

A word about the exquisitely rendered illustrations by Jim Kay. They are as dark as any nightmare, yet if you look at the closely and carefully they reveal more that you might realize. If ever there were illustrations that perfectly supported the text and themes of a story, this is definitely it. Though they were digitally rendered, the final illustrations were sketched over and over again before they were done.

My favorite

A Monster Calls is a powerful story about guilt, love, loss, and grief as only Patrick Ness could write.

This book is recommended for readers age 13+
This book was sent to me by the publisher, Candlewick Press

The yew tree/monster plays a big roll in A Monster Calls. A yew tree can live as long as 1,000 years and really are often found in church graveyards.  If you would like to know something more about them, including their mythological connections, you can find information on the website of the Ancient Yew Organization

Now that the movie is out, I was tempted to include the trailer for it, but instead I decided to include the original book trailer, after all, that's what I reviewed here: