Brenna Yovanoff

Waverly Camdenmar is the perfect girl on the surface. She gets the best grades, hangs out with the most popular people, and excels at track. Others view her as unflappable and icy. Inside, she is just as insecure as anyone else plus has thoughts that are offputting to others. Marshall Holt is her complete opposite. He's checked out of school. When he bothers to show up, he sleeps in class or just daydreams. On the weekends, he's busy drinking to oblivion, smoking cigarettes and pot, and show more maybe some other drugs. Everyone views him as a white trash loser, but he's quite empathetic and smart. His home life is difficult and he's just trying to cope. They never really interacted before until Waverly is trying to sleep using meditation techniques and a candle. She appears near him in her dreams night after night. No one else can see her but Marshall. She can be herself and free with Marshall, but her days are the same. Her emotional turmoil intensifies. She's torn between embracing her real self and continuing to pretend for others in the day.

I usually don't like to read contemporary teen novels unless they are thought to be exceptional because I just don't care about random teen drama. Add fantasy, horror, or science fiction and the romance aspect can be one part of a whole work, not the main event. However, Brenna Yovanoff is one of my favorite teen authors. Her previous books are all exceptional and she's not afraid to delve deep into darkness. So, I decided to read Places No One Knows and I wasn't disappointed at all. All of the characters are well written and engaging. The plot has just a little bit of fantasy and a lot of realistic darkness. It's different in tone and execution from her other books, but it's similar to them beneath all the trappings at its core.

The characters feel real. Waverly desperately wants to survive high school. In middle school, she repelled people with her scientific curiosity and matter of fact delivery. Others thought her a weird robotic person who talked way too much about the process of decay and other unsavory topics. her best friend Maribeth taught her how to seem more normal by using her iciness to her advantage to seem impervious and by keeping her odd interests and weird thoughts inside. She's so used to hiding herself, but the effects are seriously detrimental to her now. She can't sleep at night and opts to run to feel freedom so often and hard that she seriously hurts herself. When she visits Marshall in her dreams, Waverly can just be herself in this place out of time, away from the judgment of society. Another outlet for her real self (but in the real world) is Autumn, a brutally honest girl who just wants to be Waverly's friend. Waverly hasn't encountered this type of person before. She's so used to the passive aggression and subterfuge of the top of the societal foodchain that honesty is strange, but eventually refreshing. I felt for Waverly because she has long been conditioned that her natural state is distasteful and she felt she had to change to be accepted. Now, she's angry that the version that people accept isn't even her. It's an interesting dilemma that many can relate to: be yourself and risk being vulnerable and hurt or be someone else to protect yourself, but feel alone.

Maribeth decided to become the queen bee of the school and takes over any obstacle in her way. This book illustrates how girls deal with conflict. It isn't acceptable to be straightforward and cause conflict, so they get around it through passive aggression, creating rumors, and hurting each other socially. Maribeth is obsessed with projecting a perfect image as well, but she seems to enjoy the power hurting people without repercussion, having everyone's attention on her, and taking whatever she wants. She feels the negative aspects to when Waverly isn't as compliant as she was before, but she eventually values her social standing over that long time friendship. Waverly and Maribeth's relationship is a such a good example of how a good friendship can become toxic without even realizing it until it's too late. They were great at the beginning, but Maribeth eventually became insulting and cruel towards Waverly. Waverly knew how to handle Maribeth, appeasing her, making her think she's the one coming up with the best ideas, and making her feel like she has the most power. How is that a real friendship, especially when in return, Waverly gets backhanded comments, ridicule, and cruelty. It's never shown, but I assume the relationship became that way gradually. Waverly makes a lot of excuses for Maribeth, but then eventually sees how toxic their relationship is. A lot of this situation rang true for me as I experienced a similar relationship.

Marshall Holt is similar to Waverly. He seems to be the lazy slacker who will never amount to anything. He has completely checked out of school (if he bothers to show up) and spends most of his time with drinking, mind altering drugs, and making out with Heather. Underneath, he's quite empathetic, but his home situation wears on him. His father is disabled with a condition that may or may not be permanent. Marshall and his mother are often the target of his father's explosive anger that is really about his disability and his horrible situation. Marshall would rather drown out his feelings with substances and a meaningless physical relationship than feel all that pain. He's had a crush on Waverly for a while because he glimpsed the person she is underneath. The nights when she visits makes him want to be better and become worthy of her. They show each other their flaws and problems when they wouldn't to anyone in the real world. During the day, both ignore the other outwardly, but they long to be together. The tension during this part of the book was well done and not too angsty. Both characters are transformed by their interactions despite all the miscommunication, misunderstandings, and hurt feelings along the way.

Places No One Knows is a surprising book. I was so emotionally invested in these characters that I felt every emotion with them. I rushed through the book in a few days because I just had to know what would happen. Yovanoff made me care about these characters even though I've rolled my eyes and put down other similar books. I think each of these three characters are incredibly relatable and I can see parts of myself in each one. I also like that is has shades of fantasy with Waverly's dreams with Marshall. It's a small touch that makes a world of difference to the characters, providing a safe, insulated place to be themselves and really connect with another person. I can't wait to see what else Brenna Yovanoff will write. In the meantime, I will read her short fiction in The Curiosities and The Anatomy of Curiosities. show less

Waverly Camdenmar seems to be perfect: a top-notch student, triumphant cross-country runner, and member of the popular crowd. But it's all a carefully crafted facade. The real Waverly is someone else entirely. The real Waverly can't get to sleep. Then one night she lights a candle as part of a relaxation exercise, but instead of drifting off, she finds herself elsewhere, in the presence of Marshall Holt, a sensitive underachiever who's coping badly with problems at home. He quickly becomes show more the only person she can really open up to... but only during these strange nighttime visits.

I am genuinely astonished by how much I loved this book. YA is always kind of hit and miss for me, and as soon as I opened this one up and realized that the story was plunging me into the horrific world of the Popular Girls, I had to suppress an urge to run away screaming. (Hey, I have lingering trauma.) But Waverly isn't your stereotypical Popular Girl. Waverly is a natural Nerd Girl who's faked her way into the Popular Girls' circle by virtue of careful scheming and the right choice of childhood best friend. She's a layered and interesting person, with a strong and interesting voice. And she feels very real.

Actually, once you accept the vaguely magical realism-y premise, everything in this story feels impressively, insightfully, sometimes heartbreakingly real. And it's darned well-written, too. show less

Daphne is the half-demon, half-fallen angel daughter of Lucifer and Lilith. She lives in Pandemonium, a city of steel and heat, where she coddles little treasures from the human world brought to her by her brother, Obie. Life for her is dull, slow, and unchanging, until one day her brother vanishes. Determined to find him, Daphne travels to Earth, where everything is colder and dirtier, and time flashes by far too quickly.

With the help of Truman, a lost and self destructive boy she believes show more was the last person to see her brother alive, Daphne begins to unveil clues to her brother's whereabouts. As the back of the book says, "she also discovers, unexpectedly, what it means to love and be human in a world where human is the hardest thing to be."

After finishing The Replacement, which is currently one of my top reads for 2013, I immediately had to pick up another Yovanoff book. I didn't quite enjoy The Space Between as much as I enjoyed The Replacement. The beginning was a bit hard to get into and it was hard to get a sense for Daphne, who seems to emotionless. However, once Daphne finally got herself to earth things picked up and became very interesting.

As Daphne is presented with the reality of Earth, she's forced to really choose who she wants to be. She can be like her sisters, the Lilim, who feed on humanities desires and despairs, or she can be something else — even if she doesn't know what that is yet. Yovanoff does a great job of portraying Daphne's confusion and naivete. She doesn't know much of anything about Earth other than what she's seen in TV shows and much of what she knows is terribly outdated. She is both vulnerable and yet strong, because while she doesn't know how things work, she carries with her a deeper wisdom stemmed from her life growing up in the eternal timelessness of Hell.

Then there's Truman, who's pain is so raw, you can practically feel it peeling off the page in shreds. Somehow, these two people manage to work together, build trust, and grow from friendship into something more and it's kind of beautiful.

I'm also a huge fan of moral ambiguity, and this novel which has a demon as its central character is wrought with it. Not only Daphne is likeable but other demons, too, are multi-dimentional, complex, engaging. Even the ones you might not like so much turn out to have layers, facets and raw edges you didn't expect to find.

There's also a touch of the horrifying, a few chills along your spin here, a little blood splatter there — another thing I love to see.

Overall, this turned out to be a great read. I may just have to pick up Yovanoff's next book Paper Valentine. show less

Sixteen year old Mackie Doyle is a young man who doesn’t belong. Anywhere. He has a secret, and it’s one that might destroy him. He is a Replacement; he was left in the crib of a human baby who was snatched in the middle of the night by very scary creatures. His sole mission in life can be summed up succinctly. Don’t. Stand. Out.
It is set in the eerie little town of Gentry where very bad and very scary things happen while the citizens pretend not to see. Gentry is a prosperous town, show more and it is quickly apparent that there is a horrible price to be paid for its good fortune.
The community has accepted Mackie as the son of the local preacher, but he can never risk exposing his gruesome birthright. Resigned to his health limitations—allergies to blood, iron, and consecrated ground, he pulls off his part in the masquerade with support from his devoted sister Emma and friend Roswell. When a classmate’s sister is snatched away in the night, Mackie starts to learn the sinister truth about himself and the place where he lives.
Mackie decides to take a stand, find the courage and the strength to save the missing child and descends into the slithering underworld of Mayhem that lies beneath Gentry. This is a truly terrifying place ruled by the cruel and powerful Morrigan and her court of capricious and deadly creatures.
I loved this book! I loved that this book freaked me out, that it left intense, vivid images in my head that wouldn’t go away. I loved that this book had a messed up, complicated romance but wasn’t a paranormal romance. And most of all, I loved that this book was about the power of love, fierce, angry, insistent love, that can keep you alive against all odds.
Brenna Yovanoff has created a world that is dark, menacing and full of secrets. Her writing is richly atmospheric and very original – not a vampire, werewolf or fallen angel in sight! The fact that this is the author's first published book is phenomenal and she deserves credit for managing to craft its very own tailor-made folklore. Never once did the word 'faerie' get attached to any of the characters, making it feel like a brand-spanking new take on an old concept.
It is also an emotionally fulfilling coming of age story. I was not expecting a vulnerable protagonist searching for a place he belonged. Mackie Doyle is one of the most endearing, likable and heroic guys I've seen in YA fiction in a long time. I find most YA books I read have female lead characters so it was nice to see a male.
Yovanoff has taken the feeling of not belonging that most teens feel to its ultimate extreme. The book explores loneliness and the feeling of being outside of things. Mackie doesn’t quite belong in the human world; he also doesn’t quite belong in the underground world of supernatural creatures that control the fate of the town. He has to decide for himself who he wants to be. He is not perfect, he makes mistakes and bad decisions but ultimately works hard to make things right. You could not find a better guy to root for in a story like this. His voice is perfect. Generally, the characters were well fleshed out and the character growth was convincing and felt real.
And lastly, Yovanoff does a wonderful job of world-building: the town of Gentry is a place of just-below-the-surface evil, and the description of the world under the slag heap is deliciously creepy, peopled with beings that would be truly terrifying to encounter in the light of day, let alone in the gloomy dampness of Gentry.
It is violent and gruesome and I read it in a couple of hours, literally glued to the couch until I reached the last page. I can hardly wait to read more by Brenna Yovanoff. show less