Danielle Rollins

"Monsters are more interesting than heroes."

That is the answer the book's main character, Angela Davis, received when she asked her dad why the heroes in his stories were always boring and the monsters super cool. And that answer became, whether consciously or subconsciously, Angela's answer to life.

Burning could pretty much be summed up as Firestarter meets Orange Is the New Black, the juvie version. Angela, Issie and Cara were (potentially) strong characters in an underdeveloped plot and show more setting. The villain was obvious and cliche. The relationship between Angela and Ben, from an ethical standpoint, was effed up. The guard-prisoner relationship is romanticized but it's unhealthy and dangerous, not to mention illegal for those very reasons. And Jessica, well, she was more a plot device than a character, let alone a real person. And the battle over Jessica's teddy bear... REALLY?! Combined with the fact that I didn't for one minute believe any teen in juvie would fall for Dr. Gruen's SciGirls spiel and I'm left with a big feeling of meh.

Finally, I can't shake this uneasiness I feel about the author's choices with people of color. I was excited at first - yay, diversity in YA! - but then:

1) Angela describes returning indoors after rec time: "Issie and Cara wait at the end of the line, with me. They're the only other girls in high security. High security is for the baddest of the bad girls, one step below Segregation. The violent-offenders group. My group." Issie is Hispanic American; Cara and Angela are African American.

2) Ever heard this one before: a criminal father abandons the family, the now single mom drinks too much and can't hold a job, and naturally the kid(s) turn into delinquents. That's Angela's background, big shocker. Yes, I understand that is the reality for some African American families, but for once I'd like to read about a messed up teen from a nuclear family or a mom who left and a single dad who drops the ball.

3) Angela, a dyslexic undiagnosed until juvie when middle-class Cara figured it out for Angela, starts to entertain the idea of college because Ben tells Angela she's smart enough to go to college.

4) "[Cara's] hair seems to have grown two sizes. Or maybe she's just decided to stop brushing it. Her mother would be furious. Cara once told me her mom used to make her chemically straighten it and brush it one hundred times every day, like some sort of black Marcia Brady." I wonder, would a 17-year-old Black girl from Brooklyn, NY who sometimes barely had enough food to eat and share with her little brother, who "fell asleep to the sound of gunshots," even know what/who The Brady Bunch was? I don't imagine her mom would've remembered to pay the cable bill if she was forgetting to buy groceries.

I also wonder if the author knowingly selected the name "Angela Davis" for her main African American character? See the real Angela Davis. Hmm...

2 stars show less

A perfectly creepy thriller. The characters are incredibly well drawn, and the claustrophobic prison-style setting is just right for a story that mixes realism and the paranormal. The slowly building danger and tension pairs beautifully with the reader's growing affection for the characters. A great choice for a book you won't want to put down. I'd love this to be the first in a series, but even if it isn't, it's still a satisfying read.

Also! It's great to read a book featuring such a show more diverse cast of characters. Almost none of them felt like stereotypes, and all of them were interesting enough to carry an entire book on their own. The quiet, day to day moments of the story were just as interesting as the more creepy, tension filled parts, and I think this is because the characters felt so realistic. To sum up: you should read this. It's really good.

ps. Issie is my favorite. And a single spoilery thing that bummed me out about the story: one of the lesbian characters dies. I really don't like it when one half of a lesbian couple ends up dead at the end of a YA book. It's such a pervasive trope, and seeing it in YA is just EXTRA AWFUL. YA authors, please just kill your straights off instead.

(NetGalley and Bloomsbury Children's provided me an ARC for review.) show less

Say what?? I did NOT see that coming.

I am finding this review kinda hard to write because there were actually quite a few times while reading STOLEN TIME that I wasn't 100% sure if I was liking the story, but then the ending came along and I'm like HOLY CRAP, I need MORE!!

There were a few things in STOLEN TIME that made getting into the story fully an issue. The pacing of the book felt a little off at times. There were a few points in the story that I didn't totally get. Some things were show more cleared up with the ending, but there are still some things that need to be clarified.

Now that I got that out of the way, I really enjoyed the characters and the settings in STOLEN TIME. The story was unpredictable and I really enjoyed the many times that I was surprised and didn't see things coming. There was plenty of action.

That ending, WOW. It honestly made the whole book. I did not see it coming and I honestly questioned so many things in the book that I am excited to see what book two will bring and reveal.

* This book was provided free of charge from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. show less

Entertaining enough, but not without some issues.

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley.)

"If my dad taught me anything it was what it felt like to want something, whether it was a book in a faded folder, or him, or whatever was on the other side of a tiny silver lock. But my dad taught me something else too, something that stayed hidden in my memories until years later, when a little girl with black eyes knocked it loose. Monsters are more interesting than show more heroes, he’d said. I had no way of knowing then, as I lay awake through the night with stories echoing in my head, that he was talking about us. He was talking about me."

"In the nearly two years since I started coming up with four letter words to write on Issie’s hand, I had never once thought of 'hope.'”

Located near Syracuse, New York (the fictional) Brunesfield Correctional Facility is home to one hundred-odd girls between the ages of ten and eighteen. A large minority are considered low-security: runaways and unwanted teens whose parents dumped them in the system. Roughly half are in for drug offenses; along with the dozen girls convicted of theft and destruction of property, these inmates are considered medium-security. And then there are the high-risk inmates, the violent offenders, the so-called "monsters" of the group, one step above Seg in the prison hierarchy: Seventeen-year-old Angela "Angie" Davis and her dorm mates, Cara and Issie.

Angie rolled into Brunesfield eighteen months ago, after committing a string of robberies with her then-boyfriend Jake. (Not so much "one bad decision" as a series of them; and less "violent" than comically inept. Spoilers!) She's up for early release in just three months, and hopes to be out in time for her younger brother Charlie's birthday. But her plans are thrown into disarray with the arrival of Brunesfield's newest inmate: a shy, ten-year-old girl named Jessica Ward who's accused of starting the fire that killed her foster father and landed her brother in the hospital, scarred for life.

Strange things seem to happen around Jessica: Light bulbs shatter. Radiators burst. The air crackles with electricity and flames sometimes materialize out of nowhere. And that's not the worst of it: A social worker named Dr. Rose Gruen arrives, hot on Jessica's heels. Ostensibly in Brunesfield to recruit new members for "SciGirls," her science program for underprivileged girls, Dr. Gruen nevertheless seems obsessed with little Jessica. Soon Angie finds herself unwittingly swept up in Dr. Gruen's research.

Burning is likely to be compared to Orange is the New Black - OITNB for teens, if you will - but really it's more like OITNB meets Firestarter meets The X-Files. (A bit of an oversell, admittedly, but you get the idea.) There are a ton of supernatural elements and weird corporate conspiracies that take it out of the realm of contemporary fiction. Nevertheless, one thing it shares with OITNB (aside from the upstate NY prison setting of course), is the way that the writers use a piece of entertainment to sneakily drop some knowledge about the prison-industrial complex. Whether it's the use of torture (in the form of segregation) as punishment for minor infractions; the crumbling infrastructure; the inadequate educational opportunities; the lack of mental health care and drug treatment programs; the sub-par hygiene; or the potential for the abuse of power, Burning hints at the real monster under our collective beds: prison state, USA.

In this context, the budding romance between Angie and Officer Ben Mateo is troubling, to say the least; it feels like we're meant to root for a relationship that, if consummated, equals rape. Because of the fundamentally unequal power dynamics between guards and prisoners, prisoners cannot consent to sex. Period. Though Angie and Ben only kiss - and in a point in the narrative when his position as guard is mostly moot - the 'ship is disquieting just the same.

Returning to OITNB, it's reminiscent of the Daya/Bennett ship - but without the feminist ending. Bennett started out as a perfectly well-intentioned, even sweet guy - yet the relationship eventually went sideways, revealing him to be not such a nice guy (or should that be Nice Guy?) after all. Yet Mateo seems to stay sweet to the end, which sends the absolutely wrong message. "Good" guys don't rely on a captive dating pool, okay?

I had an especial love/hate relationship with the books on tape subplot. His Dark Materials is my all-time favorite series, and like most members of the fandom, I don't think it gets near enough love. So Mateo's gesture with The Amber Spyglass had me swooning, if just for a moment, against my better judgment. And then I felt manipulated. I am so weak, y'all.

(Issie's reaction to the whole thing was pretty chill, though, I must admit.)

Anyway, while the story is slow to get started, it really hits its stride in the last third; this, for me, was the creepiest part. I like that the monster isn't the usual suspect. (If this seems like a spoiler, worry not: it's actually foreshadowed pretty heavily in the first chapter!) In fact, Brunesfield is filled with villains, most of them totally free agents. The ending leaves open the possibility that they will all pay for their crimes ... one day.

The story is also wonderfully diverse: Angie, Cara, and Jessica are black, and Issie is Latina. Angie suffers from a learning disability, which went undiagnosed until Cara identified it as dyslexia. (Hence the audiobooks.) Cara is gay, and Issie is a big girl - and totally cool with it.

Yet there were a number of little details that didn't sit right with me: If girls keep setting fires in the bathroom at night, how come no one finds any evidence of this the next morning? You have a pantry stuffed with food (including perishables!), but you never go in there? How are two New York City girls so scared of mice? When Director Wu takes a job elsewhere (offered by Dr. Gruen, to get rid of her), why wouldn't the state just hire a replacement?

On this last point, Rollins could have made Brunesfield a privately-run prison, absent outside employees to oversee Dr. Gruen. This also would have provided yet another avenue for exploring contemporary abuses of/in the prison system.

Overall, Burning is an entertaining enough read, though not without some issues. If a supernatural YA set in a prison is what you desire, I'd recommend you give Nova Ren Suma's These Walls Around Us a try first.

http://www.easyvegan.info/2016/04/04/burning-by-danielle-rollins/ show less