Lisa McMann

An Open Letter to Lisa McMannDear Ms. McMann,Please stop writing books.This is a very serious request. To this date, you have written and published two novels, Wake and Fade. Because of your books, I have on two occasions been compelled to read deep into the night, and in this manner I have lost two good nights of sleep. I can only conclude that any further books written by you will lead to long nights with the bedside lamp switched on, frantically reading. I will not have it! I must firmly show more request that you stop at once.If you insist on continuing with your flagrant book-publishing, I have a few suggestions that may alleviate the problem. Please take the following requests into account in any and all future books.1. If there is one thing on which I really must insist, it is a general loosening-up of your writing style. This tight, exciting prose will be the death of me! If every sentence did not compel me to read the next, perhaps I would be able to put your books down long enough to get a few good hours of sleep. Perhaps you could insert some clunky dialogue?2. Your characters must - MUST - be less compelling. In fact, it would be best if Janie and Cabel could be excised completely, and less interesting characters could be inserted in their place. If I am forced back inside of Janie's head, where I can see the fascination, terror and exhaustion that are caused by her ability to see other people's dreams, I will most certainly not be able to put your book down. And Cabel, with his terrible past and his willpower and determination to do good, both in his relationship with Janie and in his work, is much too sympathetic a character.3. In a related note, the tumultuous romance between Cabel and Janie is much too intense. If you persist in writing about these characters, their relationship must be taken back a notch. As it currently stands, their emotions are too strong! Their sense of discovery of themselves and each other is too genuine! Their frustrations with one another are too palpable! Their sex is too sexy!4. Slower pacing is a necessity in any future novels. Constantly throwing your readers from horrific nightmare to sweet and sexy romance to exciting mystery causes agitation and suspense, forcing the reader to keep turning pages until the very end of the book.Thank you for your time. I look forward to not reading your books in the future.Sleepily yours,Laura Koenig show less

Positively enchanting, and every bit the wonderful work that I have come to expect when I pick up a book by this author. I loved Lisa McMann's Dreamcatcher series and Cryer's Cross, so I was excited to see what she would do for a middle grade audience. I was certainly not disappointed. I love the premise of this, and I especially love how this story was conceived---it came about when the author found out that several art programs were going to be cut out of her kids' school. I hate how often show more I hear about this kind of thing happening everywhere, but love that it became a story sparker for McMann!

The Unwanteds certainly has a dark and hopeless feeling at the beginning. You first meet the main character and his twin brother as they are basically sent to a sort of "judgement" ceremony to decide who will be a useful addition to the society of Quill...and who will be disposed of. Literally. Those who are rejected are sent the Death Farm to be thrown into a lake of boiling oil. Yikes. Needless to say, one twin is excepted and the other is not. As soon as the rejected children are sent away, the rest of Quill, including their families are ordered to forget all about them. Harsh. Especially harsh is the fact that the reason these children are disposed of is because they showed some sign of creativity and imagination.

Thankfully, the kids are all shocked when they find themselves, not boiling in a lake of oil, but secretly transported to a hidden land called Artimè, where creativity and imagination are encouraged. The kid are taught to enhance whatever their individual strengths are, and are ultimately taught to use their gifts along with magic to both create and defend themselves in the event that their world is ever discovered.

The whole story was such great world-building: the wonderful layered characters that you never quite knew where their loyalties would lie in the end, the many quirky and mysterious teachers, the cold, unfeeling conditioning of the people of Quill, and the many surprises that popped up throughout. It was heartbreaking at moments, especially where the two brothers were concerned, and I loved the little hints of young love thrown into the mix. While I don't like to make the comparison---I would definitely say that this as close to the feel of Harry Potter as I've read yet. A similar feeling of wonderment is there: the magic of finding this whole new world that was right out outside your door, the intense, unpredictable relationships and wonderful characters that are learning to be themselves and appreciate their different gifts. Yet the Unwanteds is, without a doubt, an amazing and unique tale that deserves to be appreciated in it's own right. This is definitely a great start to a series that I'm excited to continue! show less

If this book was an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark, it would have been called The Tale of the Haunted Desk. The story in this book is a fairly simple concept with an interesting execution: a sleepy town with little to say for itself ends up with some big news when multiple teenagers go missing, upsetting everyone but most notably Kendall, a teenage girl with fairly disruptive OCD. After Kendall's boyfriend goes missing and Kendall starts noticing strange messages show up on the desk show more where he sat at school, she starts to realise that there's far more going on than meets the eye.

Breaking up the chapters that are mostly from Kendalls point of view are short page-long snippets by a frantic and obsessive voice. It quickly becomes obvious that the voices are connected to the disappearing teens, though what they say is vague enough that how and why they're connected isn't entirely clear, which is a definite point in McMann's favour. Keeping the reader interested and somewhat in the dark is essential for a good mystery, driving them onward to discover what ties all the clues together.

As the story progresses, Kendall herself starts getting influenced by the voices, possessed by the intent behind them. As we discover later, intent is, by and large, what the voice are, at least to an extent. The desk isn't possessed by a particular ghost but rather the pain that was felt as disturbed boys were made to bent over it while being whipper, sometimes to death, by a sadistic teacher at the school where the desk was first used. In an attempt to find solace, the pain infected those who sat at the desk, eventually forcing them to bury themselves alive as the sentient pain tried to find a release. it's a fascinating concept, and I think McMann did a wonderful job of conveying the brutality and just what can come of abuse even after the abused and abusers are long gone from the world.

I was particularly impressed by McMann's handling of OCD, though upon finding out that her own daughter has the condition, that isn't too surprising. Given that I took have more than just a slight touch of it myself, I could relate to Kendall very well, could see the logic in her illogical compulsions (when you're forced to stop walking and tap your feet in a certain rhythm until a sense of balance and rightness returns to your body, or when you can't eat a sandwich without first tearing into specific sections, you'll understand exactly what I mean when I say that). Particularly interesting was that in the end, it was Kendalls OCD that played a part in saving her life, her compulsions overriding the strength to which she was possessed by the voices of pain. I liked how OCD wasn't protrayed as some freaky thing that did nothing but ostracize people and turn them into freaks, but rather as a legitimate condition that needed handling, needed dealing with, and occasionally can be useful.

This is defininitely a book worth picking up. The distant tone it's written it can sometimes be a detriment to really getting into the story, but the pace is quick and smooth enough to mostly make up for that, and the characters are interesting and complete. Very good for fans of YA paranormal novels, for those looking for a good haunting that can be both simple and complex. show less

This book is the awkward love child of The Hunger Games and Harry Potter, with a bit of City of Ember thrown in. It is so very flawed- the writing contradicts itself, the magic is entirely too easy and without any rules, it is all told and rarely shown; I could go on and on. However, the story was compelling enough that I missed my train stop going to work one day. I often find prophecy-driven stories to be a bit problematic. In this book, I like that any set of twins could have set the show more events of the story in motion, and it just happened to be Alex and Aaron.

I don't expect the flaws to be a problem for any upper-elementary or middle school readers, and will probably gladly hand it out. show less