YA Fiction Books, Readers, Writers, and Reviewers discussion

Okay, the poll for October is closed and here is our winner! BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA by Victoria Genevieve Tucholke. This one seems like it would be a good fit for Halloween, LOL.
Head out and get your copies and get reading, I'm gonna start today before the Ohio State game, and after so here we go :)
As always, you don't have to be finished with the book to start posting your thoughts. Feel free to chime in at any time!
~LH

I got my copy!

Really looking forward to this one!

We'll need spoiler tags for this book. See instructions here:

https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/2...

I'm reading the book and finding this one engrossing. It pulled me in and hasn't let me go yet--I'm about one-quarter through...

Just finished Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. GREAT twists.
I found the heroine to be unusual for a YA heroine - more like an adult fiction teenager as in the Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie - but the conflicts and general character arc did feel YA to me.

The way romantic reactions were handled was particularly interesting to me, and I thought backstory was woven in effectively and brilliantly. This is one of the best outsider books I've read because the heroine took her situation so matter of factly.

Great read for me; i'm interested to hear what others think of it.

I am still in the first few chapters, and kinda waffling, but I'm glad to hear you say such positive things! Maybe after I get my current edits done I'll pick it up sooner than planned :)
Anyone else got any thoughts?
~LH

I've got another 100 pp or so. The voice really grabbed me. I like this kind of atmospheric writing. I think of books like this--and Maggie Stiefvater's "Shiver"--as "mood books."

I also like Kate's phrase, "outsider book."

How do people feel about the retro out-of-time feel? (=no cell phones, not much reference to the world outside, everyone in town watches old movies in the town square.) Reminds me of Twin Peaks, when that first came out. I like it, but maybe not everyone does?

Done!
I liked the book, but I have to say that I wasn't a huge fan of the plot developments in the second half.

I'm almost done but I feel like I can throw in my two cents. I liked the book, it has a uniqueness going for it.
I agree with Peggy, this book does feel like a mood book but I'm not so sure how I felt about the out of modern time touch. I found myself going back and forth overall.
I think my biggest thing was how unrealistic it was that the parents were so.........ridiculous. I mean common, running off to Europe and leaving their kids with little money and no supervision and no way to contact them or even for them to check in? It seemed so crazy and out there. Honestly I think this was my only real problem.
I liked the characters and the romance; and I liked the last plot twists and the writing style. If only the parent situation was different, then I think this would be an out of the park for me.
~LH

I think the whole question of how parents are handled in YA books is a really interesting one. Twilight, Shiver, this book--the teens are ultra-independent, with the parents either absent, reliant on the teens, or coexisting with them in a roommate-type way.

Consensus: three readers, all positive. (If there are any lurkers out there, feel free to weigh in!) The author's voice and the atmosphere she created really stood out.