3 novels I'm reading: Abandon, family, Skinny

No time to go into more about these books that are all different from each other. Probably, even though it's paranormal and based on Dante's Inferno, Meg Cabot's Abandon is the lightest. family not only has chilling subject matter, but it's told in a chilling way that's also disconcerting (lowercase "i"s). You can read an excerpt of Skinny at Jezebel (I'm not anywhere near that part yet) and an interview at Crushable. If you're wondering, I got all these in the last two days. I'm also reading a few books I'm reviewing, and want to blog soon about the extremely fascinating Bobby Fischer biography Endgame by Frank Brady which was utterly engrossing. And I bought the first two, a copy of Skinny was sent to me by the publisher, Harper Perennial.

Author sites and Twitter feeds:

Meg Cabot (@megcabot)

Micol Ostow (@micolz)

Diana Spechler (@dianaspechler)

Cover image links go to Amazon, where I got the plot descriptions from:


Abandon by Meg Cabot

Though she tries returning to the life she knew before the accident, Pierce can't help but feel at once a part of this world, and apart from it. Yet she's never alone . . . because someone is always watching her. Escape from the realm of the dead is impossible when someone there wants you back.

But now she's moved to a new town. Maybe at her new school, she can start fresh. Maybe she can stop feeling so afraid.

Only she can't. Because even here, he finds her. That's how desperately he wants her back. She knows he's no guardian angel, and his dark world isn't exactly heaven, yet she can't stay away . . . especially since he always appears when she least expects it, but exactly when she needs him most.

But if she lets herself fall any further, she may just find herself back in the one place she most fears: the Underworld.


family by Micol Ostow

It is a day like any other when seventeen-year-old Melinda Jensen hits the road for San Francisco, leaving behind her fractured home life and a constant assault on her self-esteem. Henry is the handsome, charismatic man who comes upon her, collapsed on a park bench, and offers love, a bright new consciousness, and—best of all—a family. One that will embrace her and give her love. Because family is what Mel has never really had. And this new family, Henry’s family, shares everything. They share the chores, their bodies, and their beliefs. And if Mel truly wants to belong, she will share in everything they do. No matter what the family does, or how far they go.

Told in episodic verse, family is a fictionalized exploration of cult dynamics, loosely based on the Manson Family murders of 1969. It is an unflinching look at people who are born broken, and the lengths they’ll go to to make themselves “whole” again.


Skinny by Diana Spechler

After her father’s death, twenty-six-year-old Gray Lachmann finds herself compulsively eating. Desperate to stop bingeing, she abandons her life in New York City for a job at a southern weight-loss camp. There, caught among the warring egos of her devious co-counselor, Sheena; the self-aggrandizing camp director, Lewis; his attractive assistant, Bennett; and a throng of combative teenage campers, she is confronted by a captivating mystery: her teenage half-sister, Eden, whom Gray never knew existed. Now, while unraveling her father’s lies, Gray must tackle her own self-deceptions and take control of her body and her life.