Nerds Heart YA: A Love Story Starring my Dead Best Friend vs Dark Water: The Decision

Nerds Heart YA!, is an annual, bracket-stlye tournament aiming to highlight fantastic, underrepresented young adult books (with a central focus of diversity). With two books being judged against each other by a variety of bloggers until one book is declared the winner. Although the real point is to provide all the short-listed books with extra exposure!

Because, Lenore is in the middle of Dystopian August on her blog, and she didn’t want our post to get lost in the mix, we’re posting our full discussion and decision here on Bart’s Bookshelf.

So, I don’t know about you, but I knew very little about the two books we read, before they were put though to us to judge, so I thought we could start by talking about our initial pre-conceptions of the two books.

A Love Story Starring my Dead Best Friend

 I think the title, cover and blurb all point to a quirky light-hearted tale, I think what we got was deeper that, in fact I was pleased by how moved I was at times.

I remember wanting to read the book back when it was called Super Sweet Ninja Death Squad, so I too was expecting more frothy fun.

Dark Water

I was expecting a much darker read than what we got with this one, much more of a sense of foreboding and the forbidden. I did like how some of the wider aspects of the story were explored in the sub-plots.

Well, with “dark” in the title … based on the jacket description, I expected the forbidden romance to be more prominent than it was. The end was quite dark though.

Since we both mentioned in our reviews of Dark Water that the romance was too scant to really believe that she would act like she did in the end … maybe we should talk about the romances in both books.

Dark Water

I thought McNeal did a great job of showing us Pearl’s infatuation with Amiel – and the way that not much really happened between them for a long time felt realistic.  But then you have Pearl doing what she did based on this infatuation?  Seems like a real stretch, though of course not impossible. After all, who hasn’t done stupid things as a teen?

I could see Pearl’s infatuation with Amiel, but because we only really see it from Pearl’s side and because of Amiel’s condition learning anything about him is difficult at best, I never really understood why she was so infatuated, or strongly either way for the relationship.

I can see why she went to him at the end (it didn’t really need the relationship for that to happen, if you were the only one who knew someone was in danger, and believed yourself to be the only one who could help…) But decisions she made once there… Yeah, stretched things a bit.

A Love Story Starring my Dead Best Friend

 I know Horner tells us why Cass falls for Heather, but it didn’t feel right to me.  I can see Cass grudgingly forgiving Heather’s bullying, but falling in love with her?  I wasn’t convinced.DO: For me it didn’t feel particularly unbelievable, I liked the way she took enough time building the friendship for it to feel okay, the reason for the initial bullying in the first place felt more forced to me.

I’ve heard it said that the reason for the bullying is very stereotypical, but I wouldn’t know.  Shall we move on to setting?

I don’t know about stereotypical, but I’m not sure if Emma Horner ‘hid’ the reason as well as she’d hoped, but I twigged fairly early on.Dark Water

Seeing as the setting was a Southern California avocado grove, I thought we could have seen a little more about the migrant farm workers plight.  We do see some via Amiel – how and where he lives for example – but  I might have liked if Pearl had taken more of an interest in their well-being in general, instead of limiting her interest to a possible relationship with Amiel.  That said, the setting with the river and the land susceptible to wildfires, was used really well in the plot.

I like much of the setting, I think the groves, woods and rivers felt very real, and I could almost feel the sticky heat But yeah you’re right, we could have done with seeing a little more of the migrants workers plight. It would have made Amiel’s concern that much stronger at the end; if we had known more about what could have happen to him.

The sub-plot about Robbie’s father’s supposed affair, could have been dropped to make room for it, because for me, McNeal had already done a great job of showing Pearl & Robbie’s closeness, she didn’t need to help him for us to know that.

A Love Story Starring my Dead Best Friend

I probably liked the cross-country bike trip better than the parts preparing for the musical, although they both were cathartic to Cass and helped her accept Julia’s death. How the whole road trip ended up was definitely my favorite part of the book.

Yeah, the bike/road trip was really good. I did enjoyed the description of the biking section, and I thought Horner captured Cass’ love of cycling really well. Loneliness and separation is often a good match for exploring grief, and there were some really moving scenes. I think the dual narrative really helps with this, events in both sections often complement the other.

Both books to some extent, mix up the time lines, with Dark Water, Pearl starts to tell us the story after the events unfold, so we already know some of the fall out of her actions and A Love Story Starring my Dead Best Friend, as I mentioned  above, uses a duel narrative, how successful do you think they were.

A Love Story Starring my Dead Best Friend

I really liked this, I thought the two-story lines complimented each other nicely. Each ‘half’ contained journeys both literal and figurative, with Cass coming to terms with her grief and friendships during the road trip, matching nicely with the Cass and Heather friendship, and accepting the full truth of her friendship with Julia.

 While I liked the road trip story line more, it did have quite the soggy middle when she stayed at the girl’s house for a time. I liked it when Horner did clever transitions between the two timelines – like when she told Heather that she kissed a musician at 2 am and then we got that story – but she didn’t do this nearly enough.

Dark Water

I often have issues with books that let us know the ending before the start, it always takes some of the tension out of the thing for me. Yes, it means we can look for clues for how we get there, but I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how successful Dark Water was in this. True, the repercussions were larger than you may have expected, but I think I’d have been more moved not knowing anything going into the ending.

What we know at the beginning is that she is no longer talking to Robbie and that Amiel is gone.  Personally, I thought this created more tension, because I really wanted to know why.  It made me do a lot of speculation while I was reading and I wasn’t sure if the affair storyline was a red herring or the basis of the falling out.  The very, very end was kind of a WTF for me.  But overall, I enjoyed reading the novel very much.  Shall we talk about overall impressions and then make a decision?

A Love Story Starring my Dead Best Friend

While there were some aspects I really liked, such as the bicycle tour and the lyrics from the musical, much of the novel was just ok.  I never really felt like I got to know Cass since she seemed to define herself by her friendship with Julia.  Even though Julia was dead, she seemed the most alive to me – maybe via the musical and all.  Though that Heather did have some sass.  I highlighted the line “Didn’t anyone ever teach you that it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission?”

I think this one had more individual aspects I liked more out of the two books, the bike trip, the duel narrative and how that part dealt with Cass’ grief, as I say it was genuinely moving. The ending to the trip as well, I really, really liked, although I really wanted to shake Cass, every time she tried to prove to herself her friends weren’t really hers. Did them a great disservice. The lyrics and musical added a nice bit of fun to the story.

Dark Water

Dark Water had such lovely writing and, to me, the more compelling story.  Despite my issues with the ending, I am very much in favor of advancing this one to the next round.
How about you?

Whereas… Dark Water was the one I had more individual issues with. I don’t think we got to know Ameil, anywhere near enough, to accept the relationship enough for what happens later. And I thought Robbie’s dad’s ‘affair’ wasn’t needed, (and then wasn’t fully explored from Robbie’s side of things, he clearly starts to feel things for the girl.) But then, outside of these I enjoyed the writing, the depiction of the area, the characters other than Amiel (and that’s only because as I say I never really got to know him).

So, it comes down to looking at the books as a whole I suppose.

As you may have guessed, I personally enjoyed, A Love Story Starring my Dead Best Friend, the more, but not that strongly that I’d be upset if it didn’t go though, therefore I’m more than happy to move Dark Water on.