Jellicoe Road, by Melina Marchetta

From the jacket: “Abandoned by her mother on Jellicoe Road when she was eleven, Taylor Markham, now seventeen, is finally being confronted with her past. But as the reluctant leader of her boarding school dorm, there isn’t a lot of time for introspection. and while Hannah, the closest adult Taylor has to family, has disappeared, Jonah Griggs is back in town, moody stares and all.”

My take: Taylor is in her final full year of at the Jellicoe School and is beginning to feel the pressure. She was already head of her dorm. Now, she’s just been elected leader of her school’s army in the three way turf battle between them, the townies, and the pack of military school boys who come out from Sydney to their woods for a six-week-long annual training camp. It’s an unpopular decision among her fellow dorm leaders, who threaten her with a coup. Plus, her relationship is rocky with Hannah, the woman who took Taylor in when her mother abandoned her at a local convenience store when she was 11. It’s been particularly strained since the previous year when she and one of the cadets ran away together in an attempt to go find Taylor’s mother and the answers to why she’d left.

But when Hannah leaves without saying anything to Taylor, it’s unbearable. Could something have happened to her? Would she, too, have just up and left Taylor? And does The Brigadier, whom Taylor has seen skulking around Hannah’s cottage, have anything to do with her disappearance? And are there any answers in the story that Hannah has been writing all these years?

Taylor’s best friends, Raffaela and Ben, have her back, but it’s going to be a challenging time for her. Chaz Santangelo, head of the town kids, is an ex of Raffaela’s, and the leader of the cadets is none other than Jonah Griggs, who stole Taylor’s heart when he agreed to help her find her mother the year before, but then dashed it when he called his school to tell The Brigadier where to find the two of them. Neither of them are what you would describe as sympathetic. And if the three factions weren’t in an all-out war at the beginning, their stressed interpersonal relationships are going to lead to big trouble.

Taylor’s story is interspersed with pieces of Hannah’s book, which tells the story of Tate and siblings Narnie and Webb, all of whom were orphaned when their parents’ cars crashed in a head-on collision on the Jellicoe Road; Fitz, who found the wrecked cars and pulled the three children to safety; and Jude, who reminded them all what was worth living for. Both sets of kids are troubled and moody and melodramatic, but they all feel realistic, and you can’t help but root for them to move beyond their problems to find some sense of peace and family.

Taylor will get her answers, but they aren’t necessarily going to be what she wants or expects to hear. It’s what she does with her new-found knowledge, though, that’s going to help her figure out how to move forward when her own time comes to leave the Jellicoe Road.

Pages: 419

Anna and the French Kiss, by Stephanie Perkins

From the jacket: “Anna was looking forward to her senior year in Atlanta, where she has a great job, a loyal best friend, and a crush on the verge of becoming more. So she’s less than thrilled about being shipped off to boarding school in Paris — until she meets Étienne St. Clair. Smart, charming, beautiful, Étienne has it all … including a serious girlfriend. But in the City of Light, wishes have a way of coming true. Will a year of romantic near-misses end with their long-awaited French kiss?”

My take: Anna’s father, a best-selling author of schmaltzy novels rapidly being turned into sappy movies, decides that his daughter needs a year abroad before heading off to college. So without asking her opinion, he enrolls her at the School of America in Paris (SAP, for short). In short order, she is plucked from a comfortable life babysitting her young brother, hanging out with her drum-playing BFF, and working at the local movie theater (a gem of a job for a cinema blogger and aspiring film critic) where her coworker seems to be getting up the courage to ask her out and dumped in a country where she doesn’t speak the language with fellow students who have spent years together.

But it’s not all bad. After a few teary nights and stressful days, Anna finds comfort in the company of sporty, Beatles-loving Meredith, artistic Josh, ambitious Rashmi, and charming and cute Étienne St. Clair, who introduces her to the world of French cinema when he takes her on a tour of the city. When it seems like things are finally starting to fall into place for her and her new-found friends, Étienne gets terrible news that threatens the equilibrium of their intimate group. Will it bring them all closer together or tear them apart?

Anna and the French Kiss does what Maureen Johnson’s 13 Little Blue Envelopes failed to do (much as I enjoyed that novel) — which is to plausibly deposit a somewhat naive high school senior on the doorstep of a European adventure. Other than having a rich father (who divorced her mom and moved away just as he was becoming successful), Anna is a normal teenager living a normal life — complete with an awesome best friend and a little brother she adores, an ex-boyfriend dating a girl she can’t stand, and the hopes for a really good romance for her senior year. Pluck her from that and dump her in Paris for a year — only allowing her home for Christmas break — and you’ve got a great scenario for a story. Throw in a cute boy with a British accent, a girlfriend, and a major life issue and set it a boarding school where they allow seniors more freedom than they’d get in an American school and write it adeptly and humorously and you’ve got teen romance gold.

Many thank you’s to all the book bloggers who put Perkins’ second novel on 2011’s best of lists. Without that nudge, I wouldn’t have remembered that Anna and the French Kiss had been languishing on my To Be Read list for more than a year. I would rank Stephanie Perkins’ first novel up there with Sarah Dessen’s work as being a great contemporary book for teen girls — and that’s saying a lot.

Pages: 372

We Bought a Zoo: The Amazing Story of a Young Family, a Broken Down Zoo, and the 200 Wild Animals That Change Their Lives Forever by Benjamin Mee

From the jacket: “In the market for a house and the adventure of a lifetime, Benjamin Mee decided to uproot his family and move them to an unlikely new home: a dilapidated zoo in the English countryside, complete with over 200 exotic animals. Mee, who specializes in animal behavior, had a dream to refurbish the zoo and run it as a family business. Naturally, friends and colleagues thought he was crazy.”

My take: It sounds like an ideal story, doesn’t it? An English guy, family in tow, buys a rundown private zoo with the intent of restoring it to its former glory and turning it into a reseeding ground for endangered animals. Add in family drama, personnel issues, escaped deadly creatures, a health crisis, and two small children and it’s what movie dreams are made of. Which may be why you recognize the title of the memoir I read last month — it was a movie that came out at the end of last year.

The book, which the film’s release brought back to my mind, has a lot of potential. There’s a lot of good material in it — from Ben’s start in the French countryside, where he and his wife Katherine are raising their two young kids — all the way through the Mee family buying a dilapidated zoo from an eccentric old British man in Dartmoor and renovating it. You learn a lot about a lot of different things — from cutting edge cancer research to what an ordeal it is to secure loans and financing to bring such a business back from ruin. You get glimpses of the journalist Mee must have been before he gave up freelancing for a little piece of Dartmoor and several tigers.

But the book is weighed down by inadequate editing. Characters are sometimes reintroduced within pages, while others reappear after hundreds of pages away with nary a reminder about their purpose in the story. There’s a lack of focus, as one might expect in a sprawling family drama that involves a tapir and peacocks, but it’s nothing I feel like a good red pen from a bit of distance might not have been able to fix.

So, I guess I’d say if you think the subject matter interests you, it’s worth seeking the book out. But I didn’t connect with it in the way I expected to.

Pages: 261

How To Save a Life by Sara Zarr

From the jacket: “Jill MacSweeney just wishes everything could go back to normal. But ever since her dad died, she’s been isolating herself from her boyfriend, her best friends — everyone who wants to support her. And when her mom decides to adopt a baby, it feels like she’s somehow trying to replace a lost family member with a new one. Mandy Kalinowsky understands what it’s like to grow up unwanted — to be raised by a mother who never intended to have a child. So when Mandy becomes pregnant, one thing she’s sure of is that she wants a better life for her baby. It’s harder to be sure of herself. Will she ever find someone to care for her, too?”

My take: Mandy is pregnant and looking to give her child up for adoption. Jill’s recently widowed mom, Robin, is looking to adopt a baby, and an open-adoption website helps them find each other. Robin invites Mandy to move in with them while they wait for the baby’s arrival — two decisions that cause Jill, still reeling from her dad’s death, to flip out.

It’s like her mother has become someone Jill doesn’t even recognize. Jill has enough to worry about without a pregnant stranger living in her house and without her mother making what seems like a sudden and insane life decision: Jill’s about to graduate from high school, but while she knows she doesn’t want to head to college right away, she’s not sure what she does want to do.

She suspects, though, that at least the short term answer may involve a boy — either her reliable on-again, off-again boyfriend Dylan or Ravi, the sympathetic anti-fraud manager who works in the corporate office of her after-school bookstore job and who, it turns out, attended high school with her briefly.

Meanwhile, Mandy has moved into a house that’s way nicer than the ones she grew up in. Robin is far kinder to her than her own mother had been, and she can see that the baby she’s bearing will have the childhood she never did. Sure, she might have glossed over a few things to make the story work out better, but she’s sure it will be for the best. Now if she could only figure out what her own happy ending might look like.

Told in alternating chapters by two teenage girls, this novel is about figuring out what you want out of your own life and what makes a family. You’ll end up caring about all of the characters — and hoping that each of them can find their path forward.

Personally, I found it such a compelling read that I had to stay up late to finish it just to find out.

Pages: 341

The Baker Street Letters by Michael Robertson

From the jacket: “In Los Angeles, a geological surveyor maps out a proposed subway route — and then goes missing. His eight-year-old daughter in her desperation turns to the one person she thinks might help — she writes a letter to Sherlock Holmes. That letter creates an uproar at 221b Baker Street, which now houses the law offices of attorney and man-about-town Reggie Heath and his hapless brother Nigel. Instead of filing the letter like he’s supposed to, Nigel decides to investigate. Soon he’s flying off to Los Angeles, inconsiderately leaving a very dead body on the floor in his office. Big brother Reggie follows Nigel to California, as does Reggie’s sometime lover, Laura — a quick-witted stage actress who’s captured the hearts of both brothers. When Nigel is arrested, Reggie must use all his wits to solve a case that Sherlock Holmes would have savored, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fans will adore.”

My take: When one rents the real address of 221b Baker Street, with the lease comes the responsibility of replying (by form letter) to the inquiries that arrive addressed to the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.

High-class lawyer Reggie Heath is so excited by the space and the location that he doesn’t really pay attention to that bit of the lease agreement. But his office manager does, and assigns the task to Reggie’s younger brother, Nigel, who is recently out of the mental hospital and awaiting clearance from a review board to resume practicing law after an embarrassing misunderstanding.

Nigel, who tends to work from his heart rather than from a logical perspective, disregards the directive to use stock language to reply to Sherlock Holmes queries. His curiosity is particularly piqued when he comes across a request for the return of an item included with correspondence dated 20 years earlier. When that original letter turns out to be from a young girl seeking the sleuth’s help finding her missing father, and when Nigel detects that the signature on the modern request is a forgery, he decides to get involved.

Unfortunately, his abrupt trip to California to investigate overlaps with the discovery of the dead body of the office manager in Nigel’s office — with his head bashed in by Nigel’s statue.

What’s a big brother to do but put off Scotland Yard and follow his hapless sibling to the U.S. — even if it does ultimately mean that Reggie will visit unsavory neighborhoods, get arrested for a second murder, and nearly lose his own life?

I picked this book up at Sam Weller’s in Salt Lake on their second day open at a new location. They didn’t have the book I was after in soft-cover, so instead of buying it in hard-cover, I bought two other books instead.

I hadn’t heard anything about the mystery prior to picking it up off the shelf and thought the premise sounded promising. I’m not sure the execution lived up to the promise, with heroes whose powers of deduction at times would have put Inspector Lestrade in a positive light. However, the book was still a good — light and quick — way to pass a flight and may be considered worth checking out from the library.

Pages: 277

Ivy + Bean by Annie Barrows and Sophie Blackall (illustrator)

From the jacket: “Meet Ivy and Bean, two friends who never meant to like each other. The moment they saw each other, Bean and Ivy knew they would never be friends. But when Bean plays a trick on her sister and has to hide — quick! — Ivy comes to the rescue with her wand, some face paint, and a bucket of worms. Will they end up in trouble? Maybe. Will they have fun? Of course!

My take: A cute story about two seven-year-old neighbors. Impish Bean is non-stop energy. Ivy seems more restrained, with her nose always in a book. And neither girl is interested in befriending the other, particularly because their mothers recommend it as a good idea. (Sound familiar, Mum?) When Bean’s prank on older sister Nancy goes awry, leaving Bean on the hunt for a way to leave the scene of the crime, Ivy comes to her aid and initiates Bean into the ways of magic. Their worlds will never be the same.

Perfect for the preschool set as a long read-aloud or for young elementary school readers who are moving on to chapter books. This is the first in a series.

Pages: 120