cynthiak's review
4.0
This is NOT a young adult book. C'est un livre par Laura Kasischke qui, une fois encore, fait une critique cinglante d'un aspect de la vie américaine. Ici, en l'occurrence, la superficialité des relations adUlescentes sur fond de cheerleadisme et l'égocentrisme qui frappe les jeunes filles "bien-comme-il-faut" ou "à-ne-pas-fréquenter" issues de la sacro-sainte middle-class. Une critique aussi de l'insouciance des jeunes (ah oui, laissez-les vivre dans l'insouciance) mais dont les choix insouciants ont des conséquences qui affecteront leur vie. A nouveau, on peut faire une lecture à plusieurs niveaux. C'est incroyable comment, mine de rien, Laura Kasischke arrive à dépeindre ses personnages avec finesse et une complexité sans fin.
crabbygirl's review against another edition
2.0
[guessing at the star rating / mining my old FB notes now that they are almost impossible to find]
i often make book lists after reading my favorite bloggers, but i don't always remember who recommended which book and for whom. (i take note of books for me, as well as pepper & fierce) when this YA one came in - innocence title and slim width - i thought it was pepper. well, thank-god i read it first! it's the kind of scary tale told around the campfire and was VERY effective in that sense. the tension kept building and i thought this would be a great alternative to those horrid Goosebumps series that my daughter likes to read. but the characters - so smutty! more flawed than redemptive. i tried to give it a chance (because maybe the ending would provide a moral judgement to counter point all this bad behavior) but no - the beautiful cheerleaders keep their perfect lives and the world keeps turning.
i often make book lists after reading my favorite bloggers, but i don't always remember who recommended which book and for whom. (i take note of books for me, as well as pepper & fierce) when this YA one came in - innocence title and slim width - i thought it was pepper. well, thank-god i read it first! it's the kind of scary tale told around the campfire and was VERY effective in that sense. the tension kept building and i thought this would be a great alternative to those horrid Goosebumps series that my daughter likes to read. but the characters - so smutty! more flawed than redemptive. i tried to give it a chance (because maybe the ending would provide a moral judgement to counter point all this bad behavior) but no - the beautiful cheerleaders keep their perfect lives and the world keeps turning.
taylorfennerwrites's review against another edition
3.0
3.25 of 5 Stars!
The first time I read Boy Heaven was twelve years ago. I was thirteen and at the time this story creeped me out. Years passed and I lost track of the book but never forgot the story, eventually managing to track down a used copy online. And so as a now-twenty-five-year-old-woman I read this book for the third time.
Boy Heaven is about a girl named Kristy who attends cheerleading camp with her best friend Desiree. There they meet a redhead also named Kristi and one day decide to ditch camp and drive to a nearby lake to skinny dip. Along the way they attract the attention of two boys in a station wagon who decide to follow them. The girls decide to turn back for camp and see the boys following them so they decide to flash them. Unbeknownst to them this event causes a disastrous chain of events. Soon Desiree and the redheaded Kristi insist they're seeing the boys watching them at the camp but the other Kristy doesn't believe them, thinking they're losing their minds.
With the help of the camp lifeguard, T.J., Desiree and Kristy discover the truth about what really happened the day they ran into the boys in the station wagon, a truth that will change all of their lives forever.
This book is an okay read. It's told in a very strange way - like you know how someone starts talking about one subject then before you know it they've off-shot into about a hundred other topics that you wonder how they were connected to the original topic to begin with. That's how this story is written. Originally it starts with a camp counsellor telling horror stories around the campfire, and the Desiree and Kristis' story is one of them then we hear the story in Kristy's perspective with a bunch of offshoots to things that happened in her past that aren't really but sort of are connected to the main story.
It's not as eerie of a story as I thought it was as a teenager but the ending - the fate of the three girls still gives me an uneasy feeling and reminds me why I never liked telling scary stories in the dark as a kid.
Overall, I like this book but I think there are a lot of things that could have been cut from the story.
The first time I read Boy Heaven was twelve years ago. I was thirteen and at the time this story creeped me out. Years passed and I lost track of the book but never forgot the story, eventually managing to track down a used copy online. And so as a now-twenty-five-year-old-woman I read this book for the third time.
Boy Heaven is about a girl named Kristy who attends cheerleading camp with her best friend Desiree. There they meet a redhead also named Kristi and one day decide to ditch camp and drive to a nearby lake to skinny dip. Along the way they attract the attention of two boys in a station wagon who decide to follow them. The girls decide to turn back for camp and see the boys following them so they decide to flash them. Unbeknownst to them this event causes a disastrous chain of events. Soon Desiree and the redheaded Kristi insist they're seeing the boys watching them at the camp but the other Kristy doesn't believe them, thinking they're losing their minds.
With the help of the camp lifeguard, T.J., Desiree and Kristy discover the truth about what really happened the day they ran into the boys in the station wagon, a truth that will change all of their lives forever.
This book is an okay read. It's told in a very strange way - like you know how someone starts talking about one subject then before you know it they've off-shot into about a hundred other topics that you wonder how they were connected to the original topic to begin with. That's how this story is written. Originally it starts with a camp counsellor telling horror stories around the campfire, and the Desiree and Kristis' story is one of them then we hear the story in Kristy's perspective with a bunch of offshoots to things that happened in her past that aren't really but sort of are connected to the main story.
It's not as eerie of a story as I thought it was as a teenager but the ending - the fate of the three girls still gives me an uneasy feeling and reminds me why I never liked telling scary stories in the dark as a kid.
Overall, I like this book but I think there are a lot of things that could have been cut from the story.
katiecoops's review against another edition
4.0
I really liked this book. I was completely unprepared for the kind of writing the story told within the pages because the cover is just plain awful. I would NEVER have picked this book up based on the cover alone but I read a review of it that made me curious. I've never felt like a book needed a different cover (and maybe title) more than this book does. It's just so incongruous with the story and it is a fantastic story. Kasischke's writing is beautiful and unexpected and the story is so different from most other YA books. I definitely recommend this book even though I can't really tell much of the story without giving it away. I can say it is not a fun, sun-soaked read like the cover would lead you to believe and it is much darker than you think.
foreveryoungadult's review against another edition
Graded By: Megan no h
Cover Story: Misleading
BFF Charm: No Thanks
Swoonworthy Scale: 0
Talky Talk: Pure Poetry
Bonus Factor: Summer Camp
Relationship Status: And Now For Something Completely Different
Read the full book report here.
Cover Story: Misleading
BFF Charm: No Thanks
Swoonworthy Scale: 0
Talky Talk: Pure Poetry
Bonus Factor: Summer Camp
Relationship Status: And Now For Something Completely Different
Read the full book report here.
xoczarina's review against another edition
4.0
The ending gave me chills since I was alone at home when I finished reading this.
sam_reads_books's review against another edition
1.0
So this was a re-read of a book that stuck with me from about ten years ago. It was the twist that stuck with me and I was really looking forward to reading it again to see if I still liked it. I did not.
I just found this book so problematic, I don't know if I didn't notice before because I was so young or because I knew what was going to happen this time through so I was more focused on the writing than the mystery but I found myself making loud noises of disgust frequently through this book. Slut shaming, virgin shaming, body shaming, girl on girl hate and a whole host of other things just made this book an uncomfortable read for me.
The twist and the ending of this book was fantastic, something I personally haven't come across before or since reading this ten years ago, and I would love to have been able to love the entirety of the story, I'm sad that I just can't.
I just found this book so problematic, I don't know if I didn't notice before because I was so young or because I knew what was going to happen this time through so I was more focused on the writing than the mystery but I found myself making loud noises of disgust frequently through this book. Slut shaming, virgin shaming, body shaming, girl on girl hate and a whole host of other things just made this book an uncomfortable read for me.
The twist and the ending of this book was fantastic, something I personally haven't come across before or since reading this ten years ago, and I would love to have been able to love the entirety of the story, I'm sad that I just can't.
badradio's review against another edition
3.0
I think one of Laura Kasischke’s strongest talents is her ability to create a believable character. When we read young adult fiction, or even watch teen movies, there’s usually that overly revered popular girl, who is so wicked that the audience spends most of the movie wondering how she got to be so popular in the first place. Kasischke doesn’t make that mistake in Boy Heaven. With Kristy, she’s revered because she’s pretty and nice, but she’s not the prettiest—that’s Desiree, who doesn’t even have any other friends because she’s, as Kristy admits herself, Desiree is a slut. Not only is she easy, but she’s also mean—she has “a handful of snow for a heart,” she cheats on all of her boyfriends, etc. And then we have Kristi, and when I first saw that there was a Kristy and a Kristi, I wondered why Kasischke bothered doing that. But Kristi and Kristy are nothing alike.
Kasischke’s grasp of character and her skill at characterizing not just these three girls but the cheerleaders and counselors and small characters they encounter while at this cheerleading camp is so breathtaking that I was ten pages into the story and already felt like I knew them, like I was friends with them, huddled in the backseat of the little red Mustang with them, smiling at boys with them. These weren’t just characters—they could have been any real girls in the world, and I think that’s what made this book so very startling for me. Whatever Kristy told me, as a narrator, I believed. I believed the ghost stories and the fact that she heard screaming in the woods and everything she told me about her family. I felt as though I was her diary, the secret confidant she reveals she still writes every event of her life in.
Another strong point of this novel was how Kasischke warned us of what would come with subtle metaphors and similes. She compares Kristi’s freckles to blood spatter, uses terms like “knife” and “sliced” to refer to seeing the flame of a lighter flick to life, and other strangely out of place terms and phrases that are subtle enough that someone might not notice them but out of place enough, for the lightness of this story at first, for us to completely overlook it. As you read and things become more serious, these comparisons and word choices begin to make sense, and you remember them.
The pacing of this book was magnificent, something I struggle with in my own writing, as well as the characterizations. It wouldn’t have had the same effect on me, I think, if the girls were flat characters, chattering cheerleaders and revered popular girls without rhyme or reason or flaw, but because they were so real, the story itself struck me. This isn’t a cast of characters or a story I’m likely to forget. Even by the time I’d reached page 160 and nothing of significant importance had happened yet, I was so drawn in to the mystery, my expectations were so high from the book’s summary as well as the general tilt of suspense, that I had to keep turning the page. That’s an art. I think what I learned most from Kasischke’s work is pacing and character, and I hope I can carry that art into my own writing.
Kasischke’s grasp of character and her skill at characterizing not just these three girls but the cheerleaders and counselors and small characters they encounter while at this cheerleading camp is so breathtaking that I was ten pages into the story and already felt like I knew them, like I was friends with them, huddled in the backseat of the little red Mustang with them, smiling at boys with them. These weren’t just characters—they could have been any real girls in the world, and I think that’s what made this book so very startling for me. Whatever Kristy told me, as a narrator, I believed. I believed the ghost stories and the fact that she heard screaming in the woods and everything she told me about her family. I felt as though I was her diary, the secret confidant she reveals she still writes every event of her life in.
Another strong point of this novel was how Kasischke warned us of what would come with subtle metaphors and similes. She compares Kristi’s freckles to blood spatter, uses terms like “knife” and “sliced” to refer to seeing the flame of a lighter flick to life, and other strangely out of place terms and phrases that are subtle enough that someone might not notice them but out of place enough, for the lightness of this story at first, for us to completely overlook it. As you read and things become more serious, these comparisons and word choices begin to make sense, and you remember them.
The pacing of this book was magnificent, something I struggle with in my own writing, as well as the characterizations. It wouldn’t have had the same effect on me, I think, if the girls were flat characters, chattering cheerleaders and revered popular girls without rhyme or reason or flaw, but because they were so real, the story itself struck me. This isn’t a cast of characters or a story I’m likely to forget. Even by the time I’d reached page 160 and nothing of significant importance had happened yet, I was so drawn in to the mystery, my expectations were so high from the book’s summary as well as the general tilt of suspense, that I had to keep turning the page. That’s an art. I think what I learned most from Kasischke’s work is pacing and character, and I hope I can carry that art into my own writing.
raandoga's review against another edition
4.0
WHAT. THE. HECK.
Gorgeous book, beautifully rendered and ABSOLUTELY SURPRISING IN EVERY WAY.
Gorgeous book, beautifully rendered and ABSOLUTELY SURPRISING IN EVERY WAY.
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