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I started reading The Year of Secret Assignments this morning, sitting on the edge of the couch waiting for my toast to pop. Half the book later, I lifted my head and looked about in puzzlement, wondering why I was sitting in such an uncomfortable position and hadn't there been plans for breakfast?
That, my friends, is how engrossing Jaclyn Moriarty's The Year of Secret Assignments is. Unless you have a deep-seated revulsion to literature about high school students, you should read it.
(I note that Moriarty is Australian. All the best writers are Australian these days: Isobelle Carmody, Garth Nix, Michelle Cooper who wrote the Montmaray books. Possibly I should consider emigrating.)
The Year of Secret Assignments is a bit like I hoped John Tucker Must Die would be, if John Tucker Must Die wasn't a misogynistic piece of crap, as both of them involve taking vengeance on a sleazy jackass who jerks girls around for his own entertainment. But beyond that there's little point of comparison, as The Year of Secret Assignments has things like "female characters who actually like each other and have lives outside of their slowly burgeoning romances with their pen pals at the neighboring high school."
The story is told through the letters flying back and forth between pen pals, which means that Moriarty juggles six different first-person narrators. It's a bit confusing at first, but they differentiate eventually: Lydia is the crazy fun daredevil, Cassie is quiet and still trying to get over her father's death, and Emily is...Emily. And they have fun times together! They paint murals on the walls of Lydia's rooms and sneak out of school to watch a movie every Thursday and are generally awesome.
Emily is my favorite. She writes long letters sprinkled with malapropisms and peculiar grammatical constructions; one gets the feeling that, a) she wants to be smarter than she thinks she is, and b) she hasn't quite gotten the hang of written English yet. That this is charming rather than maddening is testament to Moriarty's skill.
Emily also has the most interesting and individual romance, which felt specific to these people, in this place, at this time. Her eventual boyfriend, Charley, is well-meaning but deeply awkward: geeky in a way that is light years removed from anything geek-chic.
(However, I suspect that the other boyfriend in the book is more popular with readers: he has most the stigmata of an appropriate book crush.)
Also, there's a sequel. It's called The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie (Bindy, a highly strung nerd, being my favorite secondary character - did I mention all the fun secondary characters? There are fun secondary characters. Given how many primary characters there are it's amazing there's room for anyone else) and I mean to get it out of the library tomorrow.
That, my friends, is how engrossing Jaclyn Moriarty's The Year of Secret Assignments is. Unless you have a deep-seated revulsion to literature about high school students, you should read it.
(I note that Moriarty is Australian. All the best writers are Australian these days: Isobelle Carmody, Garth Nix, Michelle Cooper who wrote the Montmaray books. Possibly I should consider emigrating.)
The Year of Secret Assignments is a bit like I hoped John Tucker Must Die would be, if John Tucker Must Die wasn't a misogynistic piece of crap, as both of them involve taking vengeance on a sleazy jackass who jerks girls around for his own entertainment. But beyond that there's little point of comparison, as The Year of Secret Assignments has things like "female characters who actually like each other and have lives outside of their slowly burgeoning romances with their pen pals at the neighboring high school."
The story is told through the letters flying back and forth between pen pals, which means that Moriarty juggles six different first-person narrators. It's a bit confusing at first, but they differentiate eventually: Lydia is the crazy fun daredevil, Cassie is quiet and still trying to get over her father's death, and Emily is...Emily. And they have fun times together! They paint murals on the walls of Lydia's rooms and sneak out of school to watch a movie every Thursday and are generally awesome.
Emily is my favorite. She writes long letters sprinkled with malapropisms and peculiar grammatical constructions; one gets the feeling that, a) she wants to be smarter than she thinks she is, and b) she hasn't quite gotten the hang of written English yet. That this is charming rather than maddening is testament to Moriarty's skill.
Emily also has the most interesting and individual romance, which felt specific to these people, in this place, at this time. Her eventual boyfriend, Charley, is well-meaning but deeply awkward: geeky in a way that is light years removed from anything geek-chic.
(However, I suspect that the other boyfriend in the book is more popular with readers: he has most the stigmata of an appropriate book crush.)
Also, there's a sequel. It's called The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie (Bindy, a highly strung nerd, being my favorite secondary character - did I mention all the fun secondary characters? There are fun secondary characters. Given how many primary characters there are it's amazing there's room for anyone else) and I mean to get it out of the library tomorrow.
