The Girl Who Knew Too Much by Tiffany Brooks

This book was first published as Reality Gold by Dunemere Books on May 22, 2018.  The book was republished as The Girl Who Knew Too Much by Sourcebooks Fire on January 4, 2022.

Publisher's summary:

Survivor meets Lord of the Flies in this fast-paced adventure with fascinating characters and pulse-pounding tension.  You think it's a game?  Think again.

High school senior Riley Ozment is desperate to change her reality after making a fool of herself on social media.  She needs to do something drastic to repair her social standing—like trying out for a Survivor-style reality TV show.  Suddenly, Riley's dropped onto a deserted tropical island with nineteen other teens competing for a million dollars and a rumored treasure lost on the island.

But that treasure has a history: a local curse says that seven people need to die before the treasure can be found.  And six hunters have already lost their lives in the search.  Now the question is: who will be the seventh?

With a cast of vivid characters who will stop at nothing to win the show, a cursed island setting, and a priceless treasure waiting to be discovered, The Girl Who Knew Too Much pitches readers right into a scheming web of lies, love, and betrayal.

A fast-paced new thriller where allies may not be who they say they are and legends abound, perfect for fans of young adult mystery and suspense!

Since this book features a reality show competition with 20 contestants, it has lots of characters.  There are way too many of them, but that is unavoidable given the premise.  It helps once most of them are eliminated.  However, I didn't know what most of them looked like, so I had no clear visual image for most of them.  That took away from my enjoyment.

This book is a bit slow at times.  As published, the book is very good.  If it had been shorter with less of the everyday type content, then it would have been an excellent story.  However, readers who enjoy reading slower-paced stories might find this to be an excellent book.

Targeting the YA Category

It seems that everyone is out to get the YA category.

How Public Libraries Are Targeted Right Now—It's Not "Just" Books: Book Censorship News, March 29, 2024

The above linked article covers all of the threats facing public and school libraries.  One article mentioned within it caught my eye.

Flathead County Library Board trustees propose removing young adult designation

Several Flathead County Library trustees want to remove the young adult fiction designation owing to the genre's wide age range that they argue fails to give parents enough guidance on whether a book is appropriate for their child.

That's the problem right there:  YA books are inappropriate for a child.  Children shouldn't be reading young adult books; they should be reading children's and middle-grade books.

The hue and cry over YA books being inappropriate is due to people thinking that the books are for children.  Perhaps children are consuming them, but most of them probably shouldn't be.

Young adult literature typically focuses on a young protagonist but varies in subject matter. According to a report from PBS Digital Studios on young adult fiction, the genre's meaning has varied wildly over the years, encompassing everything from coming-of-age-stories to serialized adventure series.

Not again.  Ugh.  People have a problem with YA books having varying themes.  They make it sound like the genre has no meaning since it can range from "coming-of-age-stories to serialized adventure series."

YA books feature young adult characters and are written for ages 12+.  Period.  They can be any kind of book.

[Board Chair David] Ingram described young adult fiction as for readers ages 12 to 25, which he added "appears to be an arbitrary classification by the publishers that does not provide guidance to the librarians making selections within this category."

Say what?!  Ages 12 to 25?  Apparently, Ingram hasn't heard of the category New Adult, which is for people in their twenties.

That aside, my first thought when seeing the age range of 12 to 25 was that the real age range, obviously unstated, is more like age 12 to 75+.  Lots of adults read YA, but even so, YA is still in between children's books and adult books. 

Ingram said he was confused by the young adult designation and that the easiest demarcation in his view would be to designate all materials as either "for minors or for adults."  Ingram turned the proposal into a motion, adding that it can include further division of materials by staff as they see fit.

So, books are for children or for adults.  This is the problem, people.  We have the YA category for a reason.  We should use it appropriately.  The books aren't for children.  They also aren't intended for adults, even though many adults read them.  Many adults also read children's books as well.  I am one of them.  

He had the support of Vice Chair Carmen Cuthbertson, who called young adult fiction "a designation that libraries didn't come up with, but a sales tool from the publishing industry."

Just stop.  But then a glimmer of hope...

The young adult fiction designation can be traced back to librarians at the New York Public Library, who coined the term in 1944. It followed decades of work by librarians there who wanted to keep adolescents interested in reading. An earlier iteration, the "NYPL Books for Young People" list, was sent to libraries across the country in 1929, according to PBS Digital Studios.

Thank you!

Cutbertson, though, characterized young adult fiction as a sales tool and agreed with Ingram that it is confusing for parents who want to guide their children toward age-appropriate materials.

No, it isn't.  If I were choosing books for an eight-year-old child, I would not pick young adult books.  Why is this so hard?

I wrote about the stigma against the YA category in a recent post.

Stigma Against the YA Category

I've been wanting to respond to some comments that occurred as a result of that post, and this post is a good place to do it.  Pornography in books was mentioned and that many books containing pornography fall under the umbrella of the YA category.  I can't comment on how true that is, but I have never found any pornography in the YA books that I have read.  Of course, I do avoid the modern YA romance books and also do not read YA biographical books, so perhaps that's why.

I do know that many YA books that are said to contain pornography do not contain pornography.  Two YA books were recently in the news locally because of a demand for them to be removed from school libraries.  The books were said to contain pornographic content. 

I immediately went online and found examples of the said content to see for myself how bad it is.  In short... I didn't see a problem.  The content is absolutely inappropriate for children, but it's not inappropriate for teenagers.  People pretend that teenagers know nothing about sex and that even a minor description of sex is inappropriate for teenagers.  These same people would undoubtedly be shocked about what teenagers routinely see online and in media.

The content is being described as pornography, but I contend that the word "pornography" is used as inflammatory language in order to garner support for book bans.

From Cornell Law School:

Pornography–"porn" or "porno" for short–is material that depicts nudity or sexual acts for the purpose of sexual stimulation.  However, the presence of nudity or sexual acts in piece of media does not necessarily make that media pornographic if the purpose of that media form is something other than sexual stimulation.  Pornography can take the form of photographs, videos, written material, audio recordings, or animation, among other media formats.

When a book that is not for the purpose of sexual stimulation has a brief sex scene that is described minimally, it is not pornography.  

From Google:

printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.

The key word in this definition is "explicit."  When I viewed the allegedly inappropriate content of the two books in the local news, I saw nothing explicit.  Most was left to the imagination.  That is not at all the same as reading a play-by-play of a sexual encounter with every movement described explicitly.

I will say again that some YA books may very well contain explicit sex and thus fall under the umbrella of pornography, but I do not find that most are like that.  In any case, the YA books that I read do not have explicit sex. 

Modern YA books do typically contain foul language and themes intended for teenagers.  And that's why young children should not be reading them.

The Last to Die by Kelly Garrett

The Last to Die by Kelly Garrett was published by Sourcebooks Fire on November 5, 2019.

Publisher's summary:

What started as a game turns into something much darker in this fast-paced YA thriller with a plot to die for, perfect for fans of Natasha Preston and Hannah Jayne.

Harper Jacobs and her friends are just looking for some fun when they decide to start breaking into one another's houses.  It's enough to give them a rush, and it's pretty harmless since they all promise not to take anything that can't be replaced.  But when they target the home of a classmate, it crosses a line, and one of the group turns up dead.

Harper needs to figure out what's happening fast…or else she might be next.

I found the early part of the book to be extremely interesting.  After Harper's friend dies, the plot seems to stall.  The story is not very interesting for a large chunk of the book.  Towards the climax, the story becomes interesting again, but not nearly as much as the beginning of the story.  This book is just okay.

Finding Modern Young Adult Books to Read

I have a lot of trouble finding young adult books that are of the type that I enjoy.  I have read Kindle samples of dozens of YA books over the years that I have not found interesting enough to read past the sample.

I seldom find anything I want to read from YA lists found online in various places.  It's like taking a stab in the dark trying to find something good.  It doesn't help that a lot of people lump adult books in with the YA books.  I'll check a book that's on a YA list and discover that it's aimed at adults.  Not helpful.

Even worse, we now have to deal with books written by artificial intelligence.  I've heard that Amazon is now full of such books, and I wish to avoid them.  I want to read books written by actual people, not a fake book created by a computer that copied content from real books.

This means that I must now be wary of books published by independent authors.  With some care, I can still partake of works by independent authors, but I will have to vet them first.

But still, there's the problem of finding books that appeal to me.

I got really lucky in early February when I stumbled across the book That's Not My Name by Megan Lally.  I wasn't even looking for a book to read.

I was reading this post on Reddit:

The lack of appealing teen literature is causing teens to stop reading

It's an odd post that was debunked by commenters.  Something about the post or its comments which I now can't remember caused me to run a Google search for YA books.  I ended up looking at teen book pages on both Simon & Schuster's and Barnes & Noble's sites.  Based on my browser history, I apparently saw the title These Deadly Prophecies on the Barnes & Noble site and then visited Amazon's page for that book. 

Immediately after I viewed the page for These Deadly Prophecies, I visited Amazon's page for That's Not My Name.  Amazon has dynamic content on all pages listing other books and products for sale, and I must have seen That's Not My Name and clicked on it.  The summary intrigued me, and I enjoyed the free sample.  That resulted in me purchasing and reading the book.  

That's Not My Name is the best book I've read in months (aside from Keeper of the Lost Cities).  I would love to duplicate this serendipitous sequence of events.  But how?  I found the book solely by chance.  I guess that's also what happened with Keeper of the Lost Cities nearly a year ago. 

If only I could do this more often!  Many great books exist that I would love reading, but I have to find them myself.  Books have to be in a certain style with a certain tone in order for me to enjoy them.  Many books are recommended to me that just don't appeal to me.  I'm on my own here.

I always read through reviews right after I finish a book.  As I read through the reviews for That's Not My Name, I saw praise for Sourcebooks Fire.

Sourcebooks is a publishing company, and Sourcebooks Fire is the imprint it uses for its young adult books.  One reviewer said that they get excited whenever Sourcebooks Fire has a new YA book, and they immediately read it.  I was intrigued.  Could the Sourcebooks Fire imprint lead me to some good books?  Off I went to the Sourcebooks website, checking out the YA section.

Sourcebooks Fire books for young adults

I'm interested in YA books that are dystopian, suspenseful, or have a really good mystery.  I like romance if it's just secondary to the main story.  I am uninterested in YA books that are just romance novels.  I find those tend to be a bit tedious and annoying.  I like romance only when it's part of a story where the characters are in a dangerous situation or have a lot of intense problems of some sort (zombies, deadly viruses, nuclear war, murderers on the loose, etc.).  

I began checking the Sourcebooks Fire listings, focusing mainly on the YA Thrillers subcategory. I also checked out the YA Sci-Fi subcategory.

I found a number of good books to read.  Since early February, I have read these Sourcebooks Fire books.

That's Not My Name by Megan Lally - outstanding
They're Watching You by Chelsea Ichaso - a bit flat but overall good
The Warning and The Fallout by Kristy Acevedo - excellent
The Plague Land trilogy by Alex Scarrow - very good to excellent
What Happened on Hicks Road by Hannah Jayne - very good
Swarm by Jennifer Lyle - excellent
Don't Let In the Cold by Keely Parrack - excellent
The Last to Die by Kelly Garrett - good to very good

I then decided that I should look directly on the sites of other publishers.  I checked a few, and I found it interesting that the Sourcebooks Fire inventory is much easier to navigate than the inventory offered by other publishers.  Sourcebooks Fire also seems to have more books that are to my liking.  As a result, I ended up right back on the Sourcebooks site, looking for more books.

I am now reading The Girl Who Knew Too Much by Tiffany Brooks.

I will stick to Sourcebooks Fire to see if any others are to my liking.  After that, I'm going to check on some of the authors whose books I've read in the last 10 years.  Perhaps they have some new books that will appeal to me.

Stigma Against the YA Category

The criticism of the young adult books category that occurs within the greater books community is annoying.  Worst of all, the people criticizing YA don't understand the YA category at all and completely misrepresent what it is as they complain about it. 

These people claim that any kind of book can be lumped into the YA category.  They say that YA books have a simple writing style with shorter sentences and basic vocabulary.  They say that YA books have certain kind of themes, like teenage angst.  Most importantly, they feel that YA is just a marketing label and has no meaning.

These comments are insulting to fans of the YA genre.  Books of varying reading level comprise the YA category.  YA isn't just a marketing label.  If people understood what the genre truly is, then they wouldn't make that kind of statement.

It's widely known in the books community that a significant percent of young adult book readers are adults.  I suspect that this is why young adult books get bashed.  I mean, adults are reading YA?  The horror!  How dare they do that!

Strangely, children's books do not get bashed.  Are book enthusiasts unaware that some adults read only children's books?  I guess not.

I read only children's and young adult books.  This is because I like the innocence of youth.  I want to read stories about characters whose lives are uncomplicated without all the adult problems.  The characters aren't married or divorced.  They aren't worried about their careers.  This kind of book is total escapism.  What's wrong with that?

From The Decade in Young Adult Fiction (quoted to point out the fallacy):

A large portion of the [young adult] genre has always relied on formulaic story lines and high volume, going back to "Carolyn Keene," the collective pseudonym of the many contracted authors hired to write Nancy Drew mysteries from the 1930s onward.  It just wasn't until the 2010s that this kind of fiction showed itself capable of selling in the millions of copies.  Veronica Roth's Divergent trilogy, set in a post-apocalyptic Chicago, sold 6.7 million books between 2011 and 2013.  Copycats proliferated.  Bonanzas are rare in book publishing, but this was a bona fide one.

2011–2013: The Divergent trilogy demonstrated that a dystopian YA trilogy that wasn't The Hunger Games could sell more than 6 million copies.  2012: The Hunger Games movie released. This movie suggested that dystopian YA could be as profitable a multimedia property as the fantasy worlds of Harry Potter and Twilight.

Adult readers were a significant source of the boom.  In 2012, Publishers Weekly reported on a study showing that 55 percent of books intended for a YA audience (readers aged 12 to 17) were bought by adults, and 78 percent of those purchases were for the buyer’s own reading. The largest segment of this group, 30- to 44-year-olds, were responsible for 28 percent of YA book sales.

The article is interesting but wrong.  First of all, the very mention of Nancy Drew shows that the author doesn't know what YA is.  The only Nancy Drew books that are young adult are the Nancy Drew Files, Nancy Drew On Campus, and the River Heights series.  Most people in the general public have never heard of those three series.  What everything thinks of when they hear "Nancy Drew" is the original series, which consists of middle-grade mysteries.  They are not young adult books.

Now, some of you are probably saying, "Wait!  Nancy Drew is 18 in those books."  Sure, but Nancy Drew first entered publication nearly a century ago.  Those were different times.  Children's books from that time often featured characters who were older teenagers.  The modern Nancy Drew books are middle-grade books, even though Nancy is an older teenager.  The original books are classified as middle-grade books as well, since the content is consistent with what one expects from middle-grade mysteries.

The article erroneously includes Harry Potter as a young adult series.  I have seen many comments made by book enthusiasts saying that Harry Potter is young adult.  This is incorrect.  The belief that Harry Potter is young adult shows that these people have no idea what YA is.

Like the original Nancy Drew books, Harry Potter is a middle-grade series.  Middle-grade is a category for readers who are younger than young adult.  Harry Potter is 10 years old at the beginning of the Harry Potter series.  YA books do not feature children who are 10.  It's irrelevant that Harry ages up as the series progresses.  Harry Potter does not suddenly become a young adult series in the last few books.  It's still middle grade.

People also have this odd idea that Harry Potter, which is a middle-grade series, somehow made the YA category popular.  Then what about these books?

Click on the image in order to see it clearly.  Check out the top spines.  Each book has either "YA" or "Young Adult" on the top spine.  These books are all from the 1980s.  I am a Gen Xer, and we loved our YA books.  We still love them.  

The YA books of the 1980s were very popular.  Bookstores like Waldenbooks had large displays of YA books.  It's ridiculous to say that YA books were not popular until after Harry Potter became popular and that no young adult book or series was a runaway success until the 2010s.  

From David Streitfield's article Issues published in the Washington Post on June 25, 1985:

"Chain bookstores tend to be supermarkets of books.  For teen romances, they're a mechanism to force the titles out," says George Nicholson, editor-in-chief of books for young readers at Dell, publishers of Seniors.  "They make shopping easy, and they don't intimidate kids.  There's no one at the checkout desk saying you shouldn't buy this or buy that."

And [youth] are buying these series in tremendous numbers.  Sweet Dreams, with 88 books published, claims 19 million copies in print.  Wildfire, with 70 titles, says 10 million have been sold.  After 21 books, Sweet Valley High has 8 million in print.  Cheerleaders, with only six books so far, is averaging 100,000 copies each.  In a generally stagnant book-buying market, sales figures such as these are immensely attractive to publishers.

While each individual title did not sell in the millions, each of these series collectively sold in the millions, and this was back in the 1980s.  People just don't get it.  YA books have been around for a very long time and have been tremendously popular.

From my post The Growing Pains of a Facebook Group:

I understand that the real problem is that these people think that children's, middle-grade, and teen books are all the same... 

A 10-year-old girl who is beginning to like boys is not at all the same as a sixteen-year-old girl in a relationship.  I am not interested in the trials and tribulations of a 10-year-old girl.  I only wish to see the books featuring older teens.  

5th grade isn't the same as 11th grade.  Think about it.  Would you take a group of 5th grade students and force them to attend all the same classes as a group of 11th grade students?  They'd all take English together, etc.  It makes no sense.  Why do people think that books aimed at 5th graders are the same as books aimed at 11th graders?  They aren't the same at all.

From my post Keeping a Facebook Group from Being Boxed In:

I have figured out how to clearly describe the focus of the Vintage Teen Books group:  pre-2000 young adult books that feature characters of ages 15-19.  All books that fit the criteria are fine, regardless of whether they feature werewolves, prostitution, or light fluffy romance.  

That's it in a nutshell.  True young adult books feature teenagers, usually older teenagers, in various situations.  The teenage situations almost always include dating and romance and various social issues.  If a book doesn't feature teenagers in these kinds of situations, then it isn't a young adult book.  This is why the Nancy Drew series isn't young adult; Nancy doesn't deal with any social issues.  She does have a "special" male friend, but the relationship is platonic.  Poor Ned will never get more than a chaste kiss. 

When I say that I'm a fan of young adult books, then I mean that I enjoy reading books that feature teenagers as the protagonists and include the types of situations appropriate for teenagers.  No other books are young adult, regardless of what anyone says.

Yes, teenagers might read some books written for adults, and they might also read some middle-grade books.  True YA books are not what teenagers might read.  True YA books feature teenagers as the protagonists along with the social issues.  It's that simple.

In closing, I want to point out that it's okay not to like the YA category.  However, I fail to understand why people force themselves to read YA books when they don't like them.  YA books are for those of us who enjoy them.  If everyone else will stay away from them and quit bashing the books and insulting us, then we can all live in peace, enjoying what we like.     

The Seventh Hour by Tracey Ward

In The Seventh Hour by Tracey Ward, the Earth's rotation has stopped.  This results in sunlight lasting for six months and darkness lasting for six months.  During those times, the Earth experiences extreme temperatures.

I decided to read this book because I enjoyed Tracey Ward's zombie apocalypse novels. The description implies that this is a dystopian novel with survival experiences.  Instead, the book features little about the world and mostly centers on romance.  There is little danger. This is a romance, not a post-apocalyptic dystopian novel.

The teasing and joking in this book is quite juvenile and not what I expect in a young adult book.

I skimmed towards the end of the book.  I just wanted it to be over.  I do not recommend this book unless you are looking for teen romance.

Upcoming Children's and Young Adult Releases

A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon this article, "Top 10 Young Adult Fantasy Books You Should Read." After reading the article, I checked the listings on Amazon. I settled upon Divergent by Veronica Roth. I read the book in less than two days. It is very good.

Here is the promotional summary taken from the product page on Amazon.com.

In Beatrice Prior’s dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can’t have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice they have made. Together they must undergo extreme physical tests of endurance and intense psychological simulations, some with devastating consequences. As initiation transforms them all, Tris must determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes exasperating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers unrest and growing conflict that threaten to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her.

I love having a few modern series to follow, because I can look forward to several new releases.

The second book in the Divergent Trilogy, Insurgent, will be released on May 1.

Also on May 1, Rick Riordan's The Serpent's Shadow, the third and final book in the Kane Chronicles series, will be released. I have not liked the Kane Chronicles series quite as much as I did the Percy Jackson series, but I have still found the books worth reading.

Michael Scott's The Enchantress, the sixth and final book in the Secrets of Nicholas Flamel series, will be released on May 22. I have greatly enjoyed the Nicholas Flamel series and have speculated for a long time on how the series will end. Reading the final book will be quite a treat.

May will be a month full of exciting reading.