Anywhere but Here

September 15, 2013
Small-town life has Cole down. Everyone and everything in Webster, aka "the Web," is holding him back. He dreams of moving to Vancouver after senior year to avoid the prospect of a ho-hum life with a boring job, wife and kids. Breaking up with Lauren is the first step on his new path to an exciting life as a filmmaker. As far as he's concerned, he's single, notwithstanding an "accidental post-breakup sex scene" with Lauren. So even when he starts hanging out with Hannah, an assertive, sexy girl who steps in as soon as news of the breakup gets around, he doesn't think of himself as anyone's boyfriend. His mother died less than a year ago, and like his father, he finds solace in drink. Filmmaking gives Cole needed distance from his home life, which sometimes feels like "part of a mandatory group project, like in health class." While he's working on a documentary that he thinks will reveal how tangled Webster's residents are in its web, he's utterly clueless about the real drama right in front of him--Lauren's pregnant. Cole eventually finds that everyone's life is complicated, and he's the only one who feels trapped. Clever chapter headings move the story toward a tidy ending, and Cole's voice is convincingly filled with a combination of angst and nonchalance. (Fiction. 12-17)

COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 1, 2014

Gr 10 Up-In the year since his mother died of cancer, high school junior Cole and his father have been struggling to concentrate on the future and "pretend the past never happened." Despite their efforts, her death continues to haunt and unravel both men's lives, and they spend a good portion of the novel drowning their grief in alcohol. Cole soon breaks up with his longtime girlfriend, Lauren, and decides to apply to film school. He films a documentary about his small hometown, nicknamed "The Web," for his application. Initially, his documentary focuses on people getting trapped in "The Web." In Cole's words, "the more they try to leave, the more they get pulled back," but as the story progresses, Cole comes to realize that the town is more of a safety net than an entanglement. In a bizarre set of circumstances, he finds out that Lauren is pregnant with his child (she later loses the baby) while at the same time his father has gotten a transient stripper pregnant. Seeing how his friends, family, and others in the community come through and support him when he needs it the most, Cole starts to understand his life in firm terms-he "isn't the main character but the guy behind the camera." Kyi seems to have touched upon anything and everything considered controversial in a young adult novel-sexuality, pregnancy, discussion of abortion, and use of alcohol and marijuana. Some of these explorations feel natural and believable in the context of the story line, while others seem unnecessary and included more for their shock value than contribution to progressing plot or character development. Many teens will connect with feeling trapped by their hometown, but few will relate to the soap operalike drama in Cole's life.-Nicole Knott, Watertown High School, CT

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2013
Grades 9-12 After dating his beautiful girlfriend, Lauren, for two years, Cole has abruptly broken up with her. Despite the long hours when she sat by his side while his mother died, Cole now finds her presence suffocating. In fact, Cole feels that he is constantly suffocating in his tiny hometown, known affectionately to locals as the Web. His plan is to escape through film school, and the admission process requires a submission of his work. In an intuitive flash, Cole decides to create a documentary about the Web, but he uncovers secrets that only deepen his entanglement with the town. Kyi's first-person narration feels organic as Cole grudgingly reveals background information as needed, and secondary characters are distorted by Cole's grief, reflecting the exhaustion Cole feels when he tries to engage with others. Readers will easily feel Cole's difficulty with being present. Like Daisy Whitney's When You Were Here (2013), Kyi's novel presents a heart-wrenching, realistic depiction of a son grieving the loss of his mother.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)