Althea & Oliver

September 1, 2014
Debut author Moracho takes a familiar setup—best friends with incompatible feelings—and examines it thoroughly and deeply. Althea and Oliver have been inseparable since they were kids. As they mature, Althea yearns for something more from their relationship while Oliver wants everything “to be normal.” Complicating matters, Oliver suffers from an onset of Kleine-Levin syndrome, a rare illness characterized by extreme periods of sleep, memory lapses, and erratic behavior. During one of Oliver’s episodes, he and Althea have sex, drawing a wedge in their friendship and causing her to act out violently. In what reads like a marked departure from the first half of the book, which is set in smalltown North Carolina, latter sections find Oliver in New York City, enrolled in a sleep study. Meanwhile, Althea attempts to track Oliver down but finds new friends and a stronger, more independent version of herself. Throughout the book, Oliver’s reserve is an effective counterpoint to Althea’s reckless responses to the teens’ respective predicaments. Moracho wisely resists a storybook ending for these two, concluding with what seems like the next logical step in their lives. Ages 14–up.

Starred review from September 1, 2014
This ain't no fairy tale: This raw coming-of-age novel captures the listless wanderings of teens at loose ends. Althea is always waiting for Oliver to wake up. Plagued by a mysterious affliction that renders him nearly comatose for weeks at a time, Oliver's increasingly unpredictable absences test his lifelong friendship with Althea at precisely the moment that the mounting sexual tension between them reaches the limits of plausible deniability. After a particularly intense bout causes him to sleep through the summer before their senior year, he wakes to find that life has gone on both with and without him, with startling consequences. At turns gritty and gooey, Oliver and Althea's evolving relationship unfolds in a warts-and-all narration that alternates between the two, deftly capturing the purgatorial crossroads between youth and adulthood. Moracho's descriptions are vivid and arresting-a potent cocktail of speed and Southern Comfort "unbutton[s] [Althea's] diffidence like a blouse and cast[s] it aside" at a punk-rock concert-which both grounds the story in familiar details and filigrees it with poetic flourishes. There is rich potential for crossover appeal here; while Althea and Oliver's fumbling progress toward maturity will resonate with teens currently in the angst-filled trenches, the characters' worldly-wise perspectives on their own histrionics will give adult readers reason to nod and sigh in appreciative recognition: Growing up is a messy business.Mesmerizing. (Fiction. 14 & up)

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Starred review from June 1, 2014

Gr 9 Up-This richly satisfying debut defies simple description. On its surface, it is about teenage best friends, a boy and a girl, who have complicated and messy feelings. Friends since they were six, the teens have grown up doors apart, both in single-parent families in Wilmington, North Carolina. What sets this novel apart is the way the youth are allowed to speak for themselves in all their chaotic, exciting complexity. Althea, who has anger issues, is in love with Oliver, which would be complicated enough even if Oliver didn't seem to be a modern-day Rip Van Winkle, falling into a strange, deep sleep at random moments and not waking up for weeks or months. Oliver's mom, Nicky, finds a doctor in her home city of New York who is conducting a study of this disorder, called Kleine-Levin Syndrome, and Oliver grudgingly agrees to participate. While he navigates the strange world of a hospital ward filled with other teenage boys with KLS, Althea tells her dad that she's taking a road trip to visit her mom in New Mexico, but then heads to New York City to find Oliver. Instead, she falls in with a collective house of crusty punks in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, who are perfectly described with deep familiarity instead of exotic detachment. Oliver's medical condition functions as both an interesting narrative quirk and a deeper metaphor, and the resolution is satisfyingly uncertain. The novel is set in the mid-1990s, which is vividly re-created with plenty of drinking, sex, and rock and roll, but it is the exquisitely created and painfully real, pitch-perfect characters who make it so memorable.-Kyle Lukoff, Corlears School, New York City

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 1, 2014
Grades 10-1 *Starred Review* Althea and Oliver have been neighbors and best friends since age 6. Now 17, their closeness has developed an expectation of which Althea is too aware, while Oliver seems willfully oblivious. Temperamental, unsociable Althea is afraid that she's the one who needs Oliver more, while affable Oliver wishes everything would stay the same. Compounding Althea's insecurity is Oliver's unusual narcoleptic-like condition, which causes him to fall deeply asleep without warning, for weeks or even months, leaving Althea painfully waiting for his return. After an awkward first kiss, an agonizing loss of virginity, and a messy break with Althea, Oliver goes to New York for a medical study. Althea follows, believing it to be her last chance to save their relationship. Though Oliver's condition acts as a plot deviceit's the catalyst for both charactersit's presented with believable sincerity. Set in the 1990s, Moracho's coming-of-age story carries rare insight and a keen understanding of those verging on adulthood: fierce emotions and crippling insecurity mixed with a heady sense of limitless possibility. Or, as Althea puts it to her father while defending her questionable choices, Sweaty, queasy, weirdly euphoric. Suggest this pitch-perfect debut to readers looking for an older, edgier read-alike to Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor & Park (2013).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)