You Were Here

February 22, 2016
McCarthy (Breaking Sky) delivers a skillful blend of storytelling, emotion, and adrenaline-fueled daring, spun through with romances new and old. Jaycee has accomplished something her daredevil older brother, Jake, never didâshe lived past graduation. Clinging to his memory, she is determined to follow in his urban explorer footsteps, no matter the risk. Sheâs joined by four friends, all revisiting Jakeâs old haunts for their own reasons, driven by their own demons. McCarthy rotates among the characters, mixing visual and verbal narratives. Selective mute Mikâs chapters are told through comics sequences, while Bishopâs brief entries are sketches and graffiti; Natalie contributes a logical, slightly obsessive viewpoint while her party-guy boyfriend, Zach, is immature yet insightful. What follows over several months forces these young adults to take a hard look at their past, present, and future through the lens of urban exploration and its inherent dangers. McCarthy neither shies from nor glamorizes difficult topics like sexual assault, domestic abuse, and suicide, and each character is complexly developed, ensuring relatability for a wide audience. Ages 14âup. Agent: Sarah Davies, Greenhouse Literary.

December 15, 2015
Five years after her big brother's death, Jaycee tries to understand who he was--and who she's become--by visiting the urban ruins he loved to explore. Ever since her brother, Jake, died performing a drunken stunt on the night of his high school graduation, Jaycee's life has been a wreck. She decides to mark her own high school graduation by following in her brother's daredevil footsteps and visiting the decrepit sites marked on his old urban-exploring map. Along the way, she reconnects with some old confidants, including her former best friend and one of Jake's childhood buddies, who are struggling with their own fears and heartbreak during this transitional summer. McCarthy rotates the narration among the ensemble, telling the story through a hybrid format with multiple points of view and techniques. Chapters of conventional first- or third-person narration are interspersed with visual art and passages of graphic storytelling, complete with panels and speech bubbles. It's unfortunate that the bland black-and-white illustrations of the graphic passages, with their repetitive facial expressions and generic backgrounds, fail to convey the story's intense emotions or unique settings in the same way that Jaycee's sarcastic, world-weary first-person narration captures her rage, grief, and confusion. This ambitious storytelling experiment has decidedly uneven results. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 14-18)

COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 1, 2016

Gr 10 Up-It's been five years since Jake died-he broke his neck the day of his high school graduation while attempting a daredevil stunt. Jake's sister, Jaycee, has had a hard time letting him go. It's now Jaycee's own high school graduation, but she's still consumed with sadness, guilt, and anger over his death. When she discovers a map in Jake's old room of all the locations he visited during his urbex explorations (going to abandoned man-made structures like a mall or amusement park), she and a group of unlikely friends decide to re-create Jake's path. There's Natalie, Jaycee's former best friend; Zach, Natalie's slacker boyfriend; Bishop, a lovesick artist; and Mik, Jake's former best friend who is now a selective mute. The story is told from five points of view in alternating chapters. Three follow a traditional prose narrative, while Mik's is told in graphic novel style and Bishop's through chapters consisting of street art reproduced on a single page. The emphasis, however, is on the two female characters, and since Jaycee's chapters are in the first person, her story is the most personal. The pacing is slow at the start, and the work has an ambitious structure with a lot of moving parts; it may take a while for readers to become vested in the outcome or care about the characters. Readers who persevere, however, will be rewarded by the emotionally satisfying conclusion. VERDICT The topic of urban exploration and the inclusion of graphic novel style chapters will appeal to teens.-Ragan O'Malley, Saint Ann's School, Brooklyn, NY

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.