Imaginary Girls

Starred review from April 4, 2011
In her first YA novel, Suma creates a surreal and dreamy world where magical thinking is carried to a chilling extreme. Fourteen-year-old Chloe idolizes her older sister, Ruby, a boy magnet who runs wild in their New York upstate town and is denied nothing. At a drunken party, Chloe accepts Ruby's challenge to swim across the local reservoir and finds a drifting rowboat holding the body of London, a girl from school. Afterward, Chloe is forced to move in with her father in another state; two years later, Ruby fetches Chloe back, and everything's different. Or nothing is. Chloe can't tell for sure. Ruby still has the run of the town, but there's London, alive and well. Chloe begins to recognize that things work differently in her sister's world; events bend to accommodate Ruby, and reality itself seems to take its shape from her desires. Suma (Dani Noir) uses the story's supernatural, horror movieâready elements in the best of ways; beneath all the strangeness lies beauty, along with a powerful statement about the devotion between sisters. Not your average paranormal novel. Ages 14âup.

February 1, 2012

Gr 9 Up-Chloe has been raised by her half-sister Ruby-the girl all the other girls want to be like and all the boys want to hook up with. Ruby seems to have an uncanny ability to get whatever she wants-except on a summer night at the reservoir, when Ruby dares Chloe to swim across the huge body of dark water. Nearly drowning, Chloe clings to a floating rowboat and discovers the dead body of her classmate, London. After this disaster, Chloe is sent to live with her father, far away from the magnetic Ruby. Two years later, Chloe returns to live with Ruby. But things aren't as they should be-people who are supposed to be dead are mysteriously alive, and Chloe suspects that Ruby is somehow responsible. Or is she? Nova Ren Suma's eerie novel (Dutton, 2011) blends the paranormal with contemporary realistic fiction in an atmospheric tale of life, death, friendship, and the unbreakable bonds between sisters. Many of the plot elements are hard to believe, even within the paranormal genre, and the character of Ruby-a fickle, selfish girl who cares for no one except Chloe-is difficult to like. Emma Galvin does a fine, if not particularly memorable, job of voicing the teenage characters in this creepy tale.-Margo Tanenbaum, Rancho Cucamonga Public Library

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