Book review - Dreaming of Amelia by Jaclyn Moriarty

In their words:
‘The first time I saw her I knew that my Amelia was a ghost.
Amelia and Riley have transferred to Ashbury High for their final year, and the whole school is completely obsessed with them. Glamorous, gifted and totally devoted to one another, they seem to be perfect. But there’s more to them than beauty and talent. Riley and Amelia have secrets. And everyone at Ashbury is about to find out that the past has a very long shadow...’

In other words:
It’s a ghost story. It’s a story about love, illusions, black holes, and Irish convicts. It’s a story about endings and beginnings. It’s a story about the last school year of a group of clever, witty, over-dramatic, endearing teenagers.

To me, Jaclyn Moriarty’s writing is special. Really truly unusual, even next to other teenage books. Why? Because she creates characters that come across as effortlessly genuine. They face real problems with varying capabilities, they’re individual, and they’re likeable. Other authors manage to write about teens well enough to convince you that they’re real. Very few can make you feel as though for the entire story, you’re eavesdropping on a real group of teens that you might overhear on a bus or at a school or cafe.

So now you know. I adore her characters and in this book they’re no different. There are some new ones to the Ashbury-Brookfield series and there are some returning characters (Lydia, Seb and Tony to name a few!). Regardless, I think if you were new to the stories then you’d still be able to follow it all perfectly. It’s a standalone that links in to the others, but you don’t need to have read them.

I was a bit worried starting the book because I’d found her last one (The Spell Book of Listen Taylor) very hard-going. Thankfully I didn’t need to be at all. In fact, I thought it was up to the same standard as Finding Cassie Crazy (though I should mention it’s much longer weighing in at over 500 pages!). It’s cleverly written in the shape of exam essays, meeting minutes and online conversations, with themes and seemingly unconnected details and multiple point-of-views all blending to create a gem of a book. Put that way, it sounds kind of like high literature. And it could be. This should be read in schools and then maybe more people would read. But that’s by the by because what really matters is that it is a book that teens will love.

Pages: 578
Publication date: 2nd April 2010
AKA: Ghosts of Ashbury High (US)

Series spotlight - Jaclyn Moriarty

There are so many good books that have been out in the market for ages. Series Spotlight will be featured every week and is to introduce readers to series they may not have heard of before. Usually, these series will be ongoing, like today’s spotlight – Jaclyn Moriarty’s Brookfield-Ashbury series.

This series is focused on two schools; private school Ashbury, and the nearby Brookfield, where all the students are rumoured to be ‘bunny-killers.’ Unlike most series, this does not follow the same main characters, it is mainly only the setting which remains the same. Characters from the other books do feature as minor characters, but for all intents and purposes, each book stands alone. This being so, you don’t have to read them in order, though it gives slightly more understanding if you do.

Feeling sorry for Celia:
Mainly told through post-it notes from her mother, letters from invented organisations, and letters to and from her new pen-pal Christina, this novel follows Elizabeth Clarry and her struggles between friends, school and family. Elizabeth is dealing with an irresponsible best friend who is always running away, a developing friendship between the pen-pal her English teacher makes her write to, and a posh father who has suddenly reappeared in her life and keeps taking her out to restaurants in the hope that they will bond. A mysterious stranger on the bus is slipping her anonymous love notes, her father is behaving decidedly shiftily about the step-brother she’s never met, her friend, Celia, has just run away to join the circus, and she keeps getting letters from the ‘Association of Teenagers’ telling her to crawl into a fridge.
This book perfectly captures teenage quirkiness, the importance of things like school and friends and yet is very amusing. It also addresses more serious issues that teens face, parent’s divorce, unrequited love, the importance of new friendships and old friendships and self-confidence. It takes some getting into because of the format of the prose, but Jaclyn Moriarty manages to address these issues in a non-condescending way, while still making you smile from Elizabeth’s wry voice and the refreshingly honest take on such problems. It wasn’t amazing, but it was fun, entertaining and thought-provoking.

Finding Cassie Crazy (aka the Year of secret assignments):
Best friends Lydia, Emily and Cassie are forced to enter the Brookfield-Ashbury pen-pal project that Elizabeth met Christina in the year previously in ‘Feeling sorry for Celia.’ Through this they meet Seb, Charlie and Matthew, three very different boys from Brookfield. Much hilarity ensues, including misunderstandings, secret missions, prank phone calls, dating lessons, and the need for a whole lot of revenge. In her second novel, Jaclyn Moriarty brings such a realistic teen voice while being hysterically funny. However, like its predecessor, Finding Cassie Crazy is also surprisingly deep. When quiet, vulnerable Cassie is hurt by a Brookfielder, the girls leap to her defence. The attempted revenge includes perfumed letters, a small drama studio and a declaration of all-out-war. All about friendship, love, families and learning to follow dreams, this is by far the best of the books so far. Highly recommended for some adults, as well as most teens, it is both humorous and heart-warming.
Em - ‘Well, first you have to be very, very funny. I have realized that it is essential for a boy to be funny. Otherwise, what is the point in a boy?’
Charlie – ‘What do I do if I’m a boy and I’m not funny?’
Em - ‘If a boy is not able to be funny, then the boy should not talk at all. The boy should be completely silent.’

Becoming Bindy MacKenzie (aka the Murder of Bindy Mackenzie):
A year on from ‘Finding Cassie Crazy,’ sees Ashbury student Bindy in a Friendship-And-Development class. Bindy is the smartest girl in the year, and believes she is kind and popular, always offering to show people her exam results so that they can learn from her. However, in the first ‘FAD’ class, she discovers that all her efforts are wasted; she’s the most unpopular girl in the year. She is determined to take her revenge on each of the other classmates in her ‘FAD’ group. This story is engaging and fans of the other two books will be pleased to hear that Liz Clarry and Emily Thompson both have main parts. There is a mystery element in this one, but it is also about learning to make new friendships, depending on others, and just enjoying life.
Jaclyn Moriarty does a surprising job considering that Bindy is so dislikeable.

However, through the book as I learned more about the main character I found myself supporting her more and more, especially as she became more friendly and likeable as the book progressed. Once again the supporting cast are wonderfully characterised and I could easily believe that Moriarty had just gone into a school and recorded teens talking for hours on end. While the plot itself is slightly unbelievable, the writing allows you to suspend your disbelief. I would suggest that people read ‘Finding Cassie Crazy’ before this one as one of the reasons it is so fun is getting to see the characters from the other books, especially Em. ‘Finding Cassie Crazy’ is still my favourite by far, but this is a good addition to the series.

A fourth book is currently in the works, at the moment called ‘Shadowgirl.’ It features new main characters Amelia and Riley and apparently is also a ghost story. I can’t wait to see how it turns out.