New July YA...Choke

So, I promised a review for Her and Me and You...and I'm late with it, as well. My full review will have to wait, although I did finish reading the novel and will admit briefly that I wasn't all crazy for it like the way I was with The Daughter of Smoke and Bone or Why We Broke Up. Nonetheless, I will write the review this weekend. For now, I am excited to say that I just finished writing my review of Choke by Diana Lopez which will be published in Southwestern American Literature and Texas Books in Review. This is like mega-happy-dance-time!

Here is a preview:

Based on cover art and title, Diana López’s YA debut Choke is sure to captivate a large following of teens who gravitate to the edgier voice of the genre. Choke follows the story of eighth grade student Windy Soto who finds herself participating in a high risk teen behavior, the choking game, in order to find acceptance as a “breath sister” with the new popular girl at her school, Nina Díaz. López, a Texas native and a former middle school teacher, was inspired to write Choke after witnessing the harrowing, drug-like effects of the choking game on some of her own students.

As López explains in a letter to her readers at the end of her novel, she hopes to not only bring awareness to the dangers of the choking game, but to also thwart other teens from participating. Besides providing insight on a dangerous behavior, Choke also follows along the line of other successful YA novels with sophisticated marketing design and provocative, one word titles prevalent in the genre beginning with the powerhouse books of contemporary YA such as Speak, Twilight, and Crank. Now Choke is added to the list of more recent YA releases including those with Latina female leads such as Illegal by Bettina Restrepo and Luminous by Dawn Metcalf. 


The opening page does not disappoint either with a free verse piece describing the dangerous and sometimes fatal game played by teens seeking a thrill, an escape, or acceptance by a peer group:


knockout game, airplaning,

rocket ride, sleeper hold, 

pass-out game, wall hit, 

cloud nine, gasp,

American dream game, 

necktie challenge, blackout game, 

trip to heaven, flatliner, 

hyperventilating, 

suffocation roulette 

choke 

This is only one small excerpt from my review, but hopefully I can share more of it after it is published.


Now I need to get a hold of Diana Lopez soon  and invite her to write a guest blog for Fictionally Yours!  I will keep you up to date and keep this blog up to date as best as possible...