Yes, I am a sucker for verse novels

So I was pretty excited to go through all the boxes and packages that came in the mail while I was out of town for ALA and find Stephanie Hemphill's Wicked Girls.  I loved Your Own, Sylvia and I've found that having to read so many books these days (not that I'm complaining), it's such a relief to open up a book and find out that it's a verse novel.  Verse novels, for the most part, read very fast, and have that great economy of language which I've grown to appreciate.  There's so much mood and tone in the verse novels I've enjoyed, that I find myself absolutely racing through the pages.

So far out of this year's publishing cycle, I really loved Shakespeare Makes the Playoffs by Ron Koertge, Three Rivers Rising by Jame Richards, and most recently Carol Lynch Williams' Glimpse, which I read as an ARC, but which just had its release last week.  Glimpse is an exquisitely crafted novel that packs an emotional punch, drawing readers in from the very first couple of pages, as our narrator, finds her sister with a gun, ready to kill herself.  Perhaps what I appreciated most about this book, was how well Williams explores the sad and unfortunate truth, which is that for too many kids, the parent is the villain. In this one, we have the mother, who lost her husband when her two daughters were quite young, and has never recovered.  She is a prostitute with very few redeemable facets, and yet, as we see with Precious' mother, so perfectly played by Mo'Nique, this character is so developed.  She is a monster with a backstory, and as much as you (as the reader) don't want to excuse your behavior, at least you can understand how she got to the point.  The moments where she is in Hope (the narrator's) face will get your heart palpitating like no other.  And the central mystery of the story, what event(s) precipitated Lizzie's depression and suicide attempt, easily sustain the 400+ pages of this quick read.  I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys the quick pacing and emotional nature of so many of the verse novels.