Book Review: Chasing Shadows

*******MATURE CONTENT WARNING *******

Title: Chasing Shadows
Author: Swati Avasthi (pro SWA-thee of-US-thee), graphics by Craig Phillips
Release Date: 2013
Genre: grief, pain, death, friendship, romance, violence, crime, family, mental health, Hindu, graphic novel
My Rating: ***
Official Rating: Young Adult Fiction
Age Group: 18+
Awards: Junior Library Guild Selection, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Star, Library Journal, YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults 2014, YALSA Outstanding Books for College Bound 2014, Bank Street Best Children's Books 2014

Summary
"Madness is the emergency exit" --Alan Moore, The Killing Joke
So begins Ms. Avasthi's book, and rather accurately I might add.

The book follows the experiences of Savirtri and her best friend Holly Paxton. Corey, Holly's twin brother and Savirtri's boyfriend, is shot and killed in an act of violence the two girls struggle to understand. Sav tries to convince herself she is not to blame for his death, that her hesitation of forty-seven seconds before running to his car did not cause him to bleed out. Holly, also injured in the attack, falls into a coma where she meets Kortha, the ruler of the Shadowlands where Corey is being kept. If she can find his killer, she may be able to get Corey back.
With Holly drawing further and further from reality, and Sav unable to face her own grief while she is trying to help her best friend, things begin to fall apart.

And Corey? Well, "'Corey made a choice.' His [Mr. Paxton's] voice gets thick. 'He was a good brother. A good man. You have to honor that.'"
Corey took a bullet for his twin sister. Then he died for her.
Can Holly face that reality? Can Sav?


Word of Warning

• The beginning can get a little graphic with the shooting as one character tries to stop the injured from bleeding out. 
• Holly and her boyfriend were sexually involved. At one point, she was afraid she had become pregnant. He finds out and insinuates that it might not be his kid, basically feeding her to the wolves at high school.
• At one point Holly goes to visit him and tries to seduce him to distract herself from her grief. She removes her shirt and has his pants unzipped before he completely turns her down.
•  It's not clear whether Sav and Corey were also sexually intimate. At one point she reveals she wanted to wait, and he accepted that without argument. Still, there are times where she remembers sneaking into his bedroom at night and sleeping next to him.
• Characters kiss.
• Parents fight.
• A girl drugs another girl.
• A character is shot and killed. Another character is injured and in a coma.
• Characters deal with grief in a very raw way that can be painful to read about.
• The main characters in this book are freerunners. That means they're often off running, jumping, and flipping off various things.
• Theft of a police file by multiple characters, then later theft of a gun.
• One character becomes obsessed with a false reality in which a man wants her to kill someone, or touch a killer, in order to save another.
• A character hears voices. This character also stubbornly resists any help in the grieving process, shutting everyone out one by one.
• Gangs are mentioned and initiation (either killing someone and cutting off a lock of hair, or standing without resisting while being beaten) is as well.
• The Chicago police are referred to as the biggest gang in Chicago.
• Racist comments like implying that the police are going to be particularly upset if a black gang kills a rich white kid.
• Lying to the police.
• A character almost kills another character.
• Parents in general fail in this novel. They shut their children out, or force them to do things, or berate their friendship choices, or a multitude of other things. Yes, they are grieving too, but they just fail over and over and over and their efforts not to are nearly nonexistent, making it very hard to forgive them.

The Good

• Josh, Holly's ex-boyfriend, makes a huge turnaround. He's nothing of the huge jerk that he was made out to be. He steps up and is there when Sav needs a friend to turn to in her grief and even tries to help Holly as well. While he might've been an awful person in the past, when Holly comes to him for distraction he turns her down and will not relent, not even when she starts shouting at him and leaves in an angry huff. He eventually becomes one of my favorite characters.
• Corey. For all his mistakes, he was a good supportive boyfriend and a good brother. His father's description of him as a "Good brother. A good man" seems pretty accurate, even with all his faults. It almost brings tears to the reader's eyes when it is revealed that he leaned across his sister and took the deadly bullet--for her.
• The way this novel is written. It is careful and well-done, dealing with a difficult subject in an honest and raw way. It may slip up at times, but I have to give the author credit for her bold move in doing what she did.

My Thoughts
A mishmash of two first person narrators, words, and panels that appear to be taken from a graphic novel, used when words seem to fail, this book is truly one of the strangest things I have ever read.
But it was addicting. I couldn't put it down. I also couldn't stop myself from becoming emotionally attached to characters who are so unlike me it might be hard to find anyone further away.

It was a hard read. Not in the sense of language or structure or anything else we associate with "hard read" when we think of the classics.
No, this was just hard to swallow. Hard to get through. Hard to watch.

Because even though this was words, mostly, that's what I was doing: watching. Watching Holly slowly lose her mind and lock everyone out. Watching Sav struggle to figure out whether she should go along with Holly or stand in front of her and stop her. Watching Corey die, seeing little glimpses into his character even after he was dead. Watching the parents struggle, the police unable to find the criminal, watching. Watching.
Watching.

Sometimes I wanted to yell at the book and the characters. A few times I smacked the pages with an open palm in frustration.

And that is skill. A writer who can cause that kind of emotional response from someone who has read far more books than she's willing to admit, well, sometimes that's more difficult than it ought to be.
It has its problems, yes. Some are unforgivable, sure. They make it inappropriate for young readers, of course. The topic itself even narrows the audience.
But for all that, this is still skill.
And I respect that.

TV Show Review: Flashpoint

(Please note that while I will not be reviewing specific episodes, I will be commenting on the specific trends that most of the episodes followed.)

Title: Flashpoint
Author: ION Television, CTV Television Network, CBS (a Canadian police drama)
Release Date: 2008-2012 (5 seasons)
Genre: crime, violence, drama, family, friendship, action, thriller, romance
My Rating: ****
Official Rating: N/A
Age Group: 16+

Summary:
IMDb describes it simply as "The missions and trials of a Toronto police tactical unit."
I guess so.
But this is the story of the Team 1 of the SRU (Strategic Response Unit). People who face death every day and are forced to kill become really close, so this isn't your typical idea of the word "team." People come and people go, both on the team and in team member's lives, but the story goes on. A threat is called in, and off the SRU goes to face whatever it is and save the lives of anyone put at risk. Anyone. Even the drug dealers and murderers and people they don't like. And they do it at the risk to their own lives. Every time.
But this isn't something you can do and then go home and forget about it. Because you can't forget about when you shot a man threatening to blow up a building, nor a girl threatening to shoot her father. You can't forget watching the girl you love get shot by a sniper buildings away. A man stealing a baby. A teammate's death. Bombs blowing up. Stuff. Life--to those on the team.

Word of Warning

•  Crime. There is a whole awful lot of crime going around. This might surprise you, it being a cop show and all, but there's a lot of it. Theft, murder, attempted murder, blowing things up, kidnapping, rape, gangs, drugs, the list goes on forever.
• Death. People die. Sometimes they are shot by SRU officers, sometimes they are not saved in time. Sometimes they try to kill themselves. There are a few major deaths that keep popping up during the series, so I will mention those. 1) a man is shot in the first episode by an SRU officer, right in front of the man's teenage son. 2) a girl who is threatening her father with a gun is shot by an SRU officer. There is a slow-mo shot of her falling, but no blood is shown. 3) one of the officers shot his friend by accident while in the military. 4) one member of the SRU dies in an explosion (off screen).
• Injuries. People get hurt a lot too. Gunshot wounds, getting punched and shoved around, stab wounds, etc. Rarely is there any gore shown. Blood, yes, but that's not the focus of the show so it is not dwelt upon. Even when there is blood just enough is used to make the point. Three instances stand out to me where there was a lot of blood: when a woman is hit in the arm with a piece of shrapnel, when a woman is shot by a sniper on a rooftop, a man is shot in the abdomen.
• Romance. It's not necessarily a problem, unless it is. I'm not spoiling anything by telling you this, since it establishes itself pretty early on, but two of the SRU team members quickly form a romantic relationship even though it is against regulations. They sleep together often. Aside from the SRU couple, some of the violence revolves around couples (abuse, rape, divorce, cheating on spouses, etc). There is more than one out of wedlock pregnancy.
• Stress. Sure, this is a big deal for the minor characters committing the crimes, but the focus is on the SRU. There's a lot of mental stress that goes with the job, and that's not ignored. Flashbacks, freezing up, PTSD, all that good stuff. The mental stress is there and it's acknowledged.
• Drinking and drugs. People go and get drinks all the time and rarely get drunk. Sometimes minor characters get drunk and that's involved in the SRU call. One officer had a history of being drunk, resulting in his wife taking their young son and moving to a different state. Drugs are not a problem on the SRU team, but are involved in a few different calls.

My Thoughts
It's good. It's also really hard to stop watching. While I really did find the action part of it interesting, I appreciated that attention was given to the mental state of the SRU officers. I think that was my favorite part, aside from the on-again-off-again romance on the team (which drove me crazy sometimes). My only objection is that there seems to be a disconnect at times between episodes. After doing some research on the web, it appears the disconnect (storylines not being carried over to the next episode when they should have been, etc) is because this is a Canadian show so the US only has most of the episodes. I haven't found anything to confirm this, but it would make sense. The whole thing is so well-written I have a hard time believing they just decided to forget about key storylines when writing the next episode.
I like that the focus is on the lives of the SRU officers, not the calls themselves. And I really like the bond of the team, how it flexes to work with new situations or nearly breaks when it cannot get over the old.
Overall, there's really not much to say about this show. It's just good. And if you have some free time, you might want to watch all of it. Because once you watch one episode, you'll be watching all of them.