The Afterlife of Holly Chase.
By Cynthia Hand. HarperTeen. $17.99.
The Lost Frost Girl. By Amy
Wilson. Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins. $16.99.
Feel-good stories with
twists for teenagers and preteens are scattered throughout most Christmas
seasons, and this one is no exception. Cynthia Hand’s The Afterlife of Holly Chase is a contemporary retelling of Charles
Dickens’ inevitable-in-the-season A
Christmas Carol, assembled in somewhat muddled fashion from a bit of
gadgetry, a touch of time travel, and a fair number of paranormal-romance
elements. It is a story that initially does not go the way Scrooge’s did:
wealthy, super-selfish 16-year-old Holly, the daughter of a big-time movie
director, is given a chance to mend her ways after doing a nasty number on the
family maid one Christmas Eve. But she does not cooperate with the ghosts that
warn her – so when she conveniently dies (conveniently for the plot, that is;
not for Holly), she clearly needs some sort of penance. There is no Marley-like
chain clanking here: Holly “wakes up,” if that is the right term, in New York
City, where she is forcibly recruited into something called Project Scrooge – a
kind of company that tries to redeem one otherwise lost soul every year through
interventions like the one Holly ignored. The best part of The Afterlife of Holly Chase is Hand’s description of the secrets
of how Project Scrooge operates – this is where the gadgetry and time travel
come in. But the book’s focus quickly turns to the paranormal-romance stuff,
which is pretty thin gruel. Five years after becoming part of Project Scrooge,
Holly finds out that the redemption target of the year is a super-hot, super-rich
17-year-old named Ethan Jonathan Winters III.
Yes, “Winters.” Holly has remained 16 for the past five years, and now
she actually takes an interest in her job because it involves Ethan – with whom
she secretly (and against the rules of Project Scrooge) becomes romantically
involved. In fact, Holly is seen to develop both a genuine romance (genuine by
the standards of teen-focused books like this, anyway) and a friendship with
the still-alive Stephanie, whose pre-death condition makes it possible for her
to bring coffee. These events are supposed to be part of Holly’s redemptive
efforts, which proceed almost in spite of herself. The Afterlife of Holly Chase never manages to be madcap, although
it seems to want to be. It does, however, periodically qualify as quirky, and
even though the ending is a foregone conclusion, it is pleasant enough when it
happens. The getting-to-the-ending can be a bit of a chore, though: Holly’s
narration is often pointed and attractive, but at other times it turns to treacle
that would not be out of place (except for the vocabulary) in Dickens’ time: “I
felt so close to him then, a connection that I was sure was not just based on
attraction or circumstance, not the accumulation of a bunch of fake stories I’d
told him. Something we could build on. Something that would last.” This sort of
thing seems much better when taken in the joyous and forgiving spirit of the
season.
Aimed at preteens rather
than teenagers, with a narrator who is 12 rather than 16, Amy Wilson’s The Lost Frost Girl has a more-unusual
premise than The Afterlife of Holly
Chase, although Wilson’s frequent use of fairy-tale tropes makes her novel
somewhat less intriguing than it might otherwise be. The protagonist here is
named Owl (yes, Owl) McBride, and she somewhat resembles the bird, with a
slightly beaky nose, near-yellow eyes and white-blond hair. She lives with her
mom, knows nothing at all about her dad, and has a close girlfriend named
Mallory and, soon after the book’s beginning, a new boy in class who seems
unusually interesting: Avery, who “has tawny-brown hair in a long braid snaking
down his back” and “the strangest copper-colored eyes.” Owl’s mom won’t discuss
Owl’s dad at all, until eventually she does, revealing that he is none other
than Jack Frost, the elemental spirit of winter. This explains the bedtime
stories Owl’s mom has long told her about meeting Owl’s father in “magical
wintry lands.” Soon enough, as winter begins to develop, Owl’s skin turns
bluish white and sparkles with frost – and she wonders if perhaps she has
inherited some powers of her own from her father. Now Owl just has to find Jack
Frost himself, and she does, but their first encounter is decidedly frosty: he
is wild and uncaring and denies that he is her dad. The increasingly determined
Owl decides to go to Jack’s winter kingdom and get him to help her understand
and control her emerging powers. And that leads to a series of encounters with
battling elemental spirits representing the various seasons, with Jack joining the
North Wind against the Queen of May and the Earl of October – and none other
than Mother Earth eventually having to step in as a kind of Gaea ex machina to sort things out. Wilson
tries to balance the otherworldly elements with normal, everyday concerns of
human 12-year-olds, such as school and poor grades and friendship problems.
This does not work particularly well, since it is hard to believe that Owl –
who, after all, is the narrator – would mentally and emotionally balance
mundane life against the marvels she encounters in and around Jack Frost’s
kingdom, not to mention what happens when the Queen of May maneuvers things so
that Owl is supposed to take over Jack’s role for a time. So The Lost Frost Girl creaks a bit in the
plot department and does not always hold together terribly well, but its
unusual underlying premise is more interesting than the basis of many other
preteen adventures and fantasies. And even though the reason eventually
revealed for the enmity between Jack and some of the other elementals is quite
thin, it suffices in this context to produce a satisfying climax and a
conclusion that ties the book up neatly while leaving open the possibility,
just the possibility, of a sequel.
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