First Novels Club: The Verse Novel Experiment

One of the best things about writing Karma has been the steady stream of mail from readers who say Karma has made them verse-novel lovers!  From the first moment I read "Out of the Dust" by Karen Hesse, I think I knew that one day I would try my hand at this unique genre. Here's a review below of Karma from First Novels Club.


- Cathy


From First Novels Club:


The verse novel experiment: KARMA (Cathy Ostlere) and IDENTICAL (Ellen Hopkins)

Guys, I've been converted.

Somewhere along the way in my YA readership experience, I decided that I "didn't like" verse novels. To be fair, that may have been in high school, after I was assigned to read a really depressing, slow-moving, and semi-boring verse novel, and I decided that ALL verse novels must be depressing, slow-moving, and semi-boring.

Forgive my ignorance.

Way back in April, the delightful Cathy Ostlere wrote an excellent guest post on writing novels in verse, and I read an excerpt from her novel, KARMA ... and loved it.

The imagery! The lyricism! The emotion! The gorgeous, gorgeous details!

I knew I had to break my verse novel embargo. And when I do something, I do it right. So I doubled up on the verse novel awesomesauce with an audiobook of Ellen Hopkins' IDENTICAL.

I loved them both for very different reasons and highly recommend them. 

Without further ado...

KARMA by Cathy Ostlere

KARMA just didn't let me go. I was unfamiliar with the backstory -- 1984 India, and the riots and political instability after Indira Gandhi's assassination -- but what drew me in were the characters and the writing.

One of my all-time
favorite covers.

Ostlere's words just flow along the page, and free verse was the perfect choice to highlight the urgency of the story. It's by no means a short book, but I flew through the pages, mesmerized by Maya's journey.

I love Maya. She's multicultural -- of Indian heritage, born and raised in Canada, half-Hindu and half-Sikh -- but she's a multidimensional, fully realized 15-year-old girl whose multiculturalism is just a part of who she is. She has crushes on boys, she's betrayed by her best friend, she wrestles with her parents' expectations, and she struggles to discover who she is in a ridiculously confusing and contradictory world. I connected with her immediately.

Her mother commits suicide, and she must bring her ashes to India with her grieving father. And then riots break out, and she's separated from her father in a foreign, dangerous place. Her traumas have only just begun.

Then we meet Sandeep, the other narrator, who speaks when Maya can't. I love Sandeep. He's impulsive and funny, charming, loyal, and desperate to prove himself. His family dynamics leap off the page, and his parts of the dual narration expose another layer of Indian culture and tradition, giving the reader a nuanced view of life in India during such a bloody, complicated, and divided time in its history.

Ostlere paints a vivid portrait of Maya and Sandeep's struggle to reunite Maya with her father and the development of their tentative love for one another in the midst of turmoil. 

Do yourself a favor, and read this gorgeous, epic novel.


To read the review of Ellen Hopkins' IDENTICAL please visit First Novels Club.

YA Books Make Great Reads for Adults

In the last decade, booksellers and readers have delighted in the crossover book: either the adult book that teenagers find on their parent’s bedside table or the YA novel that daughters and mothers are fighting over for the first read.  Great examples of this are: The Book Thief, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, the Harry Potter books, the Twilight series, and more recently The Hunger Games.

Last week, the NPR (National Public Radio) website featured Karma as one of five new YA books that have great appeal for adult readers.

The writer of the article, Julianna Baggott, says this about teen novels:

 “A good novel doesn't just transcend the boundaries of its target market — it knows nothing about target markets. Young readers have always reached above their reading level to get to meatier stories, and lately we've seen adult readers reaching into the world of teen fiction in search of the same thing — no-holds-barred storytelling. But the attraction isn't just related to the fact that young adult novels tend to have faster-paced narratives. Many of these crossover "teen" novels are satisfying to adult readers because they tap into ageless themes, namely the sense that each of us longs to know who we really are in a strange, confusing and sometimes otherworldly world. As it turns out, the search for self is a lifelong one.”

About Karma she writes:

“Karma is a rich historical novel by Cathy Ostlere that's wild and unpredictable. Set in 1984, it begins with the poetic diary entries of 15-year-old Maya, whose more-or-less typical high school life in Canada is shattered when her mother commits suicide. Maya, who is half-Hindu and half-Sikh, flies to India with her father and her mother's ashes. Caught up in the violent aftermath of Indira Gandhi's assassination, the two are separated, and Maya is cast into the streets alone. Sandeep — an ebullient, charming, fiery young man — shares the narration. Epic and almost surreal in scope, a love story emerges. Ostlere divulges secret after secret. Depicted as a "novel-in-verse," the language is beautiful, the pages turn quickly and the story becomes a fast-paced whirlwind of startling images, action and heartfelt emotion.”

Check out the other four books featured:

Flip by Martyn Bedford   

Delirium by Lauren Oliver 

Ten Miles Past Normal by Frances O'Roark

Trapped by Michael Northrop 

MakeShift Bookmark Reviews Karma: "SO FULL OF WIN"

Since Karma was released in late March I have been fortunate enough to receive a steady flow of positive reviews, and a lot of them have been from bloggers.  When announcing a new review on Facebook I have stated a couple of times that "this is the best review yet!" And here I am happy to announce (again) that this one too is the best review yet!


Jen of MakeShift Bookmark has written a wonderful post about how Karma has turned her into a reader who now loves historical fiction as well as verse.  I am always delighted to hear how reluctant readers of verse novels are made into fans of the genre by Maya and Sandeep's touching story.  With quotes like "This book blew my freaking mind." it is hard not to brand it as the best review yet!

"This book is perfectly written, evocative, emotional, and will totally make a historical fiction fan out of those of us who typically couldn't care less. Cathy Ostlere has made a fan out of me. And this will DEFINITELY not be my last book told in verse."


BIG thanks to Jen, to read her full review please visit MakeShift Bookmak.