This book is a 2013 Cybils YA Speculative Fiction nominee.
There’s a lot to be said for tropes in YA lit, and one of the biggies is “insta-love.” In novels where there is a lot of action and less characterization “insta-love” is a handy fictional tool to step over those messy, emo high school relationships. No need to explain why a character likes another character, they just DO all right? This book touches on instant attraction with a little twist: perhaps the ultimate freakout would be not being in high school, not in any normal circumstance, anyway, and still somehow be party to the emotional puppetry and nonsense of the group emotional dynamic which is high school. Imagine being completely at the mercy of “insta-love” because of some who-knows-why life quirk.
Oh, yeah, and imagine four guys living in the basement…
If you’re saying, “Wait, what?” you’re in good company —
Anna’s father is a scientist for the Branch, and the guys who live in the basement – in unbreakable plexiglass-type cells – are her genetically engineered-maybe-super-soldier friends, kind of. She discovered the guys in the basement when she was thirteen – and has been their biggest fan ever since… especially Sam’s. He’s amazingly gorgeous and Anna’s now seventeen, and dying to know how he feels about her. Of course, logically, he should feel “jailer” about her, and to a certain extent, that’s touched on in the novel, but Anna is impervious to the weirdness of crushing on someone jailed in her basement, and Sam is … remarkably patient with her fangirling on the other side of the glass, her visiting him in the middle of the night, and her trying to catch a glimpse of his tattoos. The novel does not spend adequate time on characterization – the boys are essentially ciphers with a single defining quirk – one eats a lot, one is grumpy, one is the best buddy, and one is the love interest. (They’re like the four dwarves: Grumpy, Hungry, Buddy, Sexy.) Additionally, Anna doesn’t really have a lot of depth, either, nor basic curiosity about what’s really going on in her house, or what goes on in the larger world. With the exception of her hated self-defense courses, Anna’s home ALL DAY and must stay upstairs most of the day. She has little or no contact with the outside, her mother is dead, and her father is completely indifferent, except for their once-a-week lemonade and sugar cookies date. I have to say that if I had a parent who ignored me except for an awkward little interlude for cookies, I might be tempted to, I don’t know, skip it and look online for how to get some kind of emancipation, but Anna is in a weird state of contentment. We’re told she wants to leave. She dreams of a life away, but… well, there’s Sam. And Trevor and Cass and Nick and all, yeah. But, Sam… [insert dreamy sigh]
