SOMEBODY UP THERE HATES YOU

When you’re surrounded by death, anything can look like a good opportunity.

Death is all around 17-year-old Richie Casey. Diagnosed with cancer, he’s spending his final days in hospice care in upstate New York. He’s weak. He can’t eat. He’s also a wiseass with a biting sense of humor, and he’s persuasive enough to convince even the toughest nurse to let him do what he wants. Seamon’s debut for teens follows Richie over 10 days leading up to his 18th birthday. His ne’er-do-well uncle breaks him out for a wild, cathartic, drunken, lust-filled night on the town in a wheelchair to celebrate Cabbage Night (the night before Halloween). He pursues his girlfriend down the hall, Sylvie, who is also dying from cancer. Each character is vividly drawn, with a sharp, memorable voice that readers will love and remember. While there is plenty of death to go around, the novel’s tone shifts from dark to light when opportunity presents itself to narrator Richie. Both the characters and readers empathize with his urge to break out and experience life despite his constraints and the consequences that might befall him. His ups and downs are what power the plot, and readers come to learn that Ritchie isn’t full of joie de vivre. Instead, he’s full of fight, and that’s what makes him so admirable and memorable.

A fresh, inspiring story about death and determination. (Fiction. 14 & up)