Sykosa Part I: Junior Yearby Justin Ordonez
published by TDS
2012
ISBN978-0-9854243-1-2
Why Read?: Review
Challenges: Debut Author, YA Saves, Multi-Cultural
Sykosa Part I:
Junior Year is one hell of a ride.
Justin Ordonez’s writing style is unlike anything I have ever
encountered, and boy, does it pack a punch.
It’s been a year since the even that forever changed
Sykosa, bringing about a blackness whenever she thought about it. One thing helps her cope with it, though, and
that is Tom, the boy who saved her. They
meet regularly behind the Chapel, but no one knows they are a couple – he
hasn’t even asked her to Prom – aside from Niko, Sykosa’s best friend. Niko, though, is the one behind Sykosa’s
problems. Niko didn’t mean to cause any
problems, but on her quest to constantly reinvent herself, while trying to put
her mother’s shady past behind her, she sometimes takes things too far. Their sophomore year, it was trying to take
down the leader of the Bitches, the cool girls who rule the school. Niko, now the leader of the Queens, a rival
group, did succeed, but the cost ended up causing Sykosa’s fragile emotional
state.
Somehow, Ordonez captures the sexually confused
emotions of a teenage girl as if he were one himself. Never have I read an adolescent female protagonist
as true as Sykosa. However, if I read Sykosa while in high school, I would
have been utterly shocked at the language and situations that appear here in
print, which leads me to categorize Sykosa
as New Adult rather than Young Adult.
Aside from an amazingly realistic protagonist,
Ordonez’s writing style also elevates Sykosa. Knowing that there is something dark in
Sykosa’s past makes the reader want to keep reading in the hopes of finding out
what the juicy gossip is. Ordonez
carefully, skillfully doles out just enough information to drag the reader in
deeper, chapter by chapter, until the tension is unbearable. The only downside
to Ordonez’s writing the random head-hopping that happens infrequently but
still noticeably.
Compulsively readable, raw and gritty, Sykosa Part I: Junior Year is a story
that cannot be forgotten. If this is
Justin Ordonez’s debut, I cannot wait to see what he produces next. Part II
cannot come fast enough!
