Brenna Yovanoff’s Places No One Knows

I have no shame in admitting that I have an unhealthy obsession with high school romance books. We all love the story of the bad boy falling in love with the popular girl. When I first heard of Brenna Yovanoff’s book, Places No One Knows, I expected it to be the same way. But as I read Places No One Knows I was so happy to be proven wrong as this book is so completely different from every other teen novel I have read but in the BEST way possible.

In the book we are introduced to a perfect young girl named Waverly Camdenmar who seems to have it all together (as a senior in high school I am extremely jealous of this). She has the perfect grades, a position on student council, and climbs through her high school social ladder. On the other hand, we have Marshall Holt who is struggling and hangs out with the wrong crowd, spending his nights drinking and smoking. But they both have their secrets. Waverly struggles with insomnia while Marshall is a freakishly intelligent guy who is wasting his intelligence. Yovanoff makes this book even more unique by adding the paranormal idea of a girl having the ability to dream her into different rooms. The main theme of this book is about two kids trying to discover who they are while getting through high school.

Yovanoff also managed to create one of the best unlikable heroines. Waverly has a very hard to understand personality, for large parts of the novel she acts distant and robotic but as the novel progresses we get to understand her a bit better. Waverly has spent so long shutting out her emotions but Marshall makes her take down her walls. I must admit to having a connection to unlikable heroines who go against our idea of a “normal girl. “ One of my favorite books is Gone With The Wind and one of my favorite characters is Scarlett O’Hara. I couldn’t help but draw some similarities between the two of them; they are both incredibly strong females that close themselves off from the rest of the world in an effort to protect their own hearts.

It was a welcome change to read about such a amazingly complicated character. Plus,we get Brenna Yovanoff’s storytelling that draws her audience in. I always think that you can tell a good book from a great book by how a character progresses through a novel and I don’t think many books can compete with Brenna Yovanoff’s Places No One Knows.

by Emaan Jafar, TAB Member