Girl Holding Up the Blue….Holding Up the Girl…Holding Coats?...forget it.

Both were fine.  Maybe even more than fine.

I’m sort of with a few of the others who have weighed in.  I think Girl in the Blue Coat is likely the better book, but Holding Up the Universe knows its audience in a HUGE way; it is far more likely to be devoured by our students.

Both are guilty of abandoning ideas/characters/motifs that are initially so intentionally carefully crafted at the expense of the machinations of plot in a way I didn’t mind until I was finished because both are twisty enough to keep you reading.  But...neither really passes a lot of scrutiny.

I think Hesse’s book wins out, however.  Mainly on the strengths of those last few pages, which, in context, are really something special. (Please note:  whenever I have waxed poetically about the last few remarkable pages of a flawed novel, that novel has been eliminated.  See:  Grasshopper Jungle.  The Bunker Diary.  More Than This. Others.  I shall refrain from writing more.)

I’m not sure that I LOVE either one of them.  I’m sort of surprised that both of them have found their way into the semi-finals.

Is this Zombie Pick time?  Because, whatever it is, it’s going to drive straight up the centre for the win this year.