The Serpent King

This is a perfect example why you should not allow labels like YA deter you from reading any book.

Dillard Early, Travis Bohannon, and their snarky sweet friend Lydia Blankenship have been friends for years. The book begins just before the beginning of their senior year of high school. These three

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are are not members of the so called "IN" crowd, or any clique aside from their own. They are all more mature than their fellow classmates for various reasons.

Lydia writes a blog called Dollywould and has a lot of followers there as well as on other social media. She is quirky and kind. Dillard, called Dill in the story is the son of a preacher. Not your typical preacher, but he's one of the ones you hear about who handle snakes and speak in tongues. Dill does not follow in his fathers footsteps, which is just as well. His father is in prison. And Travis is a sweet guy who finds escape in fantasy novels, particularly those of a particular author. He imagines himself in that world, to cope with his dysfunctional family

What happens during their senior year, will make you smile, it will make you cheer and it may even make you cry. But whether you cry from joy or sadness is what you will find out in this extraordinary story of three friends who have each others backs. They embody the meaning of friendship. We could learn a lot from them. I cannot imagine anyone not loving these young people, or reretting the time spent reading this book. It will be on my re-read shelf for sure.

Recommended.

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I received this book as part of the Early Review program through LibraryThing. I tend not to ready a lot of YA novels, and was honestly not expecting much from this novel.

I was so wrong.

This was a beautifully crafted story of loss, love, despair and hope. It brought me to tears and transported me

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from my own small town in the north to Forestville, TN (I borrowed the spelling from Lydia). This book is for anyone who has felt stuck in their life, who has dreamed of having something more and who has lost someone they love.

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Dill is no stranger to hardship. He's dirt poor, financially supporting his mother, and seems to have zero future prospects. His father, a snake-handling preacher, is in prison; many of his former parishioners blame Dill. Yet Dill has two things that keep him getting up in the morning - his friends

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Travis and Lydia. The three are strikingly different but are pushed together by their mutual status as social outcasts.

This is a story about friendship, futures, and fighting. It's the first book in a long time that's made me just start bawling - I'm generally avoid crying if I can, but this book deserved a good cry. It was that moving. I didn't just feel for Dill and his friends, I felt with them - which is saying a lot since I personally have not experienced most of the hardships that Dill and his friends were going through.

The characterization and mood of this book were what made it amazing. The characters were real. They were flawed. They got angry for stupid reasons or were sometimes bossy and blind to the needs of others. Yet they were perfect. They were just what good friends should be. They knew how to love, how to inspire, how to live. The mood of the book was remarkably well-kept. It somehow mixed the darkness of hardship with the light of an amazing friendship.

Overall, I would recommend this book to anybody who likes gritty teen realism. Personally, I volunteer for a texting crisis hotline for teenagers, and I find reading books like these helps me to better relate to the teens that text in. I am currently collecting books that I think would either be good to recommend to troubled teens, or help others in the crisis center to empathize with teens in crisis. I consider this an important collection, and carefully think about each book that I include. This one is a definite yes. Issues that I consider important in this book - religious extremism (and how it impacts youths), family members in prison, bullying, grief, mental illness, and coping mechanisms.

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Growing up as one of the kids that never got picked for teams, always feeling like an outsider, it was easy for me to identify with the characters in this book on that level, even though their lives are so different from mine in nearly every other way. I realized that I was really invested in the

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story when I found myself crying not once, but at least four times through the course of the book.

The writing wasn't perfect. I found the way he set scenes to be formulaic: the author would give us some quick surface details on appearance and compare it to something quirky, then tell us what it smells like, with more quirky details. A little clumsy, but not a deal-breaker. There were also a few unlikely wish-fulfillment scenarios, but they also weren't deal-breakers.

I liked getting to know the three main characters. Being in their heads made it easy to get emotionally invested in their lives. Even with the wish-fulfillment scenarios, some of the predictable things I was worried might happen didn't, and the story did offer some surprises. As an atheist, I was pleasantly surprised by the way the main character explored his faith through the book, and how his family and friends informed and impacted his relationship to it.

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I enjoyed The Serpent King. The characters felt familiar (everyone has known a Dill, a Lydia and a Travis) and the struggle to stay or move on will resonate with readers.

The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner is one of the most hauntingly beautiful novels I've read this year. It made me laugh, it made me cry, but most of all, it brought back memories of similar experiences when I was younger.

It's a story about three teenagers from a small town who feel "stuck" by their

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respective circumstances. Dill, a talented musician, is ostracized because of his father's crime. Kind-hearted Travis immerses himself in the pages of his favorite book to escape his dysfunctional family. And Lydia, who runs a popular fashion blog, can't wait to escape their stifling hometown and make it big in the Big Apple. These three teenagers form a strong and lasting bond amidst ridicule, bullying, abuse and tragedy. They find their strength in each other to finally emancipate themselves from whatever it is that's holding them back.

We all need a Lydia in our life. She's the type of friend who refuses to see you fail and will do everything in her power to see you reach your potential. I also fell in love with Lydia's parents, especially her dad. if all parents were like them there will be less troubled teens today.

I just love everything about this book - the cover, the characters, the story, the writing style - everything. It's heart-wrenching but ends on a hopeful note. Told from the pov's of the three main characters, The Serpent King is a reminder to be more compassionate and accepting towards those whom society label as different.

I give this book 5 out of 5 stars!

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First-time author Jeff Zentner's YA novel THE SERPENT KING follows Dill and his friends Travis and Lydia through their final year of high school and explores their struggles to break free of heredity and inheritance. It's a typical problem novel, and this trio faces a pile of problems indeed. But

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of course, because the book is intended for "children", it must somehow end happily.

Dill is the central character. Dill and Travis have hard lives, while Lydia's is privileged, apart from the "hardship" of growing up in a small Southern town. Numerous forces — such as poverty, abusive fathers, school bullying, small-minded religiosity, and a general nastiness — may keep the friends from achieving their dreams. The plot, told in their alternating voices, describes what happens and how it affects them.

I read A LOT of YA books and understand why many adults dislike the genre. Problem fiction always risks overdoing the drama; mishandled, problem novels turn into miserablism for teens. That's how this novel reads. Every plot point feels heavy and overdetermined — but perhaps that's what a reader should expect when the novelist sets his story in a town named after a founder of the Ku Klux Klan. (The author's comments suggest that he based the book on his own experiences of growing up in the American South.)

Novels like this often receive heaps of praise for being sensitive, gritty, and realistic, and certainly this novel is realistic. Many teens do struggle with serious problems, and the political and social fracturing of communities — particularly between urban and small-town rural and between haves and have-nots — amplifies the already significant challenge of growing up. But writing about individuals' problems does not necessarily make a great book. Perhaps for people who don't read much YA literature, this book feels fresh and aware because of the ground it covers; for anyone immersed in the genre, however, it feels overburdened with types and tropes (not to mention a heavy-handed attempt to update the character of Atticus Finch in the form of Lydia's dad). The dread-filled atmosphere was so thoroughgoing and unrelieved that I found the book a challenge to grind through. And the conclusion, when everything is set as right as it can be, was far too long. I stopped caring about the characters and their futures — that's not a good sign for any book.

If you're a straight white Christian boy growing up in a small Southern town, THE SERPENT KING confirms that "it gets better" when you grow up and leave. Such a conclusion frankly makes me wonder what small-town America will be in another decade — but perhaps current US politics already tells *that* story.

THE SERPENT KING is a fine book, but just that: fine. I am not the audience for this novel and didn't care for it.

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This is an Early Reviewers review.

Overall I enjoyed this book and imagine many teens might as well, in being able to relate to the emotions and experiences of the three main characters.

Initially, as Lydia was introduced, I worried. Lydia is a very cool, clever (and funny) character who acts older

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than she is and is somehow an outcast, making me think the author was relying on a trope of YA lit and film - the Manic Pixie Dream Girl - to save a hapless Dillard. Lydia does, however, develop more fully as a character in her own right through the book (chapters regularly switching between the perspectives of the three main characters helps), thereby saving her from status as a true MPDG.

The writing does do a good job of expressing the over-wrought-ness of teenage emotion without being clichéd. Some of the plot developments are fairly obvious, but the book nonetheless made me feel for the characters, and I stayed engaged - many adolescent readers will likely have a good cry. Note that some more sensitive young readers might find the mental illness and physical abuse described difficult to digest.

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Three outcast teens find their saving grace in each other's friendship while attending high school in a small Tennessee town -- but what will happen when high school is over? There's Dill, wrestling with his demons: his father, a preacher at a snake-handling church, was arrested for child

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pornography, and Dill is afraid that shame will follow him for his entire life -- not to mention the crushing debt that presses on his family. Lydia, who comes from a more affluent background, is burning with ambition: she's already a successful fashion blogger with plans to attend NYU and never look back at her small-town upbringing -- but does that mean she has to leave her friends behind, too? And Travis, a gentle giant who is obsessed with a Game of Thrones-style fantasy series, dreams of nothing more than working at the lumberyard during the day and reading (and avoiding his abusive father) at night, but an online relationship starts him dreaming of more.

This book had me crying more than a few tears. The writing is excellent, the characters engaging -- I wanted to spend more time with them. Looking back, I have a few questions about why certain things had to happen the way they did, but while reading, I was entirely caught up in the story. Highly recommended for readers of any age, particularly those who enjoy Southern small-town stories with a darker edge.

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The Serpent King is a beautifully written and touching YA tale by author Jeff Zentner. It is the story of three young misfits in Forrestville, Tennessee, a town named after a Confederate general. Dill Early Jr is the son of a Pentecostal preacher who drank poison, handled poisonous snakes, and is

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now in prison for child pornography, a crime many including his mother believe is really Dill’s. Dill has always been afraid of the snakes, something his father has used to humiliate him. He is also a talented musician although very few outside the church know this. Travis is a gentle giant of a boy, abused by his father and grieving the death of his older brother. He finds solace in a series of fantasy books, wears a tacky dragon pendant, and carries a staff, all of which help to make him an outcast at school. He spends much of his time online discussing the books he loves and has developed an online relationship with another fan. Lydia is smart, witty, already making a name for herself as a fashion blogger. She uses her wit to fight back against the bigotry and small cruelties of her classmates. Of the three, she is the only one who is an outsider by choice. They are in their last year of high school and all three want to escape the confines of the town but Lydia, thanks in great part to her supportive parents, is the only one who has the opportunity and has already made plans. She is determined, however, to push the other two and offers them both options, Dill through his music and Travis through writing.

The story is told in the third person and alternates between the three giving the reader an intimate look at their thoughts, feelings, and dreams. Dill feels the most trapped and Travis, despite his father, is the most hopeful. Lydia is the least likable of the three often seeming unable or perhaps refusing to see her advantages and pushing the other two to change their futures without looking at the reasons why they feel unable to. On the other hand, without her, they would have no hopes of a better life even if the ones she offers seem impossible.

It is impossible not to root for the three even Lydia or shed a tear when tragedy strikes. Often using short, active sentences, Zentner’s writing perfectly brings to life the poverty of the South, a religion foreign to most of us, the small and large cruelties of many people including some parents, the difficulty of fitting in to this kind of lifestyle for many teens, and the difficulties of escaping. He tells the story with clarity, empathy, and hope and he makes the reader care for his characters in a way few writers can. That it is his debut novel makes it even more impressive.

I received this book from the Early Reviewers Program on Librarything in exchange for an honest review

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