Davi’s life is comfortable, if uneventful. Uneventful, at least until that Django Conn show and Anna Z. Uneventful, until the gorgeous girl and all her talk talk talking about the alien drift and other dimensions. Uneventful, until Anna Z.’s brother comes hunting for her and they make a run for it, following Django Conn and all the glister and glam that follows the man and his music.

There is a level of oddity I expect from a book titled Meet Me in the Strange. Even more so when it features a rock star/ possible otherworldly being as a major part of the story. Leander Watts presents something a bit beyond the expected level of odd, though enjoyable so.

This is a book that thrives on its setting and the interactions between Davi and Anna Z., or rather how taken with Anna Z. Davi is. She does most of the talking between the two of them, and it paints these fantastic jumbles of ideas and thoughts. Frankenstein’s monsters and souls from the way way out there, the evolution and change of humanity and a sort of mutation of the soul, it’s got this fantastic patter to it that dances along to an almost hypnotizing beat. She’s out there and disconnected, but then it works.

Then there’s the setting. There’s this whole retro-future deal where they’re talking about recent space visits and Davi’s buying music on records, but then instead of feeling set in the past it feels like the future as seen by the 80’s. The Angelus hotel is stately and elegant and a historic throwback that draws in all manner of fancy visitors. Anna Z. talks about classic horror movies and old stories in relation to Homo Lux and the alien drift. But then there’s this bright energy with the glam-boys and glister-girls and the teen speak used. It’s unfamiliar, but feels right from a words perspective. Like, I really enjoyed the slang as part of the world building because even when I didn’t get it, it felt right.

If I have an issue with the book though, it’s that the plot is really not present for most of the run of the book. The antagonist takes awhile to show up and we’re told how much of a threat he is and shown how scared of him Anna Z. is and then not a lot happens with him. When I said that the book thrives on its setting and character interactions, that’s almost all it has. This wasn’t a major problem for me because of how much I enjoyed everything else. But it is the weakest part of the book.

So, in a lot of ways Meet Me in the Strange makes me think of Ziggy Stardust era David Bowie, just with the way it feels. It’s spacey and odd and a ton of fun. It says, at times, quite a lot but also very little. The chapters are short and it feels a bit like eating chips, you just want to keep going. I actually really want to listen to some of the music from the book’s world, to catch the kind of wild brilliance that Davi and Anna Z. hear. It gets a four out of five from me. The weakness of the plot is the only thing keeping it from getting the full five.

A beautifully written coming of age story. Felt almost like literary YA. With an ethereal rock-god named Django Conn, it felt like an homage to the great David Bowie. Would recommend for fans of beautiful writing, relatable teens, and rock music.

Meet Me in the Strange is a good title for this tale. It is strange from beginning to end. I enjoyed it, but cannot honestly say I fully understood it.

In some indeterminate future, Davi, of indeterminate gender, is entranced by the music of Django Conn. At a concert Davi becomes transported to another plane, both by Conn's music and seeing Anna Z, another concert-goer who is equally transported. When the two finally meet, Anna enlists Davi to help her escape from her brother who is violently obsessed with her. As the two navigate their relationship and search for safety, they share their common interest in the "alien drift," which was an abstraction I'm afraid I didn't really get. It seemed that there was so much to be inferred about astral powers that the plot was slowed down. However, the love of music was very clear and will be engaging for like-minded readers.

DNF at 23%

I tried reading it, and it did seem to be getting slightly more interesting but I haven't picked up the book in a while now and it's unlikely I will soon. I guess it just wasn't my type of book.

The language makes this a somewhat difficult read but it's well worth it. It's often hard to tell the characters' reality from their imagination or dreams... you have to pay close attention. The parallels with what we think is our own reality are compelling and frightening.

DNF at 34%

I seriously hate not finishig books but this really wasn't for me. I don't know why, I just really couldn't get into it and I don't want to waste time reading books I'm not enjoying anymore.
I think some people might actually enjoy this but I really couldn't. The chapters were too short (I'm usually an advocate for short chapters but those really were shorter than short) and the plot lost me right at the beginning....

DNF @28.

To begin with, I wasn't a fan of the choppy sentences and the super small chapters, but I get that this is something that is maybe/ probably corrected in the editing process, so I'll just move past that.

I liked the description of glam rock with a space twist, and the big role that the music played (at least in the first chapter or so), BUT, this is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl Story.

I didn't even have to read further than 28% to realize that, because from the moment Anna Z properly met our protagonist (who is undoubtedly male; more on this later) she started delivering those manic monologues, which, I suppose, were there to make her "weird" and "an outcast" and "a thinker", but just served to make her eye-rolling annoying in my eyes. I get that these are supposed to be pretentious teenagers, but I felt that the author was completely playing them straight. BOY, do I have some special feelings for the authors who play their stories completely straight!

About the protagonist's, Davi's, gender: I've seen other reviewers say that the author left it vague, but in my opinion he was not only male, but an Author Avatar, at that, like all Manic Pixie Dream Girl stories. There's a point when the protagonist comments on other boys wearing makeup and such, and he's like "No, I'm not like that, I'm not like those other boys" (sigh)

And apart from that (this is a first-person narrative, through Davi's eyes), he also slyly judges every single female character on whether or not she's physically attractive. There are many instances of this even in the small percentage of the book I read! Hey, you could argue that Davi could have easily been female (because judging people's attractiveness is definitely not a male characteristic), but.... Maybe this was just me, but I got a very male vibe from Davi, and the judging was in the very distinct "How bangable is she" male bro-fashion.

Seriously, Manic Pixie Dream Girl stories should stay in the early 2000s, where they belong

Meet Me in the Strange by Leander Watts, Meerkat Press

Meet Me in the Strange is a young adult book that takes place in an alternate Venice in 1970, the year after the Apollonauts, as Davi, the first-person narrator calls them, landed on the moon. It opens in the midst of a rock concert starring the glamorous Django Conn, an analogue of David Bowie, with all his marvelous trappings and cosmic mystery. The vibe of Django’s music lifts Davi into what he feels is another level of consciousness. To him, it is something wider and higher than humans, like most of the other fans in the crowd, are normally capable of experiencing or comprehending. Davi notices a girl dancing by herself, a plain girl with wild black hair and glasses. She, too, seems to have become caught up in the mystic vibe. Davi tries to meet her, but she disappears.
Davi lives in the Angelus, a sprawling, century-old grand hotel that has been owned by his family for generations. He and his sister occupy suites on the same floor, but seldom interact with one another or their widowed father. Both of them have their own interests: Sabina dabbles in New Age mysteries, like séances and spells, with dubious characters like the sinister Carlos. Davi lives for music, such as Django’s and other bands with evocative names that are chords of 1970’s acts in our Earth. He spots the mystery girl emerging from Sabina’s door and follows her out into the city.
They finally meet. She had noticed him at the concert, too. Her name is Anna Z., and she is fantastic and endlessly talkative. She explains to Davi that the vibe they both experienced was a function of the Alien Drift, which allows certain humans to tap into the infinite. Both she and Davi have felt alone, but now they have one another. It’s not all smooth or easy for them. Anna has an older brother, Lukas, who is possessive and dangerous. He feels that he owns her, that she is his creation, like Frankenstein’s monster, a comparison that comes up several times in the narrative. She has run away from him before, but never with someone who understood her and would help her, someone who understood the beauty and mystery of the coming contact with alien intelligence. Lukas knows Davi is hiding her, and threatens to kill him if Davi doesn’t bring Anna back to him.
They learn that Django is leaving the concert circuit. His last performance with his band will be at a venue a hundred miles from Davi’s city. The two teens know they have to be there, so they must sneak out of the city, under Lukas’s nose.
The book is written in a poetic, cadenced style that is almost music in itself. It lays a glamour over what might be a prosaic story of a boy and a girl meeting in an old, fairly ordinary city. The imagery is beautiful and evocative, from the glister boys and glam girls in the concert audience to the electrum light flowing over the city that only Anna and Davi understand. Sprinkled throughout are lyrics from some of Django’s songs, and the reader can dig meaning from them as the teen protagonists do. Watts understands the need that young people have to belong to something. Rock music and Django himself provide Davi and Anna with a common language that is a launch pad to a higher experience that bonds them and gives them purpose. Though the teens are passionately attracted to one another, their relationship is a fairly pure one. Meet Me at the Strange is recommended for young adults and fans of the glamour rock scene.

(This review will appear in the May 2018 issue of Galaxy's Edge magazine.)

This book was personally a bust for me. I think that it could certainly be appreciated by the right type of readers, but it was too confusing and jumbled up for me. I didn't feel intrigued by the setting or the characters and thought that the whole thing seemed very out there (which is fine. Some readers like that. Once again, this is just me). I liked how short it was but don't care for the many, many chapters consisting of 1- 1.5 pages each. It is certainly a possibility that this is just not my type of genre, but I didn't enjoy it.

Goodreads Synopsis:
Davi tries to help a new friend, Anna Z, escape a cruel and controlling brother, and the teens end up running away to follow the tour of their rock idol, the otherworldly Django Conn. The story is set in a weird and wonderful retro-futuristic city of glam-girls and glister-boys and a strange phenomenon that Anna Z calls the “Alien Drift.”

My Review:
I received a copy of Meet Me In The Strange from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

First off, I love the cover for this. Usually I don't read juvenile fiction, but I just thought that the description for this book was too interesting to pass up It begins with a concert, and a flickering out of place girl.

Davi is a young boy who lives in a dorm and spends a lot of his time listening to his favourite band. He meets a girl he really likes, and she's super weird compared to everyone else, including their first encounter where she seemed like she was flickering while she was listening to the band play at a show, but that couldn't be right could it? She's into all these conspiracies and aliens and he just loves listening to her talk. She believes the singer of their favourite band is actually an alien and Davi soon starts to believe that too. When he learns about her hidden past, it changes everything. This story is crazy and a smooth ride from start to finish.

Although the chapters are only a few pages long each, this book was an enjoyable read and I'm glad I got the chance to read it.

Here's a link to the book on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.ca/Meet-Me-in-the-Strange-ebook/dp/B075SXRX4L/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1517262553&sr=8-1&keywords=Meet+me+in+the+strange

Thanks for reading! Check out this review and more at my blog.
(Radioactivebookreviews.wordpress.com)

DNF at 30%

I just couldn't get into it.. but I do think there are people who would appreciate it a lot more than I did. It's just really different...