Weekly Reader: Mylee in The Mirror by Ellie Collins; Sweet YA Romance Starring The Goddess of Love By Promising Teen Author

 Weekly Reader: Mylee in The Mirror by Ellie Collins; Sweet YA Romance Starring The Goddess of Love By Promising Teen Author

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: I am impressed by the work of young authors. I am even more impressed when authors are barely in and out of their teens.

Take Ellie Collins for example. Her debut novel Daisy, Bold & Beautiful, was written in 2018 when she was 11. Her second book, Mylee in the Mirror, was published later that year before Collins entered 7th grade and turned twelve. Last year, she published her third book, Mad Max and Sarah, at the age of fourteen.

Despite her youth, Collins has a gift for mixing modern characters and conflicts with Greek mythology. Each of her books feature a modern girl having problems with parents, friends, potential love interests, and siblings with the help and sometimes hindrance of a specific Greek goddess that uses their connections and abilities to help the young girl with her problems.

In Daisy Bold & Beautiful, Persephone, Queen of the Underworld and daughter of Demeter, Goddess of Nature and Harvesting, help D.J. who is struggling in her relocation to a new place and using her gardening talents to relate to other kids, who are too fascinated with the latest gadgets. In Mad Max & Sarah, Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom, uses her personal struggles with her numerous siblings to help Sarah who is arguing with her troubled older brother, Max.

Now we come to Collins's second book, Mylee in the Mirror. In this one, the Goddess Du Jour is Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love & Beauty. In this sweet YA novel, Aphrodite helps Mylee, a teen who has problems with love both at home and at school.

Mylee encounters Aphrodite as her grandmother gets sent to a retirement community, a move which Mylee is against but can do little about. She's also tired of her pushy mother forcing things, like cheerleading, on her when she would rather be on the trampoline and tumbling team. Her mother tries to set Mylee up with Sam, football captain and the most popular boy in school. Mylee is confused and uncertain about her feelings towards Sam, especially when her friend Lilith also likes him and her male friend, Ty, is starting to imply that he wants to be more than friends with Mylee. On top of this love confusion at school, Mylee has more trouble at home when her mother announces that she and her father are getting separated.

This time of anguish over love is the perfect environment for a certain Greek Goddess to make an appearance and appears she does. Aphrodite is seen inside one of the mirrors in Grammy's antique hand mirror collection. Grammy accidentally ended up with Aphrodite's mirror after it was stolen by the Trickster Messenger God, Hermes. Aphrodite wants her mirror back and she wants Mylee's help. In the meantime, she will listen to Mylee's problems. 

This is one of those fantasies where a modern person seeks advice from a unique spiritual advisor, like a ghost, a fairy, or in this case a Greek Goddess. Aphrodite is written the way that she usually is in most stories, vain, aware of her looks, sometimes superficial, and practically gushing over the thought of love and romance. She has a more formal elevated way of speaking that sets her apart from the modern characters. ("You've also weeded out an imposter friend because she would have said hurtful things about you...On top of that, you managed to make your mother happy.") Then suddenly, Aphrodite throws out a sudden slang term, revealing a childlike nature and an adaptability to keep up with a world around her that no longer reveres her. ("Umm...win, win, and win!")

Aphrodite helps Mylee by telling her details of her own life. Even though she, like Mylee's mother, wants Mylee to date "the handsome" Sam, the Goddess tells the mortal teen of her own love life, such as her unhappy marriage to Hephaestus, the Blacksmith God, and her affair with Ares, God of War. Mylee uses these examples from Aphrodite's experiences to solve her own problems. Perhaps Aphrodite is subtly telling Mylee what not to do.

Usually these type of books share the same problem, the spiritual advisor is such a large presence to the book that the Reader wants to see more of them. The chapters without them seem like filler. That is true to some degree in Mylee in the Mirror. It would be nice to see more conversations between Mylee and Aphrodite. Maybe the Goddess could play a more prominent active role than sharing details of her marriage and affairs so Mylee can learn from them.

Usually, the desire to see more of the spiritual advisor is because the modern characters are lacking in comparison. Thankfully, Collins pulled a surprising trick by making both leads interesting.

Mylee is a confused emotional young girl navigating her way through her first love while dealing with the end of her parents' love for each other. The plot falls sometimes to the typical teen angst of crushes, gossip, and what happens when suddenly you see that your close friend is actually very attractive. Some of it causes Mylee to be overwhelmed with angst and sarcasm (She refers to her and Sam's date as "The Date Heard Round The World", because of her mother's endless chattering about it).

There are some sweet cute moments, particularly that concern Ty's crush on her and Mylee trying to process her friends growing affection for her. The subplot concerning Mylee's parents's separation keeps the book from being too overtly sweet, fluffy, and teenagerish There are genuine moments of heartbreak and sadness that are the results of their separation. In one chapter, Mylee is left stranded in the rain waiting for her father who forgets to come and get her.

 Mylee doesn't always handle her problems in a mature manner and no one expects her to. She is processing all of these emotions, just at the time when her body is going through various changes. On top of that is the added stress of the decline of her parents' marriage and her mother's overbearing nature. Mylee doesn't always know how to deal with her problems and exhibits sadness, rage, irritation, embarrassment, and nervousness, sometimes all at once. It's easy for Collins to capture those feelings when she is no doubt going through them herself. 

In some ways, Mylee and Aphrodite fill a need for each other. Mylee needs an adult figure that understands her, listens to her, and accepts her as she is including her interests, friendships, and potential for love. Aphrodite also wants acceptance and understanding, maybe a daughter figure who looks beyond her glamorous facade and sees a figure who had been hurt, had flaws, and needed to learn a few lessons. Together, they fill that need and change for the better. Mylee finds ways to improve her relationships with her friends and parents. Aphrodite finds someone who still believes in and appreciates her.

In only her second book, Ellie Collins, has shown a true understanding of character development, literary allusion, plot, and theme. At 14, she can write as well as authors twice her age. It would be amazing to see how her writing talent will evolve and adapt as she grows.