1.5.

I found WAITING disappointing.

Underdeveloped characters with a hefty dose of melodrama. This is an unhappy family dealing with death. It's told through London's POV, and her brother's death (view spoiler)[ by suicide (hide spoiler)] has left her grieving and trying to pick up the pieces of herself and her family. The problem is that there's never an opportunity to know who Zach was and the story of what happened comes very late in the story. Too late for me to believe it or care about it. (view spoiler)[ He kills himself after his girlfriend breaks up with him, but the breakup is less about their relationship and more than he'd gotten the girl pregnant and that wasn't good (he and the girl in question were missionary families, so there's the religious complication here in addition to the teen pregnancy issue). However, we're given the explanation that it wasn't really THAT which caused him to want to die but rather he dealt with extreme depression. I don't buy it. I don't buy you can pinpoint an issue like that in any scenario, much less in one where you don't even get to KNOW the character before he kills himself. We don't get to know him through London, either, until more than half way through the book. (hide spoiler)] Oh and then (view spoiler)[ I do find it insulting as a reader that we're sort of given the impression the only way Zach could deal with making a mistake of impregnating a girl was to kill himself. Like it was honorable. And then it only felt more insulting that he made a comment to his sister about how he'd always wanted to name a daughter after her. And then Rachel does just that. I don't know. It's much too religiously fueled here for me, even if the story repels that entire belief system at times. (hide spoiler)]

There's also weird mixed messages about sex and religion in here, and they waver between being owning sexuality and not owning it and instead deferring to God. I didn't get it and it left me frustrated because it was an unnecessary and contrived complication to the story. Also, it wasn't well written, and at times it felt weird and uncomfortable to read (London shares a story about her brother telling her about the first time he has sex, and the way he describes it just...did not work for me at all. Let alone the weirdness of that becoming an issue worth talking about at all. Also this happens to be the first time we get any knowledge of who Zach was, and it was the fact he told London about his girlfriend's soft vagina. It was just a very ODD way for them to talk and for her to remember and then FIXATE on enough to bring it up to a friend of hers).

This entire subplot, especially as it came to London's grieving, could have been done without. Because it's not just about Zach's sexuality. It becomes about London's sex life, too. For me, it wasn't owning herself nor growing nor grieving but instead felt like a convenient way for London to become saved. In the religious belief sense and in the boy-saving-a-girl sense. It's plural in this book, and that bothered me on a number of levels. (view spoiler)[ It was really bothersome that she never got the chance to be autonomous at all. Everything's gotta be someone else saving her. It's religion first and then it's the fact she's kissing two boys and then she just straight up starts lying about having sex with two boys. The messages were so mixed and while I can understand it has to do with grief and with figuring out how to deal with a screwed up mother, the problem is London never stands on her own, ever. I don't care about her story because I don't care about her because she doesn't care, period. And at times, I thought she gave herself a lot of credit for what happened to Zach, despite the fact we never got the back story there. She found him near death but couldn't save him because he didn't want to be saved because he sinned. But she almost wants credit for him killing himself even though she has nothing to do with it at all. Sorry but, I couldn't buy London here at all. (hide spoiler)] London doesn't have a full character arc. She's one note, and even at the moment when she could have grown, she didn't. Where she could have been a strong female lead, she isn't. She succumbs to a lot of the faults that bother me deeply in YA lit. And that's not to say all girls need to be strong because they don't. But, London took on a host of cliches and didn't challenge any of them. Waiting for a savior doesn't work for me.

The cover copy is misleading, too. The entire story takes place in Florida and there are virtually no flashbacks to the time of the Castle family being missionaries. There's basically not any back story as to London and her brother's relationship, and because of that, I couldn't connect. I found the ending too convenient and not at all cathartic. Because the sad fact is (view spoiler)[ that kind of stuff isn't going to be cathartic and really, it was just much, much too convenient (hide spoiler)].

Where I give the book credit is that the verse is used well. Had this been prose, I'd be even more frustrated, but enough is left unsaid here to keep the reader going.

For me, this book doesn't quite capture grief or loss in the palpable way others who have tackled this topic have. There's nothing new here, and if anything, it took on far too much and failed to deliver overall. And it left me uncomfortable on a lot of topics because of the lack of delivery, and I'm not quite sure what the message is (and I don't usually dig for messages but to me, it felt like there WAS a message here and I'm not getting it). Probably my least favorite of Williams's books.

As an aside, I find it interesting after having read a bunch of Williams's titles that she sure does write some interesting and challenging mother/daughter relationships.