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336 pages, Hardcover
First published March 10, 2015
Writing Style
Jo Knowles! Queen of my heart! Your prose is on fleek, and it makes my heart sing. You are truly a master of the five-part chapter that illustrates the life of a host of small town people. As each chapter goes on to blend seamlessly with the next, overlapping in the manner of Sarah Dessen's books, where all the characters inhabit the same town and exist on the periphery of others, my heart, rendered two sizes too small from all of the mediocre YA in the world, bounces back to its original state. For this, I thank you.
Plot
This book doesn't have a plot so much as a bunch of plots that weave together. It's refreshing to see such an elaborate plot executed so well, and no, I'm not crying, there's just joy in my eyes.
Characters
Since this book had a panel of characters, I'm not going to go character-by-character like I usually do. Instead, I'll rank them from favorite to least favorite:
Dewey
Grace
Dylan
Stephen
Lacy
Miss Lindsay
Jack
Claire
Nate
Keith
Now, I know what you're thinking: Dewey as your number one, Aroog? Really? He is such an asshole! He objectifies women! The aforementioned is very, very true, but Dewey's chapter was so well-written. I get to see this asshole describe all of the events that made him the way he is, and how living with his father has skewed his perception of women, and how he is so vulnerable, because his entire life rests on his father's promise of a job for him when he hits twenty-one. Dewey was so fleshed out that I immediately marked him as my favorite. Is he a good guy? God, no. Is he a good character? For sure. The way Stephen's chapter complements his is really nice, too, because we see Dewey from an outsider's perspective, where he shows kindness to Stephen that he doesn't need to. Read this book for Stephen and Dewey's chapters, honestly. They're the best.
Grace and Dylan were great characters, too, because they challenged other people's perceptions of them. Grace was seen as Little Miss Perfect and ridiculed by her parents for trying to be a living Barbie? The words hurt her, but she kept doin' her. Dylan, too, was amazing, because we see an asshole teenage boy taking part in a scam to get money for beer or weed, and yet he cares about so much more than that. He loves people in spite of the things they do. His mom is a pack rat, but she lets her be. Sammy is untouchable; she is higher on the social ladder than him, but they share a deep bond of brother/sisterhood. He shows small acts of kindness that go against Dewey's idea of him being a typical, lazy teenage boy. It is enough to warm my cold, cold heart, honestly.
Lacy, Miss Lindsay, and Jack had okay chapters. There was more to them than met the eye, but their chapters paled in comparison to the others'. However, two chapters that annoyed me were Nate's and Keith's. Nate's is the first chapter and it sets the tone for the entire book, and it is so painfully blah. There is no hook to draw me in with Nate's chapter (I read on only after he went into his nurse fetish in detail; that probably says something about my character...), and it was my least favorite throughout the entire book, until we got to Keith's. Keith! You boring boy! I don't understand your ritual of getting flipped off by a grunge beauty queen and her backup dancers, my man! Your entire chapter was like an uncomfortable acid trip. To be terribly blunt, that chapter is confusing and unnecessary, and needs to be rewritten or removed. It marrs the rest of the book. Nate's chapter also needs some more depth. Make me feel something for this kid. Make him interesting. He is the typical, cliche, "boy who got bullied" trope. It lowers my morale to read further, because it reads like a story about bullying, and adults usually butcher those (that is a rant for another time).
Worldbuilding/Reasonability
Wow, wow, wow. This is an excellent example of fleshed-out settings in contemporary YA. I can picture Little Cindy's and Irving High, and it is refreshing to know where everything is at. As for reasonability, everything was researched out and made sense (except for Keith and that balcony shit. I'm still convinced that was a bad trip).
The Unforgivables
Gayngst
Mogai individuals just can't seem to catch a break in YA. We die, we try to kill ourselves, we come out with lots of angst and are bullied until one of the former situations occur, or we just end up with a relationship in shambles because being gay is an angsty, nasty business. If Stephen didn't have to deal with a broken relationship and a father who had a heart attack at the same time, I might've gone easy on this book, but lord! Would it be impossible to set Stephen and Ben back up? Or at least hint at it, the way Lacy's text hinted at Stephen and Lacy becoming friends again? I'm not asking for a miracle, people.
Monochrome Casting
If, by now, in 2015, you don't understand why it is harmful to have all-white casts of characters in YA, or throwing in a token character of color (which Knowles didn't even bother with), I am not going to bother with you. This last part is intended for all authors of YA: POC exist. It doesn't matter if you're living in Armpit, West Virginia or some other racist state in the south. There are POC there. At the very least, a town will have one or two families of color, and you're writing FICTION, for God's sakes! Make it up! Color in this mayonnaise world! Give kids of color someone to relate to! Please, stop with the all-white or token-character bullshit. This is your world, you're the creator, and if you aren't comfortable with writing a character out and including a detail that marks them as POC, that says something about you. POC characters aren't hard to write. They're like white characters, but with darker skin.
TL;DR
Loved this book, but not how white it was. Also, gayngst really doesn't appeal to actual mogai individuals.