Review: Flyaway by Helen Landalf

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Publication Date: December 19th, 2011

Fifteen-year-old Stevie Calhoun is used to taking care of herself. But one night, her mom, who works as an exotic dancer in a downtown Seattle nightclub, never comes home.

That’s the night Stevie’s life turns upside down.

It’s the night that kicks off an extraordinary summer: the summer Stevie has to stay with her annoyingly perfect Aunt Mindy; the summer she learns to care for injured and abandoned birds; the summer she gets to know Alan, the meanest guy in high school.

But most of all, it’s the summer she finds out the truth about Mom.

FLYAWAY is the story of a teen girl’s struggle to hold on to what she’s always believed, even as her world spins out of control.

(Courtesy of Goodreads)

For a book that has under 200 pages, it sure packs an emotional punch.  Wow.  I finished this book this past Saturday, and here it is Tuesday, and it's still on my mind.   It's one of those books that makes me thank God for the upbringing I had; it wasn't perfect by any stretch, but it could have been a whole lot worse...

The protagonist in this book, Stevie, is the type of girl who falls through the cracks.  It's just she and her mom, but she is definitely the "adult", instead of vice-versa.  She lives her life in blind devotion to her irresponsible stripper mother, and accepts that her life is the way it is without question; in her mind, if her wonderful mother could do better, she would.  Stevie misses school to wait by the phone when her mother doesn't come home for days, saves her money in case her mother needs rent money to keep them from being evicted (even though she knows her mother will probably end up stealing it), and refuses to believe that her mother is a meth addict- even after seeing it with her own eyes.  She  is in the worst kind of denial because if she were to believe her mother to be the woman that she is, she would have to question her very worth.  When Stevie's Aunt Mindy comes in to to take over when Stevie's mom disappears for days on end, yet again, Stevie is resistant.  She wants to believe that her aunt has some kind of ulterior motive; that she's the one who can't be trusted, instead of her mother.  In actuality, Aunt Mindy just wants to provide stability and a safe environment for Stevie to finish growing up in.  She gets Stevie's mom into rehab and tries to help Stevie get on a different path, a path that won't lead to the same end as her mom.  Stevie has mixed feelings, and feels like it's a betrayal to her mother to accept Aunt Mindy's love and help.  Aunt Mindy epitomizes everything Stevie's mom isn't, and that is the worst thing Stevie can imagine.  During this time of inner struggle, she meets Alan (a "bad boy" who used to go to her school) and Valerie and learns to rehab injured birds, which is oddly cathartic to her.  She also comes to a great many realizations about who her friends are and how damaging many of her behaviors are.  This book was an eye-opening and emotional ride. 

This story did have a few holes.  I would have liked to know more about Alan and Valerie.  The bird sanctuary played a big part in Stevie finally recognizing and and coming to terms with her circumstances, yet there was very little about it in the story.   I felt like both characters could have used a lot more development.  Stevie rubbed me the wrong way sometimes too.  She was really stupid about a lot of things; she would claim she knew what she should do, and then do the exact opposite.  I have little patience for self-destructive people.  Her relationship with her mom reminded me of a victim of repeated domestic abuse who keeps going back for more until her abuser finally kills her; Stevie's mom chose drugs over her and that should have been enough for her to stop living in denial...  I did like that there wasn't  neat ending.  I don't think a story like Stevie's could possibly end neatly.  It could, at some point, have a happy ending, I suppose, but I think Stevie's scars will always be too deep to have a neat one.  The story ended with a sense of not knowing what was in store for Stevie, but that's okay, it means her story isn't over.  If her story isn't over, there's hope...

I would have really liked to give this book five stars, but I just couldn't.  It had the potential.  It was interesting, engaging, and well-written; it was just too short for the kind of character development I felt was necessary for this very character-driven story.  With the exception of Stevie, the characters were very two-dimensional to me, and that is what kept this from being the five-star book it should have been.

My Rating:  ★ ★ ★ ★  

Grade Level Recommendation:  This book is definitely a HS book.  There is a lot of mature content, and it is at times quite harsh.  I think it would be a lot for a younger reader to grasp.  Ages 14 and up (9th grade+).

Review: Blood Wounds by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Publisher: Harcourt Children's Books

Publication Date: September 12, 2011

Willa is lucky: She has a loving blended family that gets along. Not all families are so fortunate. But when a bloody crime takes place hundreds of miles away, it has an explosive effect on Willa’s peaceful life. The estranged father she hardly remembers has murdered his new wife and children, and is headed east toward Willa and her mother.

Under police protection, Willa discovers that her mother has harbored secrets that are threatening to boil over. Has everything Willa believed about herself been a lie? As Willa sets out to untangle the mysteries of her past, she keeps her own secret—one that has the potential to tear her family apart.

(Courtesy of Goodreads)

People seem to very strong feelings about this book.  I was looking at the reviews on Goodreads before I read it, and I was quite surprised; people really loved it, or really, really hated it.  I was kind of in between, but leaning toward loved...

I get that fans of Susan Beth Pfeffer's Last Survivors series (Life As We Knew It, The Dead and the Gone, This World We Live In) got something from her that is totally different from what they are used to.  This book is a HUGE departure from those books.  Anyone who went into it expecting something along the lines of those books, would be disappointed.  No doubt.  That said, most of the negative reviews I read were along the lines of, "I loved Life As We Knew It and this book was nothing like it and not what I expected, and the synopsis was misleading, and it wasn't what I expected, so it sucked." (That would be me paraphrasing, just to clarify.)  I don't think the synopsis was misleading; vague maybe, but it piqued my interest, so it did its job.  Also, it did not suck.  In the slightest.

This book was an intense, emotional roller-coaster.  Willa is a member of a perfect blended family.  Personally, I never encountered a perfect family of any kind (there's always the odd nutjob or skeleton), so I knew there was more to this story.  Add to that that Willa and her step-sisters have such vastly different lifestyles and opportunity, despite the fact that they all live under the same roof; any idiot can see that just isn't going to work; the left-out kid is going to have issues with that, even if they say otherwise... A lot of family drama unfolds in this book.  Yes, the tragedy involving Willa's biological father that is mentioned in the synopsis kicks it all off, but it was always bubbling there, just under the surface, waiting for a trigger.  This story is not about the tragedy itself.  This story is about self-discovery, standing up for yourself when you can change things, and accepting the things you can't.  It's about being who you are, even if it's not what everyone expects you to be.

At first, I didn't like Willa much.  I had very little respect for her that she couldn't stand up for herself and make her voice heard.  As the story progressed, I realized she was taught to be that girl, and was not given a choice out of fear.  As she came out of her shell, I began to not only like her, but admire her.  She shouldered so much in her short life, and she never understood that she shouldn't have had to.  The supporting characters were relatively unimportant to me; their histories were important to the story, but getting to know them really didn't matter.  Think of it like this, Abraham Lincoln was as important to the history of the United States as anyone, but to grasp that, we don't need to know him as a person.  That's how I felt about the people surrounding Willa- this was HER story.

The best part about this story was that I never really knew what to feel.  I think that the feelings I was feeling embodied what Willa was going through.  She really wasn't sure how to feel either.  She was so numb for so long that it took something so tragic and horrible and unthinkable to get her to allow herself to hurt again, and once that happened it was like a dam opening up.  With the emotional aspect of this book, Susan Beth Pfeffer did a phenomenal job of making me experience the same emotions as the protagonist, at the same time.  At the beginning, I didn't care about Willa; I was totally indifferent.  I grew with her though, and in the end felt a connection to her.  It isn't difficult to write a character into a situation that makes you feel sorry for her, but it takes talent to make you feel the emotions AS her.

This book was very good.  It isn't my favorite of her books, and I did expect a little more.  It felt rushed at times, and I felt like it was too short, but overall, I think it was very well done.

My Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★  

Grade Level Recommendation:  There are some mature themes like cutting and domestic abuse in this book.  It is also extremely graphic in its descriptions of the crimes committed and the aftermath.  I think it's fine for kids grades 8 and up (ages 13+), and possibly mature kids in 6th and 7th grade, but I would not give this to any student who especially sensitive, at any age.