by Jessica Warman
ages: 15+
First sentence: “There’s a man feeding the koi in our fishpond because my parents don’t want to do it themselves.”
Review copy sent to me by the publisher.

I thought the premise of this one was intriguing, and by all accounts, should have really liked it. Katie Kitrell has an incredibly messed up family: her father, a psychiatrist, is so absent that his children call him “the Ghost”. Her mother is an alcoholic; her older brother, Will, a schizophrenic who is becoming increasingly violent. So, when she’s shipped off to boarding school her sophomore year, she finds herself trying to reinvent who she is.

I thought it would be a fascinating story; a bit of a coming of age a bit of a mystery (the back says “And when Will commits an unthinkable act”; what is that, exactly). And for a while, it was. I’m not sure how much I connected with the characters, but Warman’s writing is quite elegant, feeling almost effortless. She does broken very well, and knowing that this story is semi-autobiographical makes it that much more powerful. But then, about halfway through, I became bored with it. I think part of it was that the book covers three years of time, and I just wasn’t interested in following Katie all through the rest of high school (with an epilogue that takes place ten years later). I think if the story had been more condensed over time, it would have worked better. For me, at least.

I also had a difficult time connecting with any of the characters. Most of them were either off-putting, spoiled, grating, or just plain irritating. I understand that it was the nature of the story, and I can accept that. Perhaps it would have been easier to stomach the characters if the time frame for the plot were shorter.

So, I abandoned it halfway through. I read the ending to see how it would all turn out (shame on me?), and then decided I didn’t care that much to go back and read about how the characters all got there. Time’s too precious to waste on books I’m not really connecting with. Right?