This one was quite the simple story, but it sure did pack a punch.
Good things, small packages, etc etc. You know how it is.
I must confess up front that books that span one day have always fascinated me.
There is something about the limited scope of them that is intriguing to me. It’s like watching an artist make a masterpiece using only limited colors. The sense of How will they do that?, and the like.
I haven’t had the best experience with these types of stories in the past (hellooo there, Nicola Yoon’s EVERYTHING EVERYTHING) but I have hope. And when I picked up Gayle Foreman’s latest, I was reminded of what I’ve hoped to see in the past.
And did it deliver? Yes, yes it did. I love how Foreman handled the limited colors she’d chosen on her palette. I love how she fashioned a story that not only was hard enough to pull off in a day, but also happened to rotate between three distinct POVs, with three distinct character arcs.
Do you see how impressive that is?
But let’s talk characters for a while. Because Freya, Harun, and Nathaniel are the heart of the story. Which is, again, tricky. If you’re not invested in them, then the story’s dead in the water. Thankfully that wasn’t the case here, which was the biggest concern for me going in.
* Freya is an interesting lead: a singer who lost her voice, rendering her career in a not-so-great position. There were intriguing dynamics going on between her distant mother, her even-more-distant older sister, her father who abandoned her, and herself: who she wanted to be, who she became, etc.
* Harun deals with the issues of balancing his identity vs his family’s expectations, and the difficulty of planning his coming out to his religious family.
* Nathaniel is my personal favorite. He’s been raised distant from the rest in a home on the edge of a forest, with an unstable father who lives in delusions close enough to affect his son both mentally and physically.
And can we just appreciate the diversity in this one? Freya is half Ethiopian and half Jewish; Harun is a gay Pakistani-American Muslim, and Nathaniel, though white, has a prosthetic eye.
The writing needs to be mentioned. Foreman’s writing is simple, but lyrical. There are gorgeous little parallels in the sentences, because the three POVs rotate, and they mirror each other in the prettiest of ways.
Unfortunately, though, there were some things I wasn’t a fan of. Mainly, there were some plot lines that seemed like stretching the bounds of believability (parallels, remember?) and a particularly irritating scene where Freya attempts to resolve issues with Haden. For the sake of staying out of spoiler territory, I’ll stay vague. But still.
Oh, and may I just say: trigger warning for a suicide attempt. Spoiler threats be damned; this needs to be mentioned.
But all in all? I like this one, very much. Good use of a limited plot space, a nice diverse set of characters, and gorgeous writing. Yes, please.
Thank you, Penguin Teen, for the pretty review copy!
(But for real, though. That cover is beautiful.)
Good things, small packages, etc etc. You know how it is.
I must confess up front that books that span one day have always fascinated me.
There is something about the limited scope of them that is intriguing to me. It’s like watching an artist make a masterpiece using only limited colors. The sense of How will they do that?, and the like.
I haven’t had the best experience with these types of stories in the past (hellooo there, Nicola Yoon’s EVERYTHING EVERYTHING) but I have hope. And when I picked up Gayle Foreman’s latest, I was reminded of what I’ve hoped to see in the past.
And did it deliver? Yes, yes it did. I love how Foreman handled the limited colors she’d chosen on her palette. I love how she fashioned a story that not only was hard enough to pull off in a day, but also happened to rotate between three distinct POVs, with three distinct character arcs.
Do you see how impressive that is?
But let’s talk characters for a while. Because Freya, Harun, and Nathaniel are the heart of the story. Which is, again, tricky. If you’re not invested in them, then the story’s dead in the water. Thankfully that wasn’t the case here, which was the biggest concern for me going in.
* Freya is an interesting lead: a singer who lost her voice, rendering her career in a not-so-great position. There were intriguing dynamics going on between her distant mother, her even-more-distant older sister, her father who abandoned her, and herself: who she wanted to be, who she became, etc.
* Harun deals with the issues of balancing his identity vs his family’s expectations, and the difficulty of planning his coming out to his religious family.
* Nathaniel is my personal favorite. He’s been raised distant from the rest in a home on the edge of a forest, with an unstable father who lives in delusions close enough to affect his son both mentally and physically.
And can we just appreciate the diversity in this one? Freya is half Ethiopian and half Jewish; Harun is a gay Pakistani-American Muslim, and Nathaniel, though white, has a prosthetic eye.
The writing needs to be mentioned. Foreman’s writing is simple, but lyrical. There are gorgeous little parallels in the sentences, because the three POVs rotate, and they mirror each other in the prettiest of ways.
Unfortunately, though, there were some things I wasn’t a fan of. Mainly, there were some plot lines that seemed like stretching the bounds of believability (parallels, remember?) and a particularly irritating scene where Freya attempts to resolve issues with Haden. For the sake of staying out of spoiler territory, I’ll stay vague. But still.
Oh, and may I just say: trigger warning for a suicide attempt. Spoiler threats be damned; this needs to be mentioned.
But all in all? I like this one, very much. Good use of a limited plot space, a nice diverse set of characters, and gorgeous writing. Yes, please.
Thank you, Penguin Teen, for the pretty review copy!
(But for real, though. That cover is beautiful.)