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nedjemet 's review for:
Hope Was Here
by Joan Bauer
Hope Was Here is hard to review. I have a lot of good things to say about the book - it kept my interest, it reads easy, I liked the plot, and so on - but there's something missing here. I think it all boils down to the characters. They just don't have any depth to them and that removes a key emotional element for me.
The basic premise of the tale is that a fifteen-year-old girl named Hope moves to Wisconsin with her aunt so that they can work at a small-town dinner. Upon arrival, Hope finds herself caught up in the local mayoral race, but I can't tell you why that is. She's not a particularly politically active child and she doesn't really know anything about the town that would make her care about the race. She just gets involved. You don't question it while reading, though, because this is one of those books where its breathtakingly clear who's the good guy and who's the bad guy. You want the good guy to win and you're interested in all the terrible things the bad guys is doing. Because of that, you're glad that Hope is involved because it means you are, too. Looking back, though, there's really no reason for her to be involved. She had no horse in this race and was in town for less than a week when everything started.
Along the same lines, the bad guy was childishly bad and the good guy was angelically good. This is middle-grade literature, so maybe that's to be expected, and I will admit that I enjoy that dynamic. It's nice to have clear cut situations and Bauer really had me rooting for the good-guy. It would have been nice for these two characters to have some depth to them, though. I can't tell you anything about who they are as people. In fact, we barely ever even see the bad guy. We just hear about all the bad things he's done.
While this main, interesting plot is going on, there's a very poorly developed side-plot about Hope and her family issues. You see, Hope has been raised by her aunt because her mother didn't want to be a mother. She still shows up every few years to say "hi," but that's about it and Hope has no idea who her father was. It's not a bad setup, but with how poorly developed Hope is as a person, I just didn't care.
The cherry on top of the whole thing was the ending which felt very left-field for me. I don't know why it was written the way it was. It gave a really sad wrap-up to an otherwise pleasant read without providing any sort of life-lesson to go with it. Sure, bad things happen in life and that's important to understand, but this was already an unrealistically simplistic tale in its approach to politics, so why add a realistic element here? Because of that, I probably wouldn't give this to a child even though I enjoyed it because I didn't think there was something special about it that justifies upsetting them and there are better books out there. Conversely, I wouldn't stop a child from reading this. Like I said before, I enjoyed it, I'm just not going to recommend it to anyone.
The basic premise of the tale is that a fifteen-year-old girl named Hope moves to Wisconsin with her aunt so that they can work at a small-town dinner. Upon arrival, Hope finds herself caught up in the local mayoral race, but I can't tell you why that is. She's not a particularly politically active child and she doesn't really know anything about the town that would make her care about the race. She just gets involved. You don't question it while reading, though, because this is one of those books where its breathtakingly clear who's the good guy and who's the bad guy. You want the good guy to win and you're interested in all the terrible things the bad guys is doing. Because of that, you're glad that Hope is involved because it means you are, too. Looking back, though, there's really no reason for her to be involved. She had no horse in this race and was in town for less than a week when everything started.
Along the same lines, the bad guy was childishly bad and the good guy was angelically good. This is middle-grade literature, so maybe that's to be expected, and I will admit that I enjoy that dynamic. It's nice to have clear cut situations and Bauer really had me rooting for the good-guy. It would have been nice for these two characters to have some depth to them, though. I can't tell you anything about who they are as people. In fact, we barely ever even see the bad guy. We just hear about all the bad things he's done.
While this main, interesting plot is going on, there's a very poorly developed side-plot about Hope and her family issues. You see, Hope has been raised by her aunt because her mother didn't want to be a mother. She still shows up every few years to say "hi," but that's about it and Hope has no idea who her father was. It's not a bad setup, but with how poorly developed Hope is as a person, I just didn't care.
The cherry on top of the whole thing was the ending which felt very left-field for me. I don't know why it was written the way it was