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A review by mbenzz
Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance by Alison Espach
3.0
3.5 Stars...
This book was a little heavier than I was expecting. 16-year-old Kathy is killed in a car accident on her way to school one morning. Her boyfriend, Billy, was driving, and her 13-year-old sister, Sally, was also in the car but survived unharmed.
This story is Sally narrating to Kathy what becomes of her and her parents after her death and how they each cope with her loss.
It's sad, strange, it's just all-around heavy, and it left me feeling slightly depressed every time I picked it up...which may explain why it took me over a week to get through it.
While I thought the story was really well written, I never really liked Sally, which I felt bad about because she was a child who lost the big sister she adored in a terrible accident that she was also involved in.
Sally and Kathy are both infatuated with high-schooler Billy Barnes. Kathy and Billy are dating at the time of her death, but Sally harbors a secret love for her sister's boyfriend, 4 years her senior. I had a hard time understanding Sally's love/obsession with Billy throughout her teenage years and on through to her late 20s (where the book ends).
Ms. Espach did a very good job of making the relationship seem believable and realistic, but I think my problem was that I identified more with Sally and Kathy's mother rather than Sally. As a 41-year-old mother to a teenager myself, the emotion I felt most while reading this was the grief of Susan, and I struggled to be able to get on board and understand the Sally/Billy aspect of the story.
I think YA readers will absolutely understand Sally and Billy and will be far more invested in their lives than what happens to her mom and dad (as they should be).
Overall, while I thought the story was well written and flowed evenly, I just thought it was so sad and depressing, and I found Sally to be an odd little girl and an even stranger adult. One I didn't really like.
I think there's bound to be some disappointment with some readers who go into this thinking it's a missing person/psychological mystery, but let me assure you, it is far from that. This is a deep character study of what loss and grief can do to a family and how it can shape and change a person so completely from childhood into adulthood.
This book was a little heavier than I was expecting. 16-year-old Kathy is killed in a car accident on her way to school one morning. Her boyfriend, Billy, was driving, and her 13-year-old sister, Sally, was also in the car but survived unharmed.
This story is Sally narrating to Kathy what becomes of her and her parents after her death and how they each cope with her loss.
It's sad, strange, it's just all-around heavy, and it left me feeling slightly depressed every time I picked it up...which may explain why it took me over a week to get through it.
While I thought the story was really well written, I never really liked Sally, which I felt bad about because she was a child who lost the big sister she adored in a terrible accident that she was also involved in.
Sally and Kathy are both infatuated with high-schooler Billy Barnes. Kathy and Billy are dating at the time of her death, but Sally harbors a secret love for her sister's boyfriend, 4 years her senior. I had a hard time understanding Sally's love/obsession with Billy throughout her teenage years and on through to her late 20s (where the book ends).
Ms. Espach did a very good job of making the relationship seem believable and realistic, but I think my problem was that I identified more with Sally and Kathy's mother rather than Sally. As a 41-year-old mother to a teenager myself, the emotion I felt most while reading this was the grief of Susan, and I struggled to be able to get on board and understand the Sally/Billy aspect of the story.
I think YA readers will absolutely understand Sally and Billy and will be far more invested in their lives than what happens to her mom and dad (as they should be).
Overall, while I thought the story was well written and flowed evenly, I just thought it was so sad and depressing, and I found Sally to be an odd little girl and an even stranger adult. One I didn't really like.
I think there's bound to be some disappointment with some readers who go into this thinking it's a missing person/psychological mystery, but let me assure you, it is far from that. This is a deep character study of what loss and grief can do to a family and how it can shape and change a person so completely from childhood into adulthood.