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A review by jacquelinec
Ballads of Suburbia by Stephanie Kuehnert
4.0
Ballads of Suburbia caught me quite off-guard - I was not expecting something so raw. The cover copy mentions Kara's struggles with drugs, family, and friends, but what's on those pages is so much more than that. The book is creatively formatted, with the epilogue both beginning and ending the novel and several chapter groupings, called "Verses", than span specific periods of time. Interspersed between all of this are the "Ballads": introspective confessionals supposedly written by various members of Kara's circle. These vignettes go a long way in adding to the story and developing the secondary characters.
The jaded youth in this story use drugs, parties, and sex increasingly as a means of escape from the realities of their home lives behind the white picket fence facade. Lonely Kara, and later her brother Liam, fall into this pattern to find friends, understanding, and her own means of escape. It's a hard tale, often with harsh outcomes. It's an honest look at the difficulties of adolescence. It's a cautionary story of parents who set bad examples and focus too much on themselves and the children who become irrevocably damaged because of it...
...To continue reading this review, head over to my blog, The Eclectic Book Lover.
The jaded youth in this story use drugs, parties, and sex increasingly as a means of escape from the realities of their home lives behind the white picket fence facade. Lonely Kara, and later her brother Liam, fall into this pattern to find friends, understanding, and her own means of escape. It's a hard tale, often with harsh outcomes. It's an honest look at the difficulties of adolescence. It's a cautionary story of parents who set bad examples and focus too much on themselves and the children who become irrevocably damaged because of it...
...To continue reading this review, head over to my blog, The Eclectic Book Lover.