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2.5 stars out of 5
As a fan of Wolitzer's "The Interestings", I approached her YA novel with some trepidation -- leaping from one genre to another is often tricky and leads to mixed results. The first 2/3 of the novel seemed almost cliche: teenage girl suffers loss, girl acts out, girl goes through journey of self-discovery, meets like-minded individuals, falls in love, etc. What surprised me was the withholding of her real backstory until the very end, when she is forced to make the ultimate choice: do I live in the past or do I choose to get better? These are some very adult questions Wolitzer asks of her characters, and she answers them well. The 'voices' and motives of each individual gradually change throughout the novel, something that Wolitzer has excelled at in other novels. There is an unexpected twist at the end that is executed nearly flawlessly, keeping me invested until the end. Wolitzer is less successful in her insertion of magic into the novel; it is a lacklustre system that might have been more believable if she hadn't been so heavy-handed with its inception. Given the adult themes in this YA novel (of which I was thoroughly impressed), I was disappointed with her conclusion in which everything is resolved like a picture-perfect, child-friendly book should. Wolitzer left herself ample opportunity to allow some of her characters' mistakes to be permanent and create a philosophical undertone to perhaps redeem the use of this half-designed magical universe as a plot-driver. Instead she chose the easy way out of the ending, making what could have been the makings of an excellent novel into one that is merely above average.
As a fan of Wolitzer's "The Interestings", I approached her YA novel with some trepidation -- leaping from one genre to another is often tricky and leads to mixed results. The first 2/3 of the novel seemed almost cliche: teenage girl suffers loss, girl acts out, girl goes through journey of self-discovery, meets like-minded individuals, falls in love, etc. What surprised me was the withholding of her real backstory until the very end, when she is forced to make the ultimate choice: do I live in the past or do I choose to get better? These are some very adult questions Wolitzer asks of her characters, and she answers them well. The 'voices' and motives of each individual gradually change throughout the novel, something that Wolitzer has excelled at in other novels. There is an unexpected twist at the end that is executed nearly flawlessly, keeping me invested until the end. Wolitzer is less successful in her insertion of magic into the novel; it is a lacklustre system that might have been more believable if she hadn't been so heavy-handed with its inception. Given the adult themes in this YA novel (of which I was thoroughly impressed), I was disappointed with her conclusion in which everything is resolved like a picture-perfect, child-friendly book should. Wolitzer left herself ample opportunity to allow some of her characters' mistakes to be permanent and create a philosophical undertone to perhaps redeem the use of this half-designed magical universe as a plot-driver. Instead she chose the easy way out of the ending, making what could have been the makings of an excellent novel into one that is merely above average.