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A review by danielghurst
Two Winters by Lauren Emily Whalen
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
TWO WINTERS by Lauren Emily Whalen is a contemporary retelling of Shakespeare's THE WINTER'S TALE. While Shakespeare's play deals with royalty and nobility, Whalen's young adult novel centers around average people from a small town in Illinois and is set in the winters of 1997 and 2014. It's a quiet book that deals with teen issues without becoming an "issue book." It also features a diverse cast of characters who face many of the struggles one would expect those of marginalized identities to face.
The prose is strong, and the story is well-paced. In the wrong hands, it might have been too brief for the number of characters and complexity of the plot, but Whalen delivers a tightly-packaged story with enough information to know and feel for the characters and a plot that's easy to follow despite the complicated web of relationships.
Trigger Warnings*: gun violence, homophobia, bullying (incl. homophobic bullying), teen pregnancy, suicidal ideation, racism, pedophilia/molestation, death of a child, physical violence, infidelity
*Bear in mind, many of these are oblique references or mentioned in passing, and all are handled with care.
The prose is strong, and the story is well-paced. In the wrong hands, it might have been too brief for the number of characters and complexity of the plot, but Whalen delivers a tightly-packaged story with enough information to know and feel for the characters and a plot that's easy to follow despite the complicated web of relationships.
Trigger Warnings*: gun violence, homophobia, bullying (incl. homophobic bullying), teen pregnancy, suicidal ideation, racism, pedophilia/molestation, death of a child, physical violence, infidelity
*Bear in mind, many of these are oblique references or mentioned in passing, and all are handled with care.