A review by brandypainter
My Diary from the Edge of the World by Jodi Lynn Anderson

1.0

Let me say the one good thing I can: The MG voice here is strong and well done. It definitely gets you invested and keeps you reading. However, that also left me feeling greatly betrayed and incredibly angry by the time I reached the end of the book. I wanted to rage and shake my fists at the sky, "I READ 400 PAGES FOR THAT???" Ugh. Engaging voice aside, it is just not worth it. The story takes place in an alternate modern US world where fantastical creatures (dragons, mermaids, sasquatches, etc. exist and so infrastructure (highways, railways, etc.) did not develop as they did in our world. What was able to develop was bad fast food. Plenty of Taco Bells and Dairy Queens to be found! It got to the point where I was ready to set the book on fire if Taco Bell was mentioned one more time. The world being so similar to ours was a big problem for me. The history of the US and its technological development would be VERY DIFFERENT if the entire middle of the country were uninhabitable. Where were the First Nations peoples? Wouldn't regions have developed their own governments and ways of surviving? The. World. Makes. No. Sense. You want to know what else this alternate world has besides fantastical creatures? Ominous clouds that show up in your town, then your street, then your house. They hover just outside waiting to take the soul of an unknown occupant. Dun Dun Duh. Want to try to outrun the cloud? It will follow you. There is no escaping the Clouds of Death. The whole plot of the book revolves around an attempt at this. Road Trip! Gracie (the main character) and her family hightail it out of their town trying to not let the doomed person from their house die. And that's the book. Family road trip to escape a Death Cloud. (They pick up an orphan and Sasquatch on the way. Hilarious right?) The ending made me furious from a thematic angle and a plot/storytelling angle. Also a characterization angle. It is the thematic angle that made the most upset though which I can't talk about without spoiling the book. See cut below if youre curious.

Spoiler

Everyone in the family assumes the cloud is there for the lovable and all around charming younger brother of the family, Sam. He is sickly. But the father suffers from depression regularly so that's an issue too. Turns out the cloud is really there for the oldest sister and SHE KNEW IT ALL ALONG. At the end she's all, time to go and lets the cloud just sort of suck her up while she waves. Is this supposed to be some long protracted metaphor for suicide? I don't know. (The cloud mechanics make no sense to me because the world building is not awesome.) But that's how it felt. And her family is all waving at her and crying? She gets to say goodbye to everyone. So yay? I just...NO!