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A review by kaitrosereads
Personal Effects by E. M. Kokie
4.0
Personal Effects has been on my to-read list since I first heard about it. I had really high expectations for this book and while it wasn’t quite as awesome as I had hoped it was still a great debut from E.M. Kokie.
It’s always interesting to read a book told from a male point of view that is written by a female. E.M. Kokie really captured the male perspective and Matt never came across as contrived or false. Matt was both the average teenage boy but also so much more. He thought about girls and sex and his future but those things were always second in his mind. Always at the forefront was worry about his dad and what kind of mood he might be in or what he might do to set him off. His home life was terrible but he tried not to let it affect the rest of his day-to-day life. Sure he had some attitude issues and he caused a bit of trouble at school but mainly he was a good guy. He was funny and kind-hearted. He was just misunderstood by most people.
The secondary characters were surprisingly well-developed. At first it seemed like Matt’s dad would just be the nasty father who didn’t really have any reason to be that way but I was pleasantly surprised when his back-story was revealed. He had a lot more going on than I originally thought and while I never really felt anything for him, by the end I could kind of understand him. Shauna was my favorite character by far. She was super nice and funny and lovable and she was the best friend ever to Matt. She stuck with him through everything and even when she was super mad at him she always cared for him. And while the rest of the characters play a big role in the story they weren’t actually present for a lot of the book. However they were well-developed and I really felt connected to them.
The story itself actually reminds me a bit of another military related book that was released this year; In Honor by Jessi Kirby. Now don’t get me wrong I’m not saying they are anything alike it’s just that the stories have some similarities that I really enjoyed in both of them. Matt finds out some things about his brother and he sets off on a road-trip to do one last thing to honor T.J. The road trip is only a minor part of the story; it’s what he finds when he reaches his destination that really changes everything for him. There was so much more to the story than the summary hinted at and there were quite a few surprising revelations. I would say that Personal Effects is a more serious, boy version of In Honor.
Overall, Personal Effects is another fabulous contemporary for 2012. Military related books seem to be a new trend this year and of the few that I have read I think Personal Effects is definitely one of the best!
It’s always interesting to read a book told from a male point of view that is written by a female. E.M. Kokie really captured the male perspective and Matt never came across as contrived or false. Matt was both the average teenage boy but also so much more. He thought about girls and sex and his future but those things were always second in his mind. Always at the forefront was worry about his dad and what kind of mood he might be in or what he might do to set him off. His home life was terrible but he tried not to let it affect the rest of his day-to-day life. Sure he had some attitude issues and he caused a bit of trouble at school but mainly he was a good guy. He was funny and kind-hearted. He was just misunderstood by most people.
The secondary characters were surprisingly well-developed. At first it seemed like Matt’s dad would just be the nasty father who didn’t really have any reason to be that way but I was pleasantly surprised when his back-story was revealed. He had a lot more going on than I originally thought and while I never really felt anything for him, by the end I could kind of understand him. Shauna was my favorite character by far. She was super nice and funny and lovable and she was the best friend ever to Matt. She stuck with him through everything and even when she was super mad at him she always cared for him. And while the rest of the characters play a big role in the story they weren’t actually present for a lot of the book. However they were well-developed and I really felt connected to them.
The story itself actually reminds me a bit of another military related book that was released this year; In Honor by Jessi Kirby. Now don’t get me wrong I’m not saying they are anything alike it’s just that the stories have some similarities that I really enjoyed in both of them. Matt finds out some things about his brother and he sets off on a road-trip to do one last thing to honor T.J. The road trip is only a minor part of the story; it’s what he finds when he reaches his destination that really changes everything for him. There was so much more to the story than the summary hinted at and there were quite a few surprising revelations. I would say that Personal Effects is a more serious, boy version of In Honor.
Overall, Personal Effects is another fabulous contemporary for 2012. Military related books seem to be a new trend this year and of the few that I have read I think Personal Effects is definitely one of the best!