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A review by corncobwebs
The Waters & the Wild by Francesca Lia Block

Bee has always felt strange in her own skin - like she didn't quite belong, even in her own body. Still, she manages to make two uncoventional friends at school - Haze, who thinks he's an alien, and Sarah, who thinks she's a reincarnated slave. They are brought together by their so-called freakishness, but they are bound by a genuine liking and concern for one another. Because they have this understanding, Bee lets her friends in on a secret - she has a doppelganger, and she has no idea what to make of it. The main question that this story brought up for me was: Is the doppelganger real? Does she really replace Bee? Or is the doppelganger a metaphor for the changes that we go through in adolescence? I felt like there was a lot of ambiguity in this book, and I'm not sure I liked that. I still enjoyed Block's writing - very fluid and poetic, as usual. My overall feeling, though, is that I would much rather sit down with one of the Weetzie Bat books.


On second thought, this book left me really annoyingly unsatisfied. I think it was all the loose ends - that and not feeling terribly connected to the main characters. When I come close to finishing a book, I want to feel like I don't want it to end because I'll miss the characters and the story. I didn't feel like that at all with this book - I just feel sort of frustrated, and don't have anyone to talk it out with because I don't know anyone else who has read the book! I feel like maybe it was too short, and if it had been a bit more fleshed out I wouldn't feel like I was left hanging. It makes me sad, because I think Francesca Lia Block is really cool and I want to like everything she writes! I guess it's time for something solid and involved, like a Jodi Picoult novel. I need to feel engrossed by what I'm reading, and I'm pissed that The Waters and the Wild didn't do that for me.