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A review by jugglingpup
The Art of Running Away by Sabrina Kleckner
4.0
To see more reviews check out MI Book Reviews.
I got an ARC of this book.
I honestly didn’t expect much from this book. I expected cute and pretty fast. Instead I was given deep and powerful. This book is not what I imagine when I imagine middle grade, instead it is now one of the standards I have for middle grade novels.
The big themes are being true to yourself and what it means to love someone. The sort of themes I always want and always seek out. The true to yourself plot is really about Maisie learning how to do her own art and how to separate herself from those around her. Her art is identical to her dad’s. She sees her and her best friend as pretty much the same person, so any growth is seen as scary and difficult. It was a really wonderful and deep look at growing up and the differences between growing apart and growing together. Maisie has to confront her own feelings of inadequacies and learn that she still has a place in her best friend’s life even if her best friend is now dating.
I love that a lot of Maisie’s growth is supported by a character that I wasn’t expecting. Her brother’s boyfriend! He really is the voice of reason, well him and their flat mate. It was wonderful that Calum is still hurting and that he is not perfectly fine after being away for six years. Instead he is human. He is allowed to be flawed and he is allowed to have complicated feelings, even though it made the ending not have the perfect bow wrapped around it. I just adored Calum, no matter if he was 117 or not.
The only real issue I have with this book is the cutting off contact with family. Maisie is twelve. She turns off her phone a lot and ignores her parents. Her parents did not immediately send Lisa to check on her. Lisa does not immediately go and get her. This seems so odd. This is especially odd when Maisie’s mom even says that if she does it again there will be big consequences, but then there aren’t. It felt like a plot hole. It took me out of the story enough to drop this book a whole star. It happened so often.
Overall, this was a surprising book and I highly recommend it.
I got an ARC of this book.
I honestly didn’t expect much from this book. I expected cute and pretty fast. Instead I was given deep and powerful. This book is not what I imagine when I imagine middle grade, instead it is now one of the standards I have for middle grade novels.
The big themes are being true to yourself and what it means to love someone. The sort of themes I always want and always seek out. The true to yourself plot is really about Maisie learning how to do her own art and how to separate herself from those around her. Her art is identical to her dad’s. She sees her and her best friend as pretty much the same person, so any growth is seen as scary and difficult. It was a really wonderful and deep look at growing up and the differences between growing apart and growing together. Maisie has to confront her own feelings of inadequacies and learn that she still has a place in her best friend’s life even if her best friend is now dating.
I love that a lot of Maisie’s growth is supported by a character that I wasn’t expecting. Her brother’s boyfriend! He really is the voice of reason, well him and their flat mate. It was wonderful that Calum is still hurting and that he is not perfectly fine after being away for six years. Instead he is human. He is allowed to be flawed and he is allowed to have complicated feelings, even though it made the ending not have the perfect bow wrapped around it. I just adored Calum, no matter if he was 117 or not.
The only real issue I have with this book is the cutting off contact with family. Maisie is twelve. She turns off her phone a lot and ignores her parents. Her parents did not immediately send Lisa to check on her. Lisa does not immediately go and get her. This seems so odd. This is especially odd when Maisie’s mom even says that if she does it again there will be big consequences, but then there aren’t. It felt like a plot hole. It took me out of the story enough to drop this book a whole star. It happened so often.
Overall, this was a surprising book and I highly recommend it.