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A review by actuallyjusthanne
Kids of Appetite by David Arnold
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
I picked this up on a whim from the library: I had read Mosquitoland by the same author, and thought it was beautifully written! While this book was also very hard hitting and beautiful, it wasn't as impactful as I thought it was going to be.
The book opens with Freeze-Frame Introduction: Vic and Mad in a police interrogation room, being questioned for a murder and starting to tell the sequence of the past 12 days, leading up until the present moment. As the book unfolds, the events that lead to the past 12 days are told from Vic and Mad's perspectives, supplemented by information provided by the police.
I loooooove a book with found family, following a list of tasks, and precocious children, and this book has all three. At the heart of the book, it is about this group of kids that don't have homes, fending for themselves in a greenhouse because their home lives aren't good. In the course of keeping each other safe, they end up in the eye of a murder investigationthey killed someone who was about to kill Mad, due to aforementioned home life situation . In that vein, this book tackles a LOT of hard subjects, so check trigger warnings before you start the book if you think that it may be too difficult for you (though it is a YA book, so it's not as dark as it could be).
I wish the other characters were more heavily involved in this book: obviously Vic and Mad are the main characters and narrators of this book, but it made the other characters hard to tell apart, as well as I know some people don't like the romance in this book; I thought it made the book what it was. I am not necessarily a fan of how the romance played out, but having a teenage boy notice a girl and start a section of his life because of her is very real, and I felt like that made Vic more relatable as a whole.
My favorite main character was Coco, who was 11 and very dramatic. She was fun and sassy and loves ice cream and rapping, and she was SUCH a fun character to read! I also thought Baz and Zuz, who are twins/triplets that fled the Republic of Congo during the genocide, were such brilliantly done characters, and I wish they were more prominent in the book. As a whole, the diversity in this book was very well done: Vic is disabled, and all of the characters have something that make them unique.
There are dozens of quotes in this book about life and about living that are so beautiful and definitely too precocious for an 11 year old, but are still sweet nonetheless. The story is structured around Vic trying to follow his (dead) dad's wishes, from a list Vic found in his dad's urn. The path of decoding, then doing, these tasks as a group of children is so fun and gives Vic a sense of where his story originates, which is just so wholesome. It is very much a coming of age book, and purely over the course of completing this list and the 12 days, all the Kids of Appetite grow up so much and learn about/cope with life.
Because of the way the book was set up, where the ending was at the beginning, the book wrapped up in a beautiful way, and I thought it was very well done. At the same time, by the end of the book, the suspension of disbelief has hit all time levels, so I wasn't as emotionally invested as I thought I was going to be when I started reading the book. It was still really well done though.
I am glad I read this book, though if I wanted to read a book with these vibes, I would recommend The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise instead. It was very heartwarming and I would read it again/recommend it to others, but I didn't cry and I was expecting to.
The book opens with Freeze-Frame Introduction: Vic and Mad in a police interrogation room, being questioned for a murder and starting to tell the sequence of the past 12 days, leading up until the present moment. As the book unfolds, the events that lead to the past 12 days are told from Vic and Mad's perspectives, supplemented by information provided by the police.
I loooooove a book with found family, following a list of tasks, and precocious children, and this book has all three. At the heart of the book, it is about this group of kids that don't have homes, fending for themselves in a greenhouse because their home lives aren't good. In the course of keeping each other safe, they end up in the eye of a murder investigation
I wish the other characters were more heavily involved in this book: obviously Vic and Mad are the main characters and narrators of this book, but it made the other characters hard to tell apart, as well as I know some people don't like the romance in this book; I thought it made the book what it was. I am not necessarily a fan of how the romance played out, but having a teenage boy notice a girl and start a section of his life because of her is very real, and I felt like that made Vic more relatable as a whole.
My favorite main character was Coco, who was 11 and very dramatic. She was fun and sassy and loves ice cream and rapping, and she was SUCH a fun character to read! I also thought Baz and Zuz, who are twins/triplets that fled the Republic of Congo during the genocide, were such brilliantly done characters, and I wish they were more prominent in the book. As a whole, the diversity in this book was very well done: Vic is disabled, and all of the characters have something that make them unique.
There are dozens of quotes in this book about life and about living that are so beautiful and definitely too precocious for an 11 year old, but are still sweet nonetheless. The story is structured around Vic trying to follow his (dead) dad's wishes, from a list Vic found in his dad's urn. The path of decoding, then doing, these tasks as a group of children is so fun and gives Vic a sense of where his story originates, which is just so wholesome. It is very much a coming of age book, and purely over the course of completing this list and the 12 days, all the Kids of Appetite grow up so much and learn about/cope with life.
Because of the way the book was set up, where the ending was at the beginning, the book wrapped up in a beautiful way, and I thought it was very well done. At the same time, by the end of the book, the suspension of disbelief has hit all time levels, so I wasn't as emotionally invested as I thought I was going to be when I started reading the book. It was still really well done though.
I am glad I read this book, though if I wanted to read a book with these vibes, I would recommend The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise instead. It was very heartwarming and I would read it again/recommend it to others, but I didn't cry and I was expecting to.
"'And when the kids needed someone most, someone to love and trust, they found one another, and they called themselves the Kids of Appetite, and they lived and laughed and saw that it was good.'
We are all part of the same story, each of us different chapters. We may not have the power to choose setting or plot, but we can choose what kind of character we want to be.