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A review by jesseonyoutube
Brave Enough by Kati Gardner
2.0
Synopsis:
Cason Martin is the youngest ballerina in the Atlanta Ballet Conservatory. With her ruthless mother being the ABC's artistic director, Cason's entire life has evolved around ballet. It encapsulates the entirety of her identity and represents all she knows and loves about herself. When Cason develops a cancerous tumor in her left leg, she meets Davis Channing, a beautiful but haunted boy who overcame his cancer, but succumbed to prescription pill addiction. As Cason loses everything she loves about herself, she gains a community, romance, and for the very first time - a true identity.
Review:
Gardner composes beautiful, rich descriptions of pain and loss. Cason and Davis lose a great deal in this book, which illustrates the reality of fighting diseases - cancer and addiction. Gardner excellently demonstrates the depth of these loses, which she has firsthand experience with being a cancer survivor herself. I loved the premise for this novel, it was enticing and had a depth many YA books are lacking.
However, I felt the characters lacked intricacy and embodied flatness. They fit much too neatly into stereotypical categories - the troubled boy, the cold dance mother, the cheerful hospital aid, the boisterous and inspiring friends. I wanted to love them, but felt they were like neatly packaged dolls that served only to fill a spoiled child's collection. The book was severely undercut by casual writing style, simplistic sentence structure, and jejune language. It eroded the weight of the story, making it extremely difficult become emotionally invested. In fact, the reading level of this book was so simple that I was able to finish this novel in 5 hours. I don't seek out easy reads - i find them to be unrewarding in the ways that "Brave Enough" proved to be.
Nevertheless, "Brave Enough" encapsulates the reality of addiction, non visible disabilities, and the various ways cancer mars its victims - physically, emotionally, and psychologically. It is a protest against the suffering cancer brings. In fact, it is the embodiment of what it means to survive, to fight, and to be brave.
Cason Martin is the youngest ballerina in the Atlanta Ballet Conservatory. With her ruthless mother being the ABC's artistic director, Cason's entire life has evolved around ballet. It encapsulates the entirety of her identity and represents all she knows and loves about herself. When Cason develops a cancerous tumor in her left leg, she meets Davis Channing, a beautiful but haunted boy who overcame his cancer, but succumbed to prescription pill addiction. As Cason loses everything she loves about herself, she gains a community, romance, and for the very first time - a true identity.
Review:
Gardner composes beautiful, rich descriptions of pain and loss. Cason and Davis lose a great deal in this book, which illustrates the reality of fighting diseases - cancer and addiction. Gardner excellently demonstrates the depth of these loses, which she has firsthand experience with being a cancer survivor herself. I loved the premise for this novel, it was enticing and had a depth many YA books are lacking.
However, I felt the characters lacked intricacy and embodied flatness. They fit much too neatly into stereotypical categories - the troubled boy, the cold dance mother, the cheerful hospital aid, the boisterous and inspiring friends. I wanted to love them, but felt they were like neatly packaged dolls that served only to fill a spoiled child's collection. The book was severely undercut by casual writing style, simplistic sentence structure, and jejune language. It eroded the weight of the story, making it extremely difficult become emotionally invested. In fact, the reading level of this book was so simple that I was able to finish this novel in 5 hours. I don't seek out easy reads - i find them to be unrewarding in the ways that "Brave Enough" proved to be.
Nevertheless, "Brave Enough" encapsulates the reality of addiction, non visible disabilities, and the various ways cancer mars its victims - physically, emotionally, and psychologically. It is a protest against the suffering cancer brings. In fact, it is the embodiment of what it means to survive, to fight, and to be brave.