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A review by thelizabeth
The Reece Malcolm List by Amy Spalding
5.0
This book! We've waited for it so long, everybody. IT GOT HERE!
It's a funny thing. The beginning is sort of a lot to jump into. Partly like a fantasy, partly head-spinny. From the start it drops you straight into the consequences of an extreme situation, and these extremities pile up really fast: all at once we learn Devan's dad has died, but he never was all that great, and her stepmother viciously hates her, because she is an illegitimate child, though she never knew who her mother was until she secretly discovered her mother is a famous author, and a trick of legality is sending Devan to live with her forever/meet her for the first time. Chapter one!
HEADY THINGS. It's possible that in another book it would be more than I could take? Or that I would question a lot of. But I trust this book. And what they render are an interesting girl that we see become new. It's the good kind of new, where it gets started by accident, but becomes the rightest thing.
Devan arrives in her new home a ball of twisted self-consciousness. I felt at first that this was just because of her amazingly awkward situation, but after a while I realized she's really carrying around something way deeper than that. She's shamed and nervous in a way exactly like people I know, exactly like I've been sometimes. It's specific; it's the shamed and nervous that results from being made to feel bad about yourself every day. Someone has to do this to you. Devan comes by these feelings via a pretty unusual story, but the feelings happen to people all the time, and they matter a lot. They create habits that do alienate you, that do take years to recover from. It takes a while for the sudden changes in Devan's life to melt it away, and we get to see how she does it.
I think what's unexpected about the book is mostly the way there's this serious current, but it's going through this really adorable novel that, honestly, feels light and happy and good and positive. That's what it is! There's friend-making and kiss-learning and MUSICALS and MORE MUSICALS! And then a musical happens! It gets to describe Merrily We Roll Along and Sondheim songs at length. I mean it's so cute. It kind of stinks that I couldn't read this in high school, because it is theater geek heaven and just begging for us to commune. Our people, they're in a book! They only have cast recordings on their iPods! And Sai, just, send him to me in a time machine? He picks Tennessee Williams for acting class. Hello, that is a panty-melter.
This is also one of those YA books that excels because it has awesome adults in it. Reece and Brad don't even need the contrast of Devan's dour dad and stepmom to be hugely great, because they are hugely great. Reece is an amazing character who both is and isn't a good mom. She's thorny and close-chested and mistake-making, and completely unpredictable, but she never ever stops being relatable. I don't know what the trick is there, how both of those things work together. I think magic? Either Reece Malcolm or Amy Spalding might be magic.
This books gets really, really special at the end. When the FEELINGS happen! They're worth the wait -- true and kind and real. It comes together in a way that just really landed right with me. And I cried! That's rarer than you'd think.
I want to know everything that happened before, and everything that happens next.
P.S. I am so eager to read Amy's next book that I wanna scream.
It's a funny thing. The beginning is sort of a lot to jump into. Partly like a fantasy, partly head-spinny. From the start it drops you straight into the consequences of an extreme situation, and these extremities pile up really fast: all at once we learn Devan's dad has died, but he never was all that great, and her stepmother viciously hates her, because she is an illegitimate child, though she never knew who her mother was until she secretly discovered her mother is a famous author, and a trick of legality is sending Devan to live with her forever/meet her for the first time. Chapter one!
HEADY THINGS. It's possible that in another book it would be more than I could take? Or that I would question a lot of. But I trust this book. And what they render are an interesting girl that we see become new. It's the good kind of new, where it gets started by accident, but becomes the rightest thing.
Devan arrives in her new home a ball of twisted self-consciousness. I felt at first that this was just because of her amazingly awkward situation, but after a while I realized she's really carrying around something way deeper than that. She's shamed and nervous in a way exactly like people I know, exactly like I've been sometimes. It's specific; it's the shamed and nervous that results from being made to feel bad about yourself every day. Someone has to do this to you. Devan comes by these feelings via a pretty unusual story, but the feelings happen to people all the time, and they matter a lot. They create habits that do alienate you, that do take years to recover from. It takes a while for the sudden changes in Devan's life to melt it away, and we get to see how she does it.
I think what's unexpected about the book is mostly the way there's this serious current, but it's going through this really adorable novel that, honestly, feels light and happy and good and positive. That's what it is! There's friend-making and kiss-learning and MUSICALS and MORE MUSICALS! And then a musical happens! It gets to describe Merrily We Roll Along and Sondheim songs at length. I mean it's so cute. It kind of stinks that I couldn't read this in high school, because it is theater geek heaven and just begging for us to commune. Our people, they're in a book! They only have cast recordings on their iPods! And Sai, just, send him to me in a time machine? He picks Tennessee Williams for acting class. Hello, that is a panty-melter.
This is also one of those YA books that excels because it has awesome adults in it. Reece and Brad don't even need the contrast of Devan's dour dad and stepmom to be hugely great, because they are hugely great. Reece is an amazing character who both is and isn't a good mom. She's thorny and close-chested and mistake-making, and completely unpredictable, but she never ever stops being relatable. I don't know what the trick is there, how both of those things work together. I think magic? Either Reece Malcolm or Amy Spalding might be magic.
This books gets really, really special at the end. When the FEELINGS happen! They're worth the wait -- true and kind and real. It comes together in a way that just really landed right with me. And I cried! That's rarer than you'd think.
I want to know everything that happened before, and everything that happens next.
P.S. I am so eager to read Amy's next book that I wanna scream.