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A review by alarra
The Last Forever by Deb Caletti
3.0
I really like Caletti's writing, her ability to draw sympathetic teenage girls at the centres of her narratives, and the difficult family relationships that drive us crazy but that we could never do without. Here, it's between Tess and her somewhat strange dad and her estranged grandmother Jenny; and between Tess and her new, dizzying crush Henry Lark and his quirky friends in the small town she's been exiled to. Real families AND found families? Oh I could've been a mess at the end of this book if I was a little less cynical. The idea of the seedbank, and the plot involving Pix the mystery plant, was lovely, but was the seed metaphor pushed a little too hard and did it become a little on the nose? Yeah. Was the book charming and touching and lovely all the same? Yep!
I do feel a bit cheated in the characters of Elijah and Millicent, who have a big role to play in the emotional climax of this story, but are thinly drawn and too much like caricatures for me to enjoy; and once their part in the plot revelation is done, they're completely thrown by the wayside, which undermines Henry's story a little. Ultimately, despite my misgivings I still really enjoyed the read, and I would read another Caletti - she's somewhat taken over the space in my YA heart that used to belong to Sarah Dessen.
I do feel a bit cheated in the characters of Elijah and Millicent, who have a big role to play in the emotional climax of this story, but are thinly drawn and too much like caricatures for me to enjoy; and once their part in the plot revelation is done, they're completely thrown by the wayside, which undermines Henry's story a little. Ultimately, despite my misgivings I still really enjoyed the read, and I would read another Caletti - she's somewhat taken over the space in my YA heart that used to belong to Sarah Dessen.