If You Find Me, Save Me

Published:  March 26th, 2013
If You Find Me
By: Emily Murdoch
St. Martin's Griffin
ISBN-13:  9781250021526

There are some things you can’t leave behind…
A broken-down camper hidden deep in a national forest is the only home fifteen year-old Carey can remember. The trees keep guard over her threadbare existence, with the one bright spot being Carey’s younger sister, Jenessa, who depends on Carey for her very survival. All they have is each other, as their mentally ill mother comes and goes with greater frequency. Until that one fateful day their mother disappears for good, and two strangers arrive. Suddenly, the girls are taken from the woods and thrust into a bright and perplexing new world of high school, clothes and boys.

Now, Carey must face the truth of why her mother abducted her ten years ago, while haunted by a past that won’t let her go… a dark past that hides many a secret, including the reason Jenessa hasn’t spoken a word in over a year. Carey knows she must keep her sister close, and her secrets even closer, or risk watching her new life come crashing down.

Review

 

     Carey and her sister Jenessa have been living with their Mother for as long as they can remember, in a camper deep in the woods of a National Park.  They have been neglected and abused, with Carey taking care of Jenessa mostly by herself.  Than one day after their Mother has been gone for longer than ever before, a social worker and Carey's long lost Father come to get them.  Carey and Jenessa are taken home with Carey's Dad and brought back into a confusing, new world full of things they don't understand.  Both girls are forced to adjust to public school and normal life with their new Dad, Stepmom Melissa and jealous, angry stepsister Delany.  But they are holding onto a secret that is causing them both pain and suffering, and has made Jenessa completely silent with it's harshness.  Can they trust someone enough to let go of their old life and tell their heartbreaking secret? 

     This book absolutely broke my heart to pieces.  Carey is only fifteen but has spent the last ten years living with her volatile, mentally unstable Mother and caring for her younger sister pretty much like her own child.  The girls are both malnourished, socially ignorant and Carey has viewed her years of abuse as something that's just a fact of life.  Watching Carey and Jenessa, who refuses to speak, try to understand and become part of the world around them is devastating.  They have to get used to normal food after a unrelenting diet of beans, a family after only having each other and Carey especially has to face up to how the abuse of her Mom and a stream of others has changed her in unavoidable ways.  My main complaint would be the ugly behavior of their new stepsister Delaney, who takes to Jenessa but immediately hates Carey and does everything she can to make her life difficult.  Another thing that bothered me was the switch from friendship with Ryan, to romance.  I felt like it didn't really fit with the story and was awkward for me as a reader (especially the scene where they interact at Carey's first-ever party).  Just felt out of place in a story where the main focus is abuse, neglect, and trying to get past it.  I loved Carey's friend Pixie, who has skipped a (couple) grades and feels out place.  She has such a gigantic personality and becomes a person for Carey to hang onto when things get confusing or a little rough. 

     Carey's dialect was well-represented in the writing and I loved the fact that she eventually picked up her violin again, not letting all the bad things take away something beautiful from her for good.  The constant way everyone is always telling Carey how 'beautiful' she is had me rolling my eyes and sighing.  Why was that in any way necessary?  Yeah, she's such a special person and has done some extraordinary things in the name of survival.  So why the focus on her looks?  That did irk me more than a little bit.  But the transitions that Carey and Jenessa went through while trying to adjust were very realistic and well written.  I didn't quite entirely guess what the big secret was but I had an idea and I wasn't really that far off.  It didn't make it any less horrifying, but it wasn't as shocking as it could have been.  I felt like the clues throughout the novel were definitely less than subtle.  I liked the ending and overall it was a beautiful and haunting book that I'd recommend without hesitation!

 

VERDICT:  4.5/5  Stars

 

*I received an Advanced Reading E-book Copy from the publisher, via NetGalley. No money or favors were exchanged for this review. This book was published March 26th, 2013.*

In That Moment We Were Infinite

Published: August 14th, 2012 (First published February 1st, 1999)

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

By: Stephen Chbosky

MTV Books

ISBN-13: 9781451696196

Charlie is a freshman.

And while he's not the biggest geek in the school, he is by no means popular. Shy, introspective, intelligent beyond his year yet socially awkward, he is a wallflower, caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it.

Charlie is attempting to navigate his way through uncharted territory: the world of first dates and mix tapes, family dramas and new friends; the world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite. But he can't stay on the sidelines forever. Standing on the fringes of life offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor.

Review

     Charlie is looking forward to his Freshman year of high school.  He wants things to be different, for big things to happen in his life for a change.  But he just can't stop observing life instead of living it - until he meets Patrick and Sam.  They lead him into a world of parties, Rocky Horror Picture Show re-enactments, new music, drugs, first love and Charlie begins to live for the first time.  Also throughout the year he has an interesting English teacher who gives him extra book assignments, that make him think about life in ways he never has before.  With family issues coming up from the past and and old trauma haunting him, can Charlie get past it and learn to make it on his own?  Or will he always just be waiting for the downturn of his happy ending?  This was a coming of age book, in the tradition of Catcher In the Rye, and Ordinary People.  It has the same melancholy, anxiousness as the latter and the honesty of the former.  I liked the story enough that I kept reading, though Charlie annoyed me quite a bit in the beginning.  No one cries that much unless they are mentally unstable and have serious issues.  And no one is that naive by the time they're a teenager (although a revelation at the end of the book kind of makes it more believable to me).  The relationships with Sam and Patrick respectively are interesting and full of great moments.   I mean, who hasn't felt this way at some point or another: 

       “So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still   

       trying to figure out how that could be.”

Then again I spent most of my teenage years as an introvert, a wallflower like Charlie.  I was a serious observer of life and not much of a liver (but then I also went through some of the same childhood issues as him, so I can maybe see the correlation in some individuals between the two).  This book was told in letter form, to someone that is never given a name, but obviously means something important to Charlie for him to be so unflinchingly honest about his feelings and experiences.  The advent of drugs into Charlie's life was sort of surreal in the way he treated it so naturally.  Like, "Oh, do I want some LSD?  Sure!  Why wouldn't I?"  The closeness of his family, yet their emotional estrangement from each other is something I am familiar with on a personal level.  Maybe the reason why this book was hard for me to read and know what I felt about it at the end, was because Charlie's life was like a photograph of my own teenage years on an extremely personal level.  The only thing I can say for myself is that I am NOT such a crybaby, am not that naive and have never gone over the cuckoo's nest so to speak.  Overall a good read, with some high emotions.  But those high emotions level out leaving the reader feeling blank at the end - probably due to Charlie's emotional blankness in his letters.  That was the only true insincerity to me.

VERDICT:  3.5/5  Stars

* *No money or favors were exchanged for this review. This book is now available in stores, online, or maybe even at your local library.**

Goodbye Norma Jean, I Still Don't Know You

Published: July 17th, 2012
Marilyn: The Passion and Paradox of Marilyn Monroe
By: Lois Banner
Bloomsbury USA
ISBN-13: 9781608195312

Like her art, Marilyn Monroe was rooted in paradox: She was a powerful star and a childlike waif; a joyful, irreverent party girl with a deeply spiritual side; a superb friend and a narcissist; a dumb blonde and an intellectual. No previous biographer has recognized—much less attempted to analyze—most of these aspects of her personality. Lois Banner has.
Since Marilyn’s death in August of 1962, the appetite for information about her has been insatiable. Biographies of Marilyn abound, and whether these books are sensational or flawed, Marilyn’s fans have always come out in bestselling numbers. This time, with Lois Banner’s Revelations, the fans won’t be disappointed. This is no retread of recycled material. As one of the founders of the field of women’s history, Banner will reveal Marilyn Monroe in the way that only a top-notch historian and biographer could.In researching Revelations, Banner’s credentials opened doors. She gained access to Marilyn intimates who hadn’t spoken to other biographers, and to private material unseen, ignored, or misinterpreted by her predecessors. With new details about Marilyn’s childhood foster homes, her sexual abuse, her multiple marriages, her affairs, and her untimely death at the age of thirty-six, Revelations is, at last, the nuanced biography Marilyn fans have been waiting for.

Review

  Marilyn Monroe is still on of the most recognized sex symbols to come out of America's history and make her way into the world conciousness.  This book is an attempt to analyze the different aspects of Marilyn's personality: her troubled childhood, the dueling longings for a successful career and a family of her own, the partying contrasted with the religion, the dumb blonde versus the very smart girl.  The author, Lois Banner, takes a feminist approach and treats the material like a slice of women's history that is in need of understanding.  Banner managed to gain material that has never been seen before, interviews with Marilyn's personal friends, and facts previously ignored by other biographers.  Banner has also gotten new details about Marilyn's childhood, abuse, and all of her other personal tragedies.  I went into this biography expecting to read something new and fresh to the world's enormous collection of books about the myth and realities of Marilyn Monroe.  The stuff about her childhood as Norma Jeane Mortenson was horrific.  I couldn't imagin a child being shifted around that much, abused, neglected and NOT coming out of it with major problems as an adult like Norma did.  But once we started getting into her movie career, it was the same old stuff that is rehashed everywhere.  I don't care what the synopsis for this book says, it was not anything that was new enough to interest me.  Not to mention that the author spends a lot of time analyzing Marilyn's every action and word instead of just reporting the facts.  This was less of a biography and more of a very amateur psychological analysis.  Seriously, what businees does she have purporting to know the inner thoughts and screw-ups of woman who has been dead for half a century?  This book was just not for me.  If you want to see Marilyn nitpicked to death and be bored out of your mind I encourage you to keep going after finishing the second half of the book.  Otherwise, don't even bother.

VERDICT:  1.75/5  Stars

*I received an Advanced Reading E-book Copy from the publisher, via NetGalley. No money or favors were exchanged for this review. This book was published July 17th, 2012.*