I really enjoyed this middle grade novel as I read it. When I write this review over a week later, a lot of the more detailed thoughts I have regarding the book escape me. This often happens when a book is good, but not great or unique or in someway extra that captures my attention. One of my biggest struggles with this book is how much the two main characters are alike. The chapters clearly state, which girl is the perspective for the chapter, but since they interact with many of
the same people, once the reader gets into the chapter, it’s difficult to distinguish between the two main characters. I did think that the author did a good job with the character development and the exploration of how each of these girls deals with parental grief. One of the main characters lost her father many years ago. The other main character lost one of her parents – I forget which one – to a drug overdose and the other was never in her life so she is being raised by her uncle. Overall, this is a decent middle grade Reid, but not one I would strongly recommend.
(I do not rate memoirs.)
I thought going into this book that I would really enjoy this graphic novel. This graphic novel is a graphic memoir of the authors, experience it as a young high school budding journalist. Unfortunately, the author does a really good job with distinguishing the timeframe that any of the events occur. He also does not do a really good job establishing the connections that he himself had with
various other people in his life, which made these jumps in time and interactions at school or in other areas quite confusing this could have been really good, but I think that many young readers will struggle to connect with the story due to the confusion it creates.
This book worked for me, which exceeded my expectations since I tend to not enjoy survivalist type stories. The thing that made this book work was the fact that the survival portion didn’t drag out beyond the suspension of disbelief. In this story, the main character wants us to go to a survivalist summer camp. It’s been something she worked towards for years and something that has been drilled into her by her mother who deals with grief
and trauma associated with the sudden death of her husband, the main character‘s father, in a flood. The story opens with the end of a huge rain storm that caused significant flooding in the nearby river, which washed out the bridge that connects this town to others. This puts in jeopardy the opportunity to go to the survivalist camp for the main character so she tries to get there but things go awry. Braden handles these complex topics quite well. I definitely recommend this book.
What on earth did I just read? I have no idea what happened to these characters between the two different books in this installment. The author seems to have lost the magic that she infuse the previous narrative with when it came to writing this sequel. The relationship between Sam and Hel did not work at all in this book. On top of that, the supposed case that Sam and Hel, accompanied by Van Helsing this time, went to investigate, had so
many twists and turns that the plot ended up looking like a pile of yarn barf. I did not enjoy this Reid at all. If the author plans to continue this series, I will not pick it up.
I understand how the authors of this book intended to make this topic work for a middle grade audience. I wish that people would learn that simply adding graphic elements, such as short, many chapters of graphic novelizations of some of the topic, does not automatically make a book interesting to a middle grade reader, especially when the rest of the text is incredibly dry and boring. Unfortunately, I do not recommend this book.
(I do not rate memoirs.)
This memoir is incredibly haunting and poignant. Adapting the original memoir for a middle grade audience makes a lot of sense, given the age of the author during the event that she recounts. Reading through stories like this are so necessary and so heartbreaking every time. I wish people would listen so that we could learn from our history.
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