Honestly, I didn’t think I was actually going to like this book. I say that from a place of YA love in my heart, though not necessarily a place of southern drama/moody/gothic-y love. When I read the synopsis, particularly the hook lines about curses, wishes, etc, I still wasn’t particularly interested. AND in getting an eyeful of the cover, I was very much still not interested.
So I did what tends, somewhat counter-intuitively to happen in my household when I’m dead set on the idea that I’m going to dislike a book: I started reading it. Not because I secretly thought there was a redeeming aspect to it, but because I figured I’d give it a few pages to righteously confirm my suspicions and then I’d set it down and feel contented knowing that I gave it a chance.
Could I have been farther from the truth? There’s a small chance, but probably not. Within the first few pages, I was without a doubt hooked into this strange, oddly secretive and interwoven set of families. Yes, they are weird. Yes, they are set in their (somewhat stereotypically) southern ways. But more to the point: Ms. Boone weaves lives, people, times, experiences, secrets, hopes, wishes, dreams and insanity together in a way that at once allows you to see the intricate patterns as well as the overall picture.
I’m not going to lie: there are times when I cringed a bit at the characters. We follow Barrie, a 17-year-old orphan, whose mother’s recent death and her former guardian’s losing battle to cancer leave her essentially hoisted upon an aunt she’s never met from a family she’s never known on the opposite coast of a continent she has never explored to experience a life she never imagined that she could. There, she’s introduced to her Aunt Pru, her mother’s sister; Eight, the apparently requisite YA love interest; an extended family she never knew she had, and a town filled with busybodies who never knew Barrie even existed until she showed up. As Barrie attempts to settle into this new life and decide how much of it she actually wants to commit to, she learns about her family’s special “gift”–something she’s experienced her whole life, but always thought of as just a strange personal quirk–and discovers that there’s a whole lot more behind why her mother left Watson’s Landing than Barrie could ever have imagined.
For those of you interested in comparisons, I actually found Barrie to be very similar in personality to Luce in Lauren Kate’s Fallen series. The book has been compared to Beautiful Creatures, but I found it largely unrelated in virtually any manner other than, perhaps, being set in the south. Also, Eight–Barrie’s love interest–strikes me as an interesting cross between Garcia and Stohls’s Ethan and his best friend, Link, though a good deal smarter than both of them.
What I Liked About the Book:
1. The author had me at Mark, Barrie’s black, cross-dressing, transgender(?) guardian. His character is bright, interesting and, even though he’s struggling with his cancer, lends color and emotion to a book that might otherwise be lacking without him. At the same time, there are a few lines Ms. Boone gives him that lean towards trite, but generally speaking, he adds color to the story.
2. The setting is fascinating. Three plantations, three founding families, all hiding a wealth of secrets between them. These are every bit the crazy, hidden-passages-behind-walls, secret-stairs-behind-panels, forgotten-tunnels-in-basements kinds of plantations. The setting alone is ripe with mystery and the unknown, leaving us (the hapless readers) at the mercy of Ms. Boone’s whims to take the story in what ever kind of direction she chooses.
3. Bet you won’t guess where this story’s going! There’s way too many elements you won’t even realize are important until the tale starts to wind it’s way to the end. . .
4. Saying “that’s crazy” or “you’re crazy” isn’t an endgame here. It seems like in a lot of YA Lit, these phrases are enough to conclude any interest in a strange idea, theory or notion. Not so here, where we see a number of such potential moments, but no takers on that conclusion–including the adult characters, who seem to be rather easily put off in YA Lit by such proclamations.
5. There are secrets upon secrets upon secrets, and while I found these frustrating at times, they also lend themselves to making the story itself all the more interesting, with all the more mystery to it.
What I Didn’t Care For:
1. My, my, but we have some inconsistent characters! One minute they’re best friends, the next they hate each other. One minute they dislike each other, the next they’re making out and in love. I particularly found it baffling how quickly Barrie would get pissed at Eight, who really didn’t seem to be doing anything particularly rude or pretentious. Perhaps if Barrie had been built up as having been a highly independent, feminist type character, then some of Eight’s acts would have been more understandably irritating to her. As it stands, Barrie’s little outbursts just came off as being fussy, annoying and immature.
2. Along those same lines, our protagonist is, at the very best, minimally complex. There’s a lot going on with her, but this is one area wherein I felt that the author could have done a slightly better job weaving together her interests, hobbies, passions and personality a bit more clearly. The way it’s done here just feels a bit too passive: we get a brief mention of Barrie’s interest in art, but nothing really about it until Mark finds and mails her her mother’s sketch book. We hear about Barrie’s fitting in as an average person in school with zero experience with boys, then later we have hints dropped about how she looks just like her mom, a multi-beauty pageant winner. Barrie doesn’t seem to spend any time in the kitchen, but mentions she and Mark watched a lot of the cooking channel, then suddenly she’s proposing opening a restaurant? She claims herself to be a boring average girl, with no real-world, leaving-the-house experiences, yet she’s willing to start a dance party at a cook out with complete strangers? She’s never really had any extended family members per se, but now she’s going out of her way and ignoring every single warning she’s given about them in her haste to make them her buddies? Hm.
3. Why does no one seem to think that they should tell Barrie anything? Mark’s keeping secrets; Barrie’s mother kept tons of secrets; Pru keeps secrets; even Eight and Barrie’s cousin, Cassie, keep secrets. By the end of the tale, it’s sort of the one consistent theme: Barrie’s being faced with both real and paranormal danger, yet everyone’s still hanging back, apparently afraid she might . . . I don’t even know what, because she’s proven herself to be fairly resilient and trustworthy, but no one wants to tell her those things that might actually help save her life and allow her to better understand the events occurring around her.
4. There are also a number of strings left undone. For example, Barrie decides to have Mark ship all of her mother’s belongings to Watson’s Landing, yet after the decision is made–and after her heartache at having to confess this decision to Aunt Pru–we never hear another word of them, nor do they appear. There seemed to be many small examples of this throughout the book, and while I assume that these inconsistencies will be addressed in the next books in the series, I found the sheer number of them to be highly distracting.
5. So let me get this straight: you have ghosts running the halls, somewhat mischievous yunwi spirits following people around, and a spooky and wordless Fire Carrier roaming the property at night and Barrie’s just totally, no questions asked, no goosebumps in the night, ok with this? I could imagine Aunt Pru being ok with this, in light of the fact that she’s grown up with it all, but Barrie isn’t even given a warning. Or an explanation. (Back to that everyone keeps tons of secrets).
6. There is a feeling here of throwing in everything, including the kitchen sink. There’s a LOT going on, and while I think that Ms. Boone manages to just juggle it all, I thought she could easily have cut one or two elements and the story still been ok with it.
Overall:
This really is a fun read, and while it’s real easy for me to sit here with a warm coffee in my hand and slippers on my feet and play armchair warrior at it, this is one of those books you can easily lose yourself in. Although I did find myself occasionally annoyed at the characters and/or their inconsistencies, the plot was interesting and fast paced, weaving together just the right amount of action, mystery, romance and intrigue to keep those pages turning.
Anyone else out there taken a glance at this one? Any interest?
The Alpha and the Omega: The Endless Ramblings of a YA Lit Lover 