With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

Rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Pages: 400 pages
Published: May 2019

I must say I picked a good first book to complete in 2020. With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo is as young adult novel that centers around Emoni who is a teenage mom living with her abuela (grandmother). She is a naturally talented chef and as she approaches the end of her senior year in high school, she's at a crossroads in deciding what the future holds for her.

This story was so real - the content, the language, the emotion. The author did an excellent job of illustrating real world scenarios in a relatable way. She did not take shortcuts or rely on stereotypes or tropes with any of the characters. I appreciated that the story featured a young woman of color but it wasn't necessarily a "Black book" or a "Latina book." The main character could have been any ethnicity, and I enjoy books positioned like that the best. It was a bit of a coming of age novel, not in that it covered an extended period of time but because of the growth the main character experienced. There wasn't an explicit physical challenge for Emoni to overcome but rather an internal conflict to resolve.

While this contemporary book is categorized as young adult fiction, I don't feel it's limited to that demographic. The book has a wide range of appeal, and the writing is solid. I found myself wondering about Emoni's future long after my library loan was over. If selecting this book for your pre-teen or teenager, make sure they are mature enough to handle the content. There are topics of teen pregnancy, and the author uses curse words, albeit in an effect manner. (I'd rate the book PG-13.) Having said that, the topic is surely to make teens consider what being sexually active means and what consequences can come with that.

Recommendation:  I highly recommend this book. It is always available on Hoopla. If you have access to that service, why don't you download an electronic copy today?

Until next time ... Read on!

Regardless of whether I purchase a book, borrow a book, or receive a book in exchange for review, my ultimate goal is to be honest, fair, and constructive. I hope you've found this review helpful.

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Beartown by Fredrik Backman

Rating:  4.5 of 5 stars
Length: 432 pages
Published: April 2017

Beartown by Fredrik Backman is about a fictional town in Sweden where the boy's hockey team is the nucleus of the community. The players, the staff, the parents, and the residents all are invested in the sport and the team because hockey has touched them all in some way - whether in the past or present times. And beyond hockey, there isn't much going on in this town ... until there is. A tragic decision made by the star player shatters the life of a young girl and transforms the town forever. 

Beartown is a story about division and the major events that divide families, friends, and an entire town. Backman sets up examples of this theme through the illustration of several dichotomies of character pairings. There are about two dozen characters in this book that all play a role in the book's forward-moving plot. You'd think with that many characters, the reader might get confused. Quite the contrary, the author does an excellent job of setting up the characters and the plot in the first half of the book that you, as the reader, get the feeling that he's sharing information about people who could live in your community. Backman does a superb job of developing these characters so that everyone is equally represented and their role in the story is executed perfectly. 

The only thing I did not care of in this book was the quick jumping from one character to the next as a literary device to reveal events and the timeline of the story. On many occasions the story was told in small paragraph vignettes, and I would have preferred more cohesive scenes developed within longer written passages. That is my only reason for the less than 5-star rating. 

I've read most all of Backman's novels and novellas. As usual, he won me over with his prose. He has a writing style that digs deep in my soul and hangs on tight for many days after the story ends. However, I won't have much time to recover from this one. The Beartown sequel, Us Against You, was readily available at my local library at the time I finished this book, and I've already borrowed it! 

Recommendation: Backman took on a darker topic with Beartown, but he handled it well. This story will give you all the feels. Get your copy today, and get emotionally invested in this intriguing cast of characters. 

Other Fredrik Backman books I've reviewed on A Page Before Bedtime: 
A Man Called Ove
My Grandmother Asked me to Tell You She's Sorry
Britt-Marie was Here
And Every Morning the Way Home gets Longer and Longer

Until next time ... Read on!

Regardless of whether I purchase a book, borrow a book, or receive a book in exchange for review, my ultimate goal is to be honest, fair, and constructive. I hope you've found this review helpful.

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LOSING IT BY EMMA RATHBONE

Image: goodreads.com

Rating: 1 of 5 stars

Losing It by Emma Rathbone is about a young lady, Julia, who is still a virgin and perpetually plagued as to why. Without any sort of concrete plan in place, she quits her job in Arlington, Virginia and attempts to go back home to San Antonio, Texas to live with her parents for the summer. Unfortunately, for Julia, her parents do have concrete plans and they suggest she spend the summer with her Aunt Viv who lives near Durham, North Carolina. Once there, we learn that 58-year old Aunt Viv is also chaste.

The novel is told from Julia's point of view, and there is not a lot of conversation between characters but rather more inner dialogue where Julia is clearly in conflict about her sexual position (no pun intended!) in life. This writing style made the ~250-page book feel more like 650 pages. In reading this story, I got to know quite a bit about Julia and her thought processes as of voyeur of her stream of consciousness, and as a result, I found her character to be very unlikable. She is self absorbed, judgmental, irresponsible, and quite rude. While staying with her aunt (for free) during the summer, she repays her by invading her privacy, damaging her property, and bailing on her on one of the most important night's of her aunt's life. You might expect and condone this behavior from a young or immature protagonist but not from a 26-year old who was too cowardly to have a frank conversation with her aunt.

I think Julia should have focused more on how to find and develop more meaningful relationships rather than how to lose her virginity. I have a feeling if she'd focused on the former, she might have solved the "problem" of the latter. The author did try to redeem Julia's character at the end of the book, but it was too little too late. Rathbone's writing style is decent (albeit the multitude of times Julia responded with the single-word sentence, "cool."), so I might consider reading something else by her. Perhaps a different storyline and setting might better highlight her writing skill.

Recommendation: I suffered through this book because it was a book club selection. I thought it might be a funny, light-hearted read. Instead I found it painfully dreadful. There are so many books in circulation, with new ones being published everyday, and there is only so much time to read. Save your time, and choose something else.

Until next time ... Read on!

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