Cara Haycak

Review to come. First (and subsequent) impressions, though: meh. It was okay.

***

finally drafted my review. This isn't final, mostly because finding a polite way to say "blaaaaaaaaaaaaah" is hard to do.

Mia thinks her life is hitting bottom when she gets busted for shoplifting, but it’s about to get much worse: her two best friends announce that they’re tired of dealing with her and don’t want to be her friends anymore. Her grandfather--the person she’s closest to in the world--is in poor health. And to pay the cost of the shoes she stole from the department store, Mia has to find herself a job--and the one she finds involves feeding flies and monitoring their breeding habits.

Her new employment provides a bit of discipline, giving Mia a stable environment to learn to control her impulses. Not that she reins them in completely--she still flirts with college boys she knows she shouldn’t date, and eventually gets herself fired for freeing the flies she’s found beauty in--but she’s trying. While Mia never really gets her impulses totally under control, she does come to terms with her life and the people in it, and how she can better react to and deal with them.

The book has some positive messages and a reasonably-likeable narrator, but it never leaps off the page. Mia’s ups and downs all happen in quick succession chronologically, but the story still limps along without a compelling hook. Both the plot and character arcs are predictable and steady. Teens may pick this up, but are not likely to be compelled to finish.
… (mehr)

**** SPOILER ALERT ****

This might have gotten five stars but for the last bit. It's certainly a very lush and evocative coming-of-age story, sounding much more YA-ish (conflicts with parents, missing friends, crush on boy) in the first half than the second. I particularly liked the way Benita's mother was drawn, and I thought her father's boorish behavior and conflicts with the natives were (sadly) about what you would expect would happen in real life. However, the last part -- "suddenly we all get along like BFFs even though we were at each other's throats last time we appeared in the book" didn't quite ring true for me. I'm not saying Benita should have to come home to the ravaged foundation of her family's house and scorched fields of their plantation, but the sudden spirit of happy cooperation between Dad and the islanders just didn't jibe.

I can't make up my mind about the old woman. Real-life hermit, witch or shape-shifter? Or all three?… (mehr)