Allison LarkinRezensionen

Julia Whelan is a terrific narrator, as always. The writing and the story were fine - enjoyed listening, it just wasn't one of my favorite stories.

Sixteen-year-old April Sawicki lives in a parked motorhome, where her divorcee father (her mother hasn’t been in the picture for years) mostly leaves her to fend for herself while he hangs out with his girlfriend and “the boy”. She makes music and as much of a life as she can, but when her father destroys her guitar, she has enough and runs away to Ithaca. As April begins to settle, someone threatens her and she goes on the road. Three years later, she’s still traveling, scrounging for gigs and scraping by.

The book felt as directionless as April. I wondered what the point of the story was for most of the book, and only really kept with it because the book was a Christmas gift and I wanted to be able to tell the gifter that I read it. I didn’t hate it. April was a character I wanted to root for as much as I wanted to shake her. But it’s a lot of meandering before April can finally make her home, and I had trouble believing in the entire set up of the plot.

this is such a feel good read, and tugged on my heartstrings quite a bit. That coming of Age tropes made me feel so invested in the characters. Wish I picked this up sooner

This is so so good, bonus is Julia Whelan reads the audio book. April is a great character and so are her people. The book stays interesting and on the move just like her

I knew nothing about this book prior to downloading it from the library but OMG… it was incredible. A beautiful coming of age story, highlighting love and chosen family.

This reminded me in tone a lot of Maid the TV show. I didn't like the ending!!! I was really disappointed that it took getting pregnant for April to find a place to settle. I wanted her to do it of her own accord, of her own growth, for HER, to find that she did have the ability to create permanence and do something for herself. But it had to be for a baby and as sweet as Max was, I was disappointed. Otherwise though, I really adored the sheer amount of pain and walls we could feel in April, and the way she floated around and opened and closed. There's a lot of vulnerability here.

I won't bother to get into details about what did and didn't work. The story of a runaway teen who finds solace in the upstate NY town of Ithaca..I've seen this plot many times and this one was far from the best.

Unlike most, I find sappy, predictable romance stories anything but interesting especially when there's books like [b:All Together Now!|49046872|All Together Now!|Matthew Quick|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1596430372l/49046872._SX50_.jpg|6961579] that are far, far superior!

I'd give this one star, but I did manage to get half way through..and that's only because I hoped it would evolve..no such luck

April Sawicki was abandoned by her mother when she was just six years old. From there, her life has only gotten worse to the point that, at sixteen years old, she is living in a seedy trailer park in a motorhome that doesn't even have an engine. Her emotionally absent father has also spent the past several months also being physically absent, living with another woman, Irene, and fathering her young son, while failing to even provide April with the basic necessities like food. She works part-time at the local diner owned by Margo, who is her friend and surrogate mother. Margo cares deeply for April and understands her father well, having dated him in high school and again after April's mother left. "Your father's a good man, April. He always means to be a good man," Margo explained when telling April that she was breaking up with her father, but not her. "He just . . . he gets in the way of himself, you know?" Margo and the diner give April a place where she can retreat, feel safe, and talk about life and her future. April is flunking her classes, but is completely enthralled with the old guitar her father gave her as a birthday present. She taught herself to paly and is and writing her own songs.

One night April finds the courage to hotwire her elderly neighbor's car and attend open mic night at the Blue Moon Cafe. She performs two of her original songs -- one about losing her virginity to her boyfriend, Matty, and another about her father ("Don't forget you made me. Don't forget you made me the way I am"). The audience loves her. She returns to the motorhome, curls up in the driver's seat to sleep . . . and fails her math test the next day. She decides to quit school and is offered a steady Friday night gig at the Blue Moon. But April discovers her father's secrets and they prove how little he cares about her. In a fit of anger, he breaks her guitar. After another argument, April has had enough. She steals her father's car and heads to Matty's house "one last time" with the knowledge that their discussions about marriage were not realistic. Because if she stays, she "will always be a body at rest" rather than the person she is meant to be. So with any possessions she figures will prove useful shoved into a garbage bag and thrown into the car, along with her mother's ring and a hundred and seventy-eight dollars saved from working at the diner, she drives on an interstate highway for the first time . . . with Little River and her little life there in her rearview mirror.

She sees a sign indicating that Ithaca is forty-one miles away. "I feel like the sign for Ithaca is fate or something close to it," April relates in the first-person narration Larkin employs to tell her story. She finds a dirty campground where she can spend the night, and in the morning walks into town. The Cafe Decadence has a "help wanted" sign in the window and the owner, Carly, hires her on the spot.

Thus begins April's journey to discover who she really is, what matters most to her, a place to belong, and people she can love and be loved by. Her first stop is Ithaca, but when her time there comes to a heart-wrenching end, even though it is the place where she makes her "first true friend," she hits the road again. Along the way, music sustains her spirit and feeds her soul, and she carves out a unique career as a singer-songwriter. She loves hearing her favorite sounds -- "“the click of the strap buckle against the guitar, pop of the mic as I switch it on, the way the strings of the guitar vibrate ever so slightly when I rest it on my leg.” She records and sells her CD's at the various venues where she performs and, over time, her music also "comes with its own chains. Leaves me pulled apart and spread too thin." It doesn't provide the freedom she dreamed about. Several times she lands in places where she thinks maybe she "could really fit" but when things do not work out, she resumes her nomadic life even as it "gets harder and harder to follow the road" and she decides she's "done with wanting what can't be mine."

But April presses on, despite loneliness, longing, and disappointment. She is a deeply sympathetic character, because her struggle is one that is universally understood and to which readers can readily relate. April's parents displayed the worst kind of callous disregard for her well-being. Her mother left her with her father who lacks the capacity to love and, worse, be present in his daughter's life. Rather than care for her, he gets involved with Irene, lavishing his attention on her son and fathers another child with her, leaving April to fend for herself in the motorless motorhome that has holes in the floorboard. April, with the unconditional support of Margo, figures out how to survive in Little River, but life there is too confining and finite for her. She summons the strength to escape, but, as she explains, she has never had a real friend or traveled, and she is unprepared for the challenges she encounters on her own. She is naive and she gets used, but she is a fast learner.

Larkin's choice to set the story in the 1990's -- a decade that seems, in retrospect, so much simpler and less complicated than today, in part because there was no social media -- and let April tell her story in her own words is highly effective. Larkin's straight-forward, unembellished writing style enhances the tale's emotional resonance. Because readers are privy to April's inner dialogue in which she voices all of her fears, insecurities, dreams, and desires, readers don't merely understand her journey. Rather, April embeds herself in reader's hearts at the very beginning of the story and continues residing there -- as she has lived in Larkin's consciousness since 2006 -- taking readers with her on her sojourn as she learns about what it means to really love another person ("It's easy to fall in love with someone hen you need them, but that doesn't make it real or right"), love herself, and be simultaneously self-reliant and able to make room in her life for others to love her. After great internal turmoil, April reconciles, in her own way, with her father, finally appreciative of and embracing Margo's wise explanation about his shortcomings. "It wasn't about me at all. He did what was easy. He didn't have it in him to do any better." She also figures out that she does not have to grow up to be like her parents, destined to make the same mistakes, but she can instead make different choices and conduct her life far differently. Ultimately, she learns how to let people love her and that those are the people she wants to keep in her life.

The People We Keep is a poignant coming-of-age story of one indomitable young woman who instinctually recognizes that her life is not meant to forever be limited and constrained by her circumstances. Rather, she summons her innate inner resources to explore the world and the people who inhabit it in a quest to find what makes her happy and fills her spirit up. Along the way, she learns painful, often heartbreaking truths about herself, the people she meets along the way, and how the world operates, as she searches for what her parents never gave her: a home and all it symbolizes. "A real place with a floor that isn't on wheels, where there aren't any lies left to catch up with me."

In The People We Keep, Larkin compassionately details April's examination of and quest for what and who matter to her life. She hopes April's story will serve as a reminder to readers to take a moment and "think about the people in their life who have been an enduring part of it in healthy and happy ways." Because for all of us, those are the people we keep.

Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book.

Almost a DNF – fifty pages from the end and I was just tired of it, tired of the main character’s neediness and immaturity. The scene where April )leaves a note for Ethan, letting him do her dirty work of telling Robert the baby isn’t his and runs off yet again was where I mentally renamed this The People We Use . But after a few days I picked it back up and can say that not only did it get better, it ended in a way that lived up to its title.

Loved this book. I like books set before social media and I-phone. Great people in this book.½

I really wanted to like this, based on the title; but, the few shining stars of this story weren’t enough to save it. Read my full review here.½

The People We Keep by Allison Larkin is not being marketed as a YA novel (probably due to some light sexual scenes), but I think it may find its audience there as it follows a pretty classic coming-of-age narrative. At almost 16, April has already endured a lot of difficulty in life — her mother left when she was young, and her father recently took up with a new woman and basically abandoned her in their old mobile home. When her father destroys her guitar in a fit of rage, April decides nothing is keeping her in her hometown, so she steals a car and begins traveling the country. The book takes up at different points in her travels, meeting all kinds of people and having experiences good and bad. When life throws her a curveball she can’t ignore, she realizes that some of these people are in her life to stay. Larkin’s writing definitely surpasses most typical YA, and the universal themes of friendship and family endure. Readers of Jennifer Niven, Mary HK Choi, and other mature or adult YA readers will enjoy this novel.½

The People We Keep is a charming, though often heartbreaking, story, of a young woman who raised herself. Both her parents were alive, but her mother left long ago and her dad moved in with his girlfriend, leaving April to raise herself. Luckily, her dad’s ex-girlfriend didn’t break up with April when she broke up with her dad. Margo is there with support and love and a job waiting tables after school

But April is a singer/songwriter and school is getting in the way of her future. When her father, in a moment of anger, breaks her guitar, April takes his car and hits the road. Over the next several years she finds love, friendship, and heartbreak. She also builds a following and a routine traversing the eastern seaboard, calling home to Margo so she won’t worry.

She was sixteen when she hit the road and lying about her age and her history is second nature. She fears if she is honest, she will lose people, but when she finally finds someone who knows her whole story and they still love her, well that is a real crisis because she has a new reason to lie

I loved The People We Keep. How many of us know people who expect to be left, so they leave first? They might be good with casual friendships, but the experience of abandonment as a child has left them unable to trust love. After all, if your own parents who are obligated to love you unconditionally abandon you, what can you expect from anyone else. This is so real.

And so as a reader, I found myself telling April to give people a chance, don’t go, tell them your problem and you will see they still love you. But as a person who has seen this in action, no about of telling someone they are loved and valuable can fix what was broken until people find a way to accept their past.

This story felt emotionally authentic which is why it was so often heartbreaking.

I received an ARC of The People We Keep from the publisher through Shelf Awareness

The People We Keep at Gallery Books | Simon & Schuster
Allison Larkin author site

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2021/08/06/9781982171292/

Actual Rating: 3.75 stars
Review: This was, in my opinion, a good book. I enjoyed the story. It also has a great message, especially for the teenage/young adult age brackets. Although the story was good (and I did enjoy it), I don't think that this book was ultimately for me. While I liked most of the characters and the setting, something about the book made me think, "I read it. I liked it. It's one-and-done."

When your family leaves you, and you’re constantly living in survival mode, the people you choose to collect in your life can make all the difference. April’s journey is rough, heartbreaking, resourceful and filled with heart. I laughed out loud at many parts and teared up as well. Definitely pick this one up, the feelings it provokes will be hard to shake.
*I received an arc from the publisher through NetGalley for an honest review

This was one of the most heartbreaking novels I have ever read-at least lately. But, it was a novel that I just couldn't put down. I stayed up all hours biting my nails to see what would happen with April and her wanderings.

And I would have given this novel the whole 5 stars, but near the end, I stopped and thought - The first time April had to deal with an unfair reality (and it was totally unfair of her father, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be snarky). The second time April reacts to a threat the way she did was heart-wrenching, but the third time problems (and yes, they were big problems) occurred in her life, she just reacted the same way she did the first two times. She didn't learn or grow.

But I'm happy to say that there is a happy ending, and people from her past all show up to give her the love she missed during her growing-up years.

*ARC supplied by the publisher, the author, and ATTL/Edelweiss.

3.5