Jeff Zentner

So my friends recommended this book to me. At first I was a little McMad about reading it, because it's about Pentecostal Christianity and abusive fathers, both subjects that hit a little close to home for me. And it's a slow burn, so it took me a while to get through it. Lydia and Dill both come off a little annoying at the start, but Travis struck me as the type of kid I went to high school with, so his character at least felt familiar. Dill and Travis both have unstable family lives and darkness within them, balanced out by Lydia's near-perfect existence. But I found the internal struggle the characters go through to be compelling. Much of the story is about the weight of parental and social pressure for the small-town working class. All three characters deal with questions of familial responsibility, college, and charting a path to adulthood, even if it goes against parents' expectations. All in all it's a sad but hopeful read.… (mehr)

I won a copy of this book from a giveaway on LibraryThing in exchange for a review. The author did a fabulous job describing the MC's insecurities and experiences. That part of the story felt realistic. For the most part, I liked the writing style. It was easy to read.
There was something about the dialogue at times that threw me off. I'm not entirely sure what it was. Likewise, Vi and Alex's characters felt a little flat to me. As we neared the end, I found the storytelling more list-like. At that point, we were checking off items from a list. Those items didn't necessarily need to be added. It didn't add any final character development or a last "hurrah" of fun between friends. But hey I still liked it.… (mehr)

This book reminds me of a time when I used Fidonet. (if you don't know what that is, look it up). Mail came slower (Netmail (like email)) and messages even slower. There was a man in the one group I belonged to. He was a story teller. He said he was from the "hills of Kentucky" and he told stories about his life. And he was great at describing life in the hills. I looked forward to his weekly stories.

This book is like that. Everything is described very well. You feel like you are in the story. Jeff Zentner does a great job in describing the life of one such person and his life (in the hills and beyond).
I hope this author writes more stories like this. I really enjoyed it.… (mehr)