Author: Emily Murdoch
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Rating: WORTHY!
Read by Tai Sammons who does a really excellent job.
The problem with audio books is that you can't easily skip the boring and/or thoroughly uninteresting bits! I have no time for prologues, prefaces, or poetical (or other) quotes. I really honestly and truly do not care how literate or well-read you authors are. Really, I don't care what poems or quotations interest or inspire or motivate you. I got your novel so I could listen to or read your story, not random bits of someone else's. If I want to read the quotations or the poetry, I'll get a book of quotations or poetry, 'kay? Just making sure you know.
The premise we’re forced to face, almost from the very beginning of this novel, is that of hard choices reluctantly and resiliently made by the older sister of two, both abandoned by their mother a dozen years after she had removed the older one from her father, who had just been granted sole custody. It slams a hard option down onto the slim, undernourished shoulders of Carey, of being separated from her younger sibling, whom she loves more than life itself, or of accepting that they must live with the man she believes abused them years before. Carey has so much locked up inside her that it's hard to imagine how she even manages to stand up tall without snapping precipitously like an overtightened violin string.
This novel will choke you up even as you pretend you're not choking. It will moisten your eyes even as you lie that it's merely dust irritating you, and it will bring a lump to your throat even as you deny swallowing the last one it delivered. Yes, it’s pure fiction, but you know that reality is hard on its heels, with all too many young children suffering the very kinds of deprivations and abuses which Carey and Janessa have endured. It will make you wish all children could share their good fortune and make you detest to your core the god-awful circumstances which leave other children unrelieved of such horrors.
This novel will prove to you that you can have a strong female main character without any attendant nonsense and bullshit. It will prove to you that you can have a strong girl without rendering her into a boy with breasts. It will show you how to write a wonderful girl who will stay with your readers long after the novel itself has left their hands. It will show you how to write a character who lives and breathes, who commands your attention from word one on page one, who speaks, and who knows without saying so, who has feelings and a life, and who changes every day.
Murdoch begins her story with a welcome amount of humor and two girls living in the woods in a camper trailer, who haven't seen their mother in at least one, and maybe two, months, and who are running out of food. Suddenly, they hear a guy's voice, something which they haven't heard in a long time, and they discover that he knows their names and is accompanied by a woman who's entirely ill-dressed for wandering around the woods.
Carey is only fourteen and responsible beyond her years. Her six-year-old sister Jenessa won't say a word. They don't know the man who is their father and Carey almost consistently refers to him as 'the man'. Now their mother has disappeared leaving only a note to social services saying she can no longer care for the babes in the woods, all that these girls have as their life is completely thrown for a loop is each other to rely on. They're forced to face civilization for what feels like the very first time, and the shocks keep coming one after another.
At their new home - a farmhouse - they discover that they have a new mother named Melissa, their father's wife, and they have a stepsister in the shape of Delaney, a resentful girl who is around gives Carey's age and who gives her a really hard time. Those tough times keep coming even as Carey starts to feel like maybe this house is home. In addition to having to deal with the moody and resentful Delaney, Carey has to contend with a trip to the mall, something which your typical teen would adore, but which Carey realizes she cannot handle, and waits in the car in the parking lot instead.
Both she and Janessa are tested for placement in school, and the tests show that both of them are two grades ahead of their peers, but the social worker elects to place them only one year ahead in order to better integrate them into their new lives. On her first day Carey meets a twelve-year-old who has also been placed ahead, and she feels herself becoming fast friends with "Pixie". She also meets Ryan, who shows her to her home room that first day after Delaney abandons her at the school entrance. The problem is that Delaney also has her eyes on Ryan, who has an interesting secret of his own. The novel continues from there through one gripping incident after another, one revelation after another until we learn all of Carey's secrets, including the big bad secret of the Night of the White Stars.
This novel is outstanding. If I had any complaints it would be about Carey's relationship with Delaney, which on occasion simply didn't ring true for me. Plus I was a little surprised that we learned nothing of Carey and Janessa's acclimation to school work, but these are minor considerations given how brilliantly this novel is written, and what a powerful impression it will make upon you. I rate this novel worthy and whole-heartedly recommend it.
