Author: Paula Danziger
Publisher: Full cast Audio
Rating: WARTY!
Read well by Caitlin Brodnick (and "full cast")
Today is the «animal» ate my «school-related item» day today! This book started out really well, then went bad on me. The reader of the audio-book was excellent, but the material she had to work with was less than stellar after that first 30% or so. Note that this was a performance by more than one character, so when I say "the reader" I mean the person who read it as Marcy Lewis, the main character and narrator. The other readers, who performed other parts, were okay - nothing special but okay.
The story was - to begin with - very entertaining and well-written. It amused the heck out of me, but then it seemed to fall into a rut which was neither interesting nor well-written. It was almost like going into another book, and it became preachy and rather strident and not really that interesting.
The issues dealt with here included an overweight middle-grade child, and a rather abusive home life. The problem is that nothing really changes. The kid starts out overweight (and yes, we get reminded of that routinely - so much so that it becomes tiresome and made me begin to resent her, which is never a good feeling with which to imbue your readers) and ends up overweight - she's just less focused on it at the end, which means she's less likely to do something about it. Worse than this, she starts out living with an abusive father and a mother who protects the father, not the daughter, and ends up in this same family, and all we're told is that mom & dad are "talking" - but she still hates him! That wasn't good enough for me. It's not okay to accommodate abuse.
I'm not a reader who demands that a character change through the course of a novel. I've read entertaining stories where there is no such change, but in this case, where clearly there are issues presented which seem like they're seriously in need of major adjustment, and we end the story with little or nothing having happened in that regard, it strikes me as pointless.
I can't recommend this one.
