Author: Julia Park Tracey
Publisher: Libertary Co
Rating: WORTHY!
(I initially believed that Julia Park Tracey didn't know how to spell gravy (she adds an unfortunate penultimate 'e'), and that's how I opened this review, but I'm told by two people - neither of which appears to be the author! - that this was deliberate, so evidently I missed something! Believe it or not, that happens, so strike that one!). Thanks Betsy and Tuscany for keeping me honest!)
I'm not sure if main character Veronika is my kind of person, though. She abuses alcohol to a horrifying degree, and was liberally sprinkled with tats (of which I'm not a fan), which amusingly seemed to be all along a Little Mermaid theme, but that said, she was strong, diligent, smart (for the most part!), inventive, industrious, and really interesting, so she had a heck of a lot going for her which is why I liked her as a character. It was like the author had read my playbook before endowing her character with some of her traits, in particular, her environmental views. A lot of the time, she sounds exactly like me in her thinking and her rather caustic or humorous observations of life around her. It felt a bit weird!
Here's another way this got me: I'm not a fan of first person PoV, but in this case, it was done in a non-nauseating way, so even that wasn't an issue. It never felt like I was reading, "Hey look at MEEEEEE! How important am IIIIIII?", so I'm eternally grateful to the author for that! I'm not a fan of series, either, unless they're well done. All too often, they're merely a cynical and lazy way of making a buck by substituting tired templates for actual creative work, repeating the same story with only a twist or two here and there to try and warm it over, so it is indeed a compliment that I'm interested in reading future volumes in the "Hot Off the Press" series, of which this is volume 1.
As much as I loved this novel, I had, as you know if you read my blog, one or two inevitable issues. The only serious one of these was when Veronika bikes down to the building site one Saturday morning and sees the bulldozers churning-up what look like Native American shell burial mounds, and what look (to her) like bones. Instead of using her camera to take pictures, she panics and causes a scene, and then has to call in a man to man-handle her vaporous womanly ways - or her frantic teenage ways, however you wish to categorize it. I was a bit saddened by that, but willing to forgive it since it was that one time - and no character should be perfect since no person is. Besides, what are friends for?
There's another issue directly related to that one, which is that Veronika seems to have Eona syndrome, whereby (as in the dilogy of the same name), she has all the facts, but can't arrive at an intelligent and logical deduction from them. She ought to know exactly how long-time friend Aiden feels about her, but she's completely blind to it. This was the sole example of a trope or cliché which registered with me in this novel. Other than that, the novel as brilliantly written, studiously avoiding the common pitfalls, and being all the better for it. I salute the author for providing an object lesson to clueless YA and adult writers how to actually tell a good, original, and engrossing story.
Veronika's alcohol abuse was an issue because first of all it's always an issue and secondly, and more importantly in the context of the writing, it seemed out of keeping with her health-minded attitude to what she puts into her body, and in particular with her vegan mind-set. Veronika is a latter-day hippie, truth be told, with the tats, the body-piercings, and her dress sense and diet, but she drinks strong coffee and also alcohol to a disturbing degree.
Not that vegans can't do such things by any means, but it seemed to be too far out of her character zone to me. Maybe I misread her character! But again, these things happen in real life, so it wasn't a death-blow to my enjoyment of the novel. I just felt that if you were going to imbue her with some necessary flaws, there were better ones to give her than these. OTOH, she's not that long out of college, so maybe there's some maturing lying-in-wait for her there?
Veronika's sex life was a curious one, because it was conducted entirely in her mind, yet there was nothing in the text to indicate that she was fantasizing. I learned great caution after that first time, and so I almost didn't believe it was happening for real when it actually did. I was amused by that one - the sexual escapade described at the end of chapter 25, between Veronika and one of the other main characters. It was written as poetically as it was perversely, so I couldn't tell if the author had deliberately (and I do mean with deliberation) chosen to be lyrical and playful, or if she was just really shy about writing about that particular kind of sexual encounter. Or maybe I completely misunderstood what she was describing? Ha!
If that doesn't make you want to read this novel, then nothing will!
I'd say something about he cover: how its exploitative and has nothing whatsoever to do with the story or the main character, but the cover is rarely in the hands of the writer unless they self-publish, so let's leave that alone, shall we?! But on the other side of this coin, I've had good success with Libertary Co. They published The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood by Diana McLellan which I favorably reviewed last month.
So, overall, 100 thumbs up for this one. This novel and the precious few others like it are what makes it worth going through a dozen or two other annoying and predictable novels, because it's this one - this kind of story, the one the author really nailed, that I'm looking for.
It was beautiful, gorgeously written, with great characters and, amazingly, a wonderful plot! It was told well, in great English, and had just enough extraneous detail to make it feel realistic, without getting bogged down in reams of pretty prose which take the story nowhere.
I thoroughly recommend this one and if the author is seeking beta readers for the next volume, I'm in!
