Rating: WARTY!
One Lame Tome.
Quite frankly I'm not sure why I picked this up at the library. I can only assume it was in haste. When I look at the blurb now, it sounds like it might be an interesting plot, but I honestly cannot remember my thought processes when I checked this out! I should have considered it more deeply. It turns out this is yet another Newbery award novel and I've already sworn off those because they've been almost one hundred per cent garbage in my experience. This one was no different.
Set in 1871, a young girl named Georgie Burkhardt is evidently responsible for her older sibling Agatha running away. Later a body is found wearing Agatha's ball gown (why she ran away in a ball gown is anyone's guess), and everyone is content to believe that Agatha is dead - except of course Georgie, who starts off on a quest: will the real Agatha Burkhardt please show up!
The biggest problem with this story is that it's way too damned 'down home' for my taste. If there is one thing which gets me irritated out of all proportion in novels, it's down-home country folk in stories of historical America spewing their catch-phrases and their home-spun wisdom. Yuk! I cannot stand them, and this is not only one of those stories; the reader of this audiobook, Tara Sands, reads it in the most nails-on-a-chalk-board voice imaginable. I literally could not stand to listen to it, and I doubt that even if I got the print book, I would want to actually read it. First of all it's a Newbery, and second of what's left, the writing is far too self-satisfied. The arrogance of that home-grown "country learnin'" is nauseating and just obnoxious. Y'all don't cuhm back nah!
