EricaO

I have 5-star love for most of this book...except for the quarter that gave me 1-star irritation.

I can definitely see what the fuss is about, why educators and the lot love this book. However, I can also see why many readers are all, "Oh, the DRAMA! Make it STOP!"

I loved:
-The family dynamic going on. I 100% get not relating to one's mother. I also get the stress of having to take care of everything on your own because your partner can't help. I get a lot of the characters and how they relate to each other.
-Ellie. Because, really, how can you not love that kid, right?
-The situation. It's a horrible one and one I don't actually understand, having never experienced anything like it. This made me feel the roller-coaster-in-the-mud feelings that Alice and everyone left behind at home were feeling. Excellent job on that.

You know going into this that it's not going to have a happy outcome, no matter how hard you hope. And I hoped. I hoped with all my evil little heart that Dad would come back whole. But everyone knows that's not going to happen. So gear up and get ready because you're going down with the rest of the family. It was a hard ride but one I'm glad I took.

I did not like:
-Alice. I mean, I should have. She's just my type of girl. But I was so put off by her non-desire to do anything other than freak out. I know how exhausting it is to be on edge all the time, to be full of anxiety and ready to explode at any moment...but there always comes a point where you can't do it anymore and you have to try to stop freaking out. I didn't see her do this.
I didn't see her really care about anyone else, either. She was exceptionally self-focused on how her dad being deployed was affecting her. Yeah, she's a teenager, but come on. They're not that bad all the time.
-that Ellie was 8/2nd grade. I really wanted her to be 10/5th grade. I know she's precocious, and all, but she just didn't feel like an 8-year-old to me. Not at all. I had a hard time getting over that.
- Alice's reaction to her dad's death, mostly the memorial and funeral. On the one hand, it made perfect sense that the story built in tension and her freaking-outing finally came to a head when she found out her dad was dead, that his body was coming home, that he was being buried, all of that (though I would have thought she'd have wanted him to be buried, what with their shared love of growing things in the earth) and then to have it all go out-of-control on the day of the funeral. That's good pacing; that made sense, story-telling-wise. What irked me, though, was that it's told from Henry's perspective, thereby relieving Alice from all responsibility. She flips out, steals some alcohol and a car and then her best friend and that's all. After that, it's Henry's take on it, Henry's reactions to Alice's behavior. It's sympathetic to Alice for the wrong reasons. She doesn't have to stop and think about her actions and reactions. Henry is there to watch it all and report and poor Alice. Yes, poor Alice, we know, but I wanted her point of view, her pain, her reasoning for being a moron at that moment. Not Henry's interpretation.

So while I loved about half the book and was fine with a quarter, there was about a quarter that just riled me up and not in a good way (you know, like when reading that damned Song if Ice and Fire series) but in a "that was cheating" sort of way. And so I can't give it the 5 stars some of the book deserves or the 4 stars it should probably get.