Cicada is billed as young adult, sometimes paranormal young adult, fiction. That simple description is so far from the mark that I was shaking my head in disbelief halfway through the story. It's a book of deep and painful loss, first young love, and becoming an adult, tinged with a fantastical sci-fi/fantasy aspect. Author Belle Whittington addresses many of the very important issues that young men and women are forced to deal with when entering adulthood. It brought back vivid memories of my own summers between the high school years. Always a lot of fun with friends and family but the dark cloud of the coming school year or college year would be lurking right over the horizon, making every moment a little less bright. Whittington is an adult with her own daughter, yet she hits the right mark in this book in regards to the emotions and reactions of the teenaged characters. Perhaps because loss and love and fear are universal emotions, always and forever the same.
The activity in the book runs like life in a southern town, slow and friendly. Barbeques, deviled eggs, motorcycles in the pasture, nights at the drive-in, all interspersed with the same familiar faces that inhabit the small town where Blair, Andrew and friends live. Blair, the main character, is a tomboy and future veterinarian, taking after her grandfather. Her thoughts and actions revolve around working and hanging out with her older brother and his friends. She's such a girl-next-door character that the reader doesn't even know, by the end of the book, what she looks like. We DO know that she has long, sometimes messy, hair and typically wears jeans and t-shirts. She texts like an ordinary teen and can be fun and sarcastic, adventurous or sad, like any other young girl. But, unlike other young girls, she is forced to confront the horrific death of her father and older brother over and over again in her dreams. To add pain to misery, Blair soon learns that there are other even more ghastly problems looming over her town, friends and family.
The first portion of Cicada reminds me of those popular movies where the group of young kids must band together to save or fight off alien invasions. Many discussions regarding the validity of their decisions, shows of courage and camaraderie. The reader wondering how these kids could possibly stop such an immovable force. The second half takes off with heart-stopping action and many unanswered questions coming to light regarding the world as we know it. It was a bit jolting at first to reconcile the small town feel of the book with the amazing sci-fi story but that was Whittington's intention--to shock and entertain readers with an extraordinary plot. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and Whittington's style of writing. Utilizing the narrative point of view and descriptive prose, she evokes an older, more flavorful, type of literary writing. Overall, an excellent book. I eagerly look forward to reading Firefly, the follow-up to Cicada.
