I actually finished this book quite a while ago, but then between deadlines and a killer cold that will not die, I've had to put off my review. Plus, I wanted to think about this one. Why, you ask? Because this book is outside of my normal reading range (it doesn't have a cyborg OR a werewolf in it.) It is, in fact, a very serious and complicated book because it handles addiction and the fall out from it. A very hard book to write, and I feel like, for some people, it will be a hard book to read because you're facing some of the nasty sides of drinking and loss. (Not that there's good sides to those things...) That's hard subject matter to tackle, and it's easy to get caught up in what we want to happen--simple answers, hugs, clear-cut black and white outcomes. Roy, I think, avoids that. Nothing is clear-cut or tied up in a little bow, because, folks, that's just not how this kind of thing plays out. Life is messy, addiction doubly so.
The book is divided into a dual narrative. One path follows Luke, a teen who's had to parent himself after the loss of both parents, one to the grave, and one to the bottle. Luke, unable to handle his father's problem any longer, flees to a new home found in a youth hostel in the Moab desert. I love Luke. He's a sweet kid trying to make a new life for himself.
Ava, the other lead, is a more challenging read because she's naturally an unlikeable character. As a teen who has recently started AA, she's having a hard time believing she has a problem, and is blaming the world around her for her issues. This is hard to face because, well, even if many of us weren't teen drinkers, we were fairly self-involved as teens and so it brings back rather unpleasant memories of our own young lives.
I feel that many readers are going to have a passionate reaction to this book because whenever you tackle these subjects people are going to want to argue with you and tell you that either you're handling it wrong , or they will have advice for what the characters should have done--basically, the things we tell addicts in real life. And I think this kind of passionate reaction will be good. It means the author struck a chord, made you think, made you examine how you feel on these sensitive subjects.
All of this aside, I don't want you to think this book is a downer. Yes, hard subjects are tackled. But, Roy does a nice job balancing the pain with the natural beauty of the Moab desert (which I now kind of want to visit). I love that she tackles many aspects of spirituality, but doesn't condemn or push anything particular besides the idea of love and acceptance. Oh, and I loved the bear.
My only real complaint is that, in some places, I wish I could have had more. The book is super short--only about 164 page, and I read it in a day. I think I just wanted more of Luke, of Ava, and the desert. But then I started to think, with all the heavy things tackled in this book, maybe it was best to keep it short and sweet...and to hope for a follow up.
