I didn't care much for this book the second time around (I read it before back in 2014). The main character, Cady, is a member of a wealthy family that summers every year on a private island near Martha's Vineyard. Two summers ago she suffered from an accident that left her with amnesia and crippling migraines. When she finally returns to the island at the age of 17, she is still being protected by her relatives who don't want to talk about what happened, hoping that her memories will return by themselves. In the meantime she spends most of her time either with her cousins and their friend Gat (who Cady is in love with) or lying in bed with a migraine. Mysteries abound, such as why her grandfather completely rebuilt his home without keeping anything from the past, why one of her aunts roams the island at night, and why did none of her cousins or Gat respond to her emails and texts of the past two years? The twist at the end is completely unexpected and a little too sudden. The high level of melodrama is perhaps typical of YA fiction, but something that I'm not fond of. Cady repeatedly reports on her emotional reactions to dramatic events by describing herself being shot and bleeding out, or something similar. For example, when her father leaves Cady's mom to be with another woman: "Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest...Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound, then from my eyes, my ears, my mouth...Mummy snapped. She said to get hold of myself." That device got really old after a while. In the end, this wasn't a very satisfying book.
No comments:
Post a Comment