When Beth Moon
dies- possibly by suicide- her family falls apart. Her husband stops going to
work takes to drinking from dawn to dusk. Olivia, the younger daughter, stares
at the sun until she does permanent damage to her retinas, leaving her legally
blind. Jazz, the older daughter, pushes on, getting a job so she can keep the
family together. The book is divided into sections named for the stages of loss;
the sisters take turns telling the story.
Jazz and Olivia
were brought up so differently that it’s like they were raised in different
homes. Jazz was sent to school and always told to take care of her sister.
Olivia has synesthesia, seeing tastes and hearing colors, was taken out of
school at a young age and homeschooled. Of course Jazz holds some resentment
for Olivia because of this, but she also feels compelled to carry out the
script of making sure Olivia doesn’t get herself into trouble. Those aren’t the
only differences in how they were raised, though; after the birth of Jazz Beth
fell into a nasty case of postpartum depression, which she didn’t do with
Olivia. Jazz is caretaker of her mother as well as of Olivia; Olivia is more of
a playmate for Beth.
Beth spent her life
working on a fairy tale that she never finished. She dreamt that someday she’d
make a trip to the Cranberry Glades in West Virginia, see the fairy lights, and
that would enable her to finish the book. So it seems logical to Olivia that
some of her ashes should be taken there- and she’ll do it with or without Jazz
to be her eyes. When their vehicle breaks down on the road, Olivia figures that
she’ll just hop a freight train and get there on her own. This is where she
meets Hobbs, a young man covered in tattoos who she
immediately takes to, and Red, an old man who she most certainly doesn’t take
to.
This is a book
of secrets; everyone has a lot of them, and they feel they must keep these
secrets to protect those they love. The secrets come out painfully; no one
trusts anyone else. Some of the secrets they are keeping belong to other
people.
This is a
coming of age book; I’m honestly not sure what audience it’s aimed at but it
could just as easily be enjoyed by young adults as by adults. The twists that
the book takes are things I never expected and things never stop moving
hectically along. I started out thinking the book was okay; by the middle I was
growling at anyone who tried to interrupt my reading.
The above is an affiliate link. If you click through and buy something, Amazon will give me a few cents. This book was given to me by the Amazon Vine program in return for an honest review. Neither of these things affected my review.
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