White Oleander - Janet Fitch
- Ali Mark
- Dec 17, 2015
- 2 min read
When your mom "allegedly" kills her boyfriend, you're now a foster-kid, skipping from home-to-home with another sob story.
Goodreads readers ranked this book a 3.90 and I'd recommend it if you're into:
crime
sexual abuse
foster-care
Let me preface that this book has been on my list to read for at least 3 years now... so maybe the expectations were too high. Had the book been shorter with consistent detail, I could've easily made this a 4-star.
Pros: The plot, the basis for this story was good - almost great. The foster care system isn't attacked often, and when it is, it's always spun positively. The story itself was captivating, and primarily why I kept reading. I needed to know the outcome of life in the system, and if there was an "out of the system." The general description from the author throughout the book was enough to give you visions, enough that you could space out and see the scene in your living room.
Cons: The book did one of two things - drug on and on (and on) about the same few days for 50 pages, or we literally could coast through 6 months in 6 sentences. The consistency in the 'routine' description is frustrating because I felt rushed through some parts without any update where it could've been helpful, or I felt like the next month would never occur.
Towards the end, the letters we receive from the mother are inconsistent compared to the rest of the book. We went from a 2-3 paragraph letter to pages of letters. The inconsistency felt as if the author was trying to fill pages (which was hardly necessary). I just really fell out of love with the book at this point and admittedly, skipped through the paragraphs that were more like poetry than necessary points to the story and character growth.
The biggest issue I had with this book was its length. A book can be good and be long. But it's hard to do without droning on about the same thing every 40-50 pages, which is what I felt once we got to the halfway point. I felt as if I was constantly reading the same story every 75 pages with different names, maybe a different picture was painted, but it all ended up being the same.
Comentários