Goldengrove

I picked this book up solely because of the cover.  I seriously love canoeing.  This cover makes me think of summer camp, family summer vacation in Ontario and weirdly enough about a series of books I read as a kid where the characters would spend their summers at a cottage in Muskoka.  

Anyway, the cover was a win, and the book itself was actually pretty decent too.  Taken from the perspective of a 14 year old girl during the summer following the accidental death of her charismatic older sister.  She ends up getting involved with her sister's grieving boyfriend, and it moves into some pretty bizarre territory.  

The best thing about this book was that I think it portrayed grief in a pretty lifelike way.  The characters were all stalled in their own ways after the death of Margaret, and it took each of them a very real and immediate reason to decide to move forward in their lives.  I think it was also very good that it didn't all wrap up neatly at the end.  Much like real life, instead of closure some relationships just drifted apart.  It was a really relatable way to write a book.

My only pet peeve was that the timeline didn't really work out.  Really, it's such a stupid thing to get worked up about, but come on!  Nico, the main character, watches movies all throughout the film.  Each time she does, it is specified that she watches them on DVD.  This is fine.  However, in the epilogue she starts talking about her life in her marriage 25 years later.  Now, DVDs aren't exactly new technology, but are they 25 years old?  No way.  Even if they are, they haven't been in the popular sphere for that long.  Maybe 1o years, maybe.  But there is no way that you would have been able to go to the local small town video store 25 years ago and rent classic film on DVD.  Really.

Anyway, the DVD issue notwithstanding, it was an enjoyable read, and one that can't be considered teen fiction (yay me!).  I give it 3.5 creepy boyfriends making you dress up like your dead sister out of 5.