Spotlight Review: Here So Far Away

-

Here So Far Away by Hadley Dyer (368 pages)
Overview: George is the daughter of a cop, no, the cop in their small, Canadian town. She is also in the popular, close knit group at school. Senior year should be a breeze, even if George's future has no direction. Just one more year till she can follow her friends to the city. Senior year turns out to be so much more when she meets Francis, a handsome stranger, at the lighthouse. The only problem is that he's twenty-nine. George must navigate her new secret love and the problems that come with it alone in order to keep their secret. Overall: 4

 Characters: 4 I like George. I thought she was relatable, and I appreciated her snark. Pieces of her story are very relatable as she struggles with friendships, family, and relationships.
I also liked her well developed family. Her father is deteriorating from his place of glory after losing his foot to an ignored infection. Her mother is trying to hold the family together to keep them afloat, emotionally and financially, and her younger brother Matthew tries to counteract George's more wild ways with his quiet, unassuming nature.
Her friend group is also interesting. They create plenty of friction throughout the book. Bill, her platonic friend who stands by her, makes a nice support system for isolated George. Lisa, her best friend, causes tension as their friendship fractures. And Nat isn't afraid to choose sides. They're the perfect ingredients to compliment George.
Then there's the members of the farmhouse where George works as a caretaker for elderly Rupert who owns a constantly escaping pig and a beautiful home that's falling apart. Rupert really makes the story for me.
And finally, Francis. While he does have his charming moments, he doesn't really come to life beyond George's elaborate words about how hung up on him she is. I just couldn't look past the age and the horrible power imbalance he allowed to continue through the story.

Plot: 4 There are aspects of the plot I love, and others that I felt could have been left out. As you can see from my elaborate character descriptions, there's a lot going on in this book. I love the storylines about family and friendship. There is plenty of both love and friction to fill the story between trying to cope with her spiraling father, attempting to get control back of her disappearing friendships, and caring for Rupert who acts almost like a grandfather to George. Those aspects kept me reading.
The storyline with Francis, not so much. Of course, while there were some swoon worthy moments that were fun to read, I felt like there were some things left to be desired with their narrative. First, if you're going to write about a relationship between an adult and a minor, the issues and consequences, not just legally but emotionally too, should be better articulated than they are here. Also, there is a twist in the final third that I felt was a lazy out of the storyline. Francis would have been better forgotten in favor of friends and family.

Writing: 5 Dyer has a syrupy, thick style that drags you in from page one and keeps you wrapped up in her world with plenty of vibrant details. I really enjoyed her word choice and world building. I also thought it was interesting to set the book in 1992-1993. I'm not sure why she chose this time because it felt like it was set in modern times just with a lack of cell phones, from the way she described it.

*I received this book from Harper Teen in exchange for an honest review*

Links of Interest:
If you liked this article, please share it with your friends and check out our other articles ranging from book reviews to poetry and short stories to editorials. To get updates about new posts and extras, please follow us on Instagram (@readingwritingandme), Twitter (@readwriteandme), and Facebook or sign up for email alerts by clicking the subscribe button at the top of the sight. Also, please leave comments or email us (readingwritingandme@gmail.com) with your thoughts or review requests. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

You'd Be Home By Now by Kathleen Glasgow: YA Book Review

-
Image
  You'd Be Home By Now  by Kathleen Glasgow  I'm very thankful to the publisher for providing me with this ARC to share my honest thoughts on this book with all of you. Overview: Emory has always been the good one. The nice one. The easy one. The invisible one. Her older sister, Maddie, is gorgeous and talented. Her older brother, Joey, is struggling with addiction issues, and her parents saddle Emory with the responsibility of being his forever babysitter. No one thinks about Emory- ever. Which leads her to pick up a habit of stealing and collecting small things and hooking up with the high school baseball star next door to feel seen and important. While Joey is stuck on the rollercoaster of his addiction, his family is right there behind him, and as Emory struggles to keep Joey stable, she's also left to contend with her own precariously okay life. Overall: 5+ Characters: 5 Emory is maybe the most universally relatable teen character in YA. She feels unheard and unseen by
Read more

Hole In The Middle

-
Image
Hole In The Middle  by Kendra Fortmeyer (September 4) Overview: Morgan is like everyone else starting senior year. She's easing into adulting and thinking about her future. She's living in an apartment with her best friend Caro and trying to figure out how to break it to her super driven, successful, fitness guru mom that she doesn't really want to go to college. Morgan also spends a fair amount of time at the doctor's office because she has a peach sized hole straight through her abdomen. There's been one rule her entire life. Don't let anyone know about the hole, and, besides Caro and Caro's boyfriend Todd, she's succeeded. One night, though, she cuts herself a crop top and goes out to a club called Mansion where she shows off her true self, in all her glory. Photos spread like a wildfire on the internet, and she's approached by a new doctor who thinks she might have a cure. Though it  comes with press crews, a boy who has a lump that won'
Read more

Happy Place by Emily Henry: romance review

-
Image
Happy Place  by Emily Henry Overview: Harriet found her friend group for life in college. They might as well be her family. They've grown together through graduation and law school and medical school and one member leaving to go to South America to learn organic farming because they always come back together to spend a week in Maine every year at one friend's family summer house. Now, as they confront true adulthood and the changes that come with it, they have one more summer together before the house is sold to set the course of the future of their bonds. Overall: 4 Do I think this is an incredible romance? Maybe not. But it is a great book.  Characters: 4 There's a lot of characters in this book. The core friend group is six people, plus we get a closer look at both Harriet and her ex-fiancé Wyn's families. They're all well developed and have good dimension despite there being so many characters involved.  Harriet is at a crisis point in her life. She's in the
Read more