Review: Poor Example for Intended Audience
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 03 11, 2013
This story has potential and makes a decent start, but somewhere along the line it feels as if Ms. Kirkpatrick panicked and rushed to get through to the end. When you have such compelling material to work with - a young girl from a broken home, mother working two jobs to keep them on the fringes of the best school system in the neighborhood, a drug dealing relative, and all the privileged, wealthy classmates - it seems to me that the book could have covered consequences and reality a bit better.When the topic got tough it felt as though we got the dime tour rather than the full price tour. I wish there had been more time spent exploring the familial relationships and the why/how things ended up the way they did. More time was spent on trivial things than on the meat of the story. While I understand that this was written targeting the YA audience, I was disappointed to discover that it dumbed things down for them, not giving them enough credit to handle the darker, more complex side of growing up and of life in general.Most depressing was the message that it sent, or should I say didn't send. Sure, things could have ended as they did, but odds are they also could have ended drastically differently. The ending just felt false to me, which I find depressing as it could easily influence people to make very poor decisions, believing that they'll walk away without any consequences. It plays directly into the "that will never happen to me" mindset so dominant in our society, and most especially in the younger generations. Heck, it stays with some people their entire lives, however long, or short, they may be.I'm sorry to say that this is not a book I would recommend for the intended audience. There are simply too many mixed messages and not enough realistic consequences for actions taken.