Review: Good lessons
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 8, 2014
Many authors try to write teen fiction, digging back into their memory banks to recall what it was really like back then, or watching teens around them for clues, then scratching their heads because the world is actually so very different. This novel is out of an alternative box. The teen perspective is shot through every sentence, every thought and every description with amazing alacrity. There is a promising innocence about this storyline and the way that it has been executed. I did not anticipate the ending until it was upon me and then I understood the risk the author took with it. Rain, the main character is initially irritating and yes, I wanted to slap her into reality. I was always going to be on the side of the parent because that’s my perspective. But I think that was the skill of the author in that she was meant to make me react, in the same way my own teens do. She got under my skin with her self-pity exactly as she was supposed to do. Had I been a teenager, I would have gone along applauding her risk taking and thrill seeking crying ‘Yeah’, but only up until the moment when her lessons became uncomfortable and a bit close to home. Rain’s diary entries were inspired, watching her grow and change and find her level. It obliges as a clever thread throughout the book, reaching the full impact at the end when we realise the function it serves. There is a lot of good morality tucked away in the folds of the novel and great lessons about kindness and loyalty. The descriptions of drug taking were frighteningly real, drawing the reader into every parents’ worse nightmare. That world has not been painted as anything other than it is, which is refreshing in a teen novel, which would usually set out to show our young that all the adults suck, don’t know what they’re talking about and just want to spoil their fun. Not so with this one. I thought it was a great novel and I enjoyed it.