Since You've Been Gone
www.readingbifrost.com“The frustrating thing is that each time my life changes, I leave little pieces of myself behind”
As soon as a couple of teenage girls started the ‘You don’t know me!’ ‘Well, you don’t know me!’ bickering at the beginning of the book, a little warning bell went off and the eye-rolling commenced. Okay, so we’re talking about 15 year old girls. Noted. Getting past the eye-twitching drama leads to the inconsistencies throughout the book.
Edie is first introduced as a fiery, short-tempered girl who would punch on anyone who crosses her. Skip ahead just a few pages and she turns into cowering kitten. At one point in the story the narration states that she ‘finally’ lets it all out and starts crying, when she’s been crying for the last 20 pages.
Another thing that aggravated me was when I finished the book, I realized there were several things that had happened and several characters that had no point to the story at all, or were just left hanging with no place to go.
The ‘romance’ was probably the worst part of the story. Edie, mother missing, enlists the help of Jermaine, a boy with big issues of his own. The romance seems to start out sweet and innocent enough, but at times Edie completely forgets about her mother missing and her father chasing her. She carelessly flirts with Jermaine, and even eyes several other guys in passing as the two search for her mother.
There’s a lot of adult/authority bashing; cops, teachers, random strangers. There was so much it became disturbing. Edie and Jermaine would be great candidates for the next Children of the Corn movie.
With that all out of the way, there were some good points made though out the story. It hits on topics such as school bullies, domestic violence (and how sometimes those two can coincide), and racism.
Overall the book was okay, but without at least one strong main character and consistent storytelling I can’t really recommend this one.
