She Treads Softly: It Started with Goodbye

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

It Started with Goodbye

It Started with Goodbye by Christina June
Blink: 5/9/17
eBook review copy; 272 pages
ISBN-13: 9780310758662

It Started with Goodbye by Christina June is a recommended YA retake on the story of Cinderella.

Tatum Elsea (TLC) is sixteen and about to experience a horrible summer. After Tatum unwittingly acted as a getaway driver for her best friend Ashlyn and Ashlyn's boyfriend, she's been charged with a misdemeanor. She has to pay a $500 fine and perform 100 hours of community service. To make things worse, her strict and intolerant stepmom along with her perfect stepsister are the ones in charge of her "house arrest" as her father is going to be away on business. When her stepgrandmother/fairy godmother arrives, it is a blessing. Tatum is secretly starting a graphic design business, TLC Design during this summer of reflection and growth.

This is a feel good story where the characters make dramatic changes rather quickly and the plot is very predictable. but it is all for the happy ending that you know will be coming because it is a Cinderella story. It is also quite decidedly a young adult novel. As an adult reader there were parts that made little to no sense and annoyed the heck out of me, but I am definitely not the target audience here. I would take this down to a younger teen audience (grade 8 for sure) as older teens or adults who like YA fiction are likely going to also have a few issues with the novel.

The writing is fine and there is some progression with the plot. Suspend disbelief for a few parts and just go with the flow to appreciate this light, fun novel for younger YA readers. (I really love the cover more than the book.)

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Blink.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.