Protected, by Claire Zorn ~ 4.5 Stars

Tags

Australia, Bullying, Coping With Loss and Grief, Family Relationships, Friendship, YA Fiction

Thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: Available Now

276 Pages

Synopsis: I have three months left to call Katie my older sister. Then the gap will close and I will pass her I will get older. But Katie will always be fifteen, eleven months and twenty-one days old.

Hannah’s world is in pieces and she doesn’t need the school counsellor to tell her she has deep-seated psychological issues. With a seriously depressed mum, an injured dad and a dead sister, who wouldn’t have problems?

Hannah should feel terrible but for the first time in ages, she feels a glimmer of hope and isn’t afraid anymore. Is it because the elusive Josh is taking an interest in her? Or does it run deeper than that?

In a family torn apart by grief and guilt, one girl’s struggle to come to terms with years of torment shows just how long old wounds can take to heal.

Australian author Claire Zorn’s Protected has been nominated for and won several awards, and after reading it, it’s easy to see why. With the many issues it brings up it’s a difficult read at times, especially as it’s so believable, but take my word for it, this is a book worth picking up.

The story begins in the present day, with the one year anniversary of the death of Hannah’s sister, Katie, approaching. The family is in crisis, with the mother being severely depressed and the father being under investigation as he was driving the girls at the the time of the accident. Complicating things further is that he has amnesia due to his injuries. Hannah also claims to have amnesia, and is now facing a meeting with investigators. 

As the story unfolds, you see that fifteen-year-old Hannah’s trauma started long before the accident. She has been a victim of a vicious and frankly, depraved campaign of bullying since her first year in high school. Despite a caring teacher and school counsellor, the adults here are oblivious to what’s been happening until after the accident. Hannah’s well-meaning parents discover how much their youngest daughter is suffering, but with Katie’s untimely death, the bullying is forgotten. If there’s a silver lining in all this, it’s that now, Hannah’s tormentors have somewhat grown a conscience and leave her alone. 

Hannah is such a relatable character, and my heart ached for her. Her grief is palpable and as the story goes back and forth between the present day and the past events which lead up to the fateful day, it’s obvious that this young girl is a lot stronger than she appears. Her first person narrative is full of raw emotion and I honestly found myself stunned at times at the way she was able to push through the trauma and grief and guilt. 

The reader also sees the difficult relationship that existed between the sisters. Katie knew about the the bullying, but as the popular older sister, not only didn’t want to get involved, but actually blamed Hannah. The quintessential party girl, Katie was completely self-absorbed and viewed Hannah with a mixture of scorn and bitterness. I found myself wondering if she had lived, if their relationship could have been saved once they reached adulthood. My one criticism is that I thought Katie was a little too one dimensional. Sibling relationships can be complicated, but there was nothing likable about Katie whatsoever, and I wish she had been fleshed out a little more.

Hannah’s mother and father are both loving parents, but since the accident, her mother has completely withdrawn from the world and only shows emotion when she’s bitterly blaming her husband for Katie’s death. There is a family support system in place of sorts, with grandparents trying to help, but I found it hard to believe that no one brought up the idea of professional counseling for her. The father and Hannah have a closer relationship and I appreciated how even facing the possibility of legal repercussions, he urged her to tell the truth. 

The two people who ultimately help Hannah get past what has happened though is Anne, the quirky school counsellor and Josh, a fellow classmate. Both of them determinedly set out on bringing Hannah out of her shell and showing her what a wonderful person she is, and that she did not ask for or deserve anything that’s happened to her. I enjoyed the burgeoning relationship between Josh and Hannah. He made me laugh out loud more than once, and he’s exactly what Hannah needs as he patiently coaxes her back into the world, The ending is bittersweet but filled with hope as you can see that Hannah is going to be alright. 

Claire Zorn’s writing is incredibly vivid, from her descriptions of the Blue Mountains of Australia, to the bullying and the consequences that result from it. Hannah is such a sympathetic character that I think she’s going to stay with me for a long time. Protected is a perfect book for classrooms and book discussion groups and I highly recommend it. It’s the first book I’ve read by this author, but it certainly won’t be the last.

Before This Is Over ~ By Amanda Hickie – 4.0 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Australia, Contemporary Fiction, Epidemics

Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review. 

Release Date: Out Now

384 Pages

Synopsis: There is a deadly virus spreading around the world. At first it is a distant alarm bell in the background of  Hannah’s comfortable sir urban life. Then suddenly, it has arrived on the doorstep.

The virus traps Hannah, her husband, and their young sons in their city, then their neighborhood, and finally their own home. As a former idyllic backyard and quiet street become battlefields, fear and compassion collide. But what happens when their water supply is cut, and then the power, and the food supply dwindles?

Before This Is Over is a fascinating and believable look at what could happen when an epidemic, which begins in Asia, rapidly spreads resulting in the majority of the world’s population seriously ill and dying. The author was inspired to write this after living in Canada during the SARS outbreak in Toronto which makes this all the more interesting. The story looks at the effects of this calamity on one family living in Sydney, Australia. Hannah and Sean are your perfectly ordinary couple with two sons, teenage Zac and five-year-old Oscar. As soon as the first case of the Manba virus is reported, Hannah becomes obsessed about protecting her family, even while Sean and her colleagues at work tell her she needs to calm down. Hannah’s actions as well as the story brings up several thought-provoking questions. What would you do if a deadly epidemic broke out? Would you go from stockpiling food and other essentials, to stop working and socializing, and basically barricade yourself in your house? And most importantly, where is the line between assisting and having compassion for others and just looking out for yourself and your family? And finally, how would the world cope with the loss of electricity and other essential utilities? Hannah may not always be likable, but what she does in order to protect her family is understandable. The story itself starts out a little slow, but picks up after the first few chapters. The biggest issue I had was with the ending. It was extremely rushed and seemed to be just thrown in at the last minute. Overall though, I thought Before This Is Over to be a fascinating and realistic novel which had me questioning how I would react under similar circumstances. 

 

Relativity ~ By Antonia Hayes – 4.0 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Australia, Coming-of-age stories, Family Relationships, Science

Thank you NetGalley and Gallery Books for providing an e-Arc in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis: Twelve-year-old Ethan Forsythe, an exceptionally talented boy obsessed with physics and astronomy, has been raised alone by his mother in Sydney, Australia. Claire, a former professional ballerina, has been a wonderful parent to Ethan, but he’s becoming increasingly curious about his father’s absence in his life. Claire is fiercely protective of her talented, vulnerable son–and of her own feelings. But when Ethan falls ill, tied to a tragic event that occurred during his infancy, her tightly-held world is split open.

Thousands of miles away on the western coast of Australia, Mark is trying to forget about the events that tore his family apart, but an unexpected call forces him to confront his past and return home. When Ethan secretly intercepts a letter from Mark to Claire, he unleashes long-suppressed forces that–like gravity–pull the three together again, testing the limits of love and forgiveness.

Told from the alternating points of view of Ethan and each of his parents, Relativity is a poetic and soul-searing exploration of unbreakable bonds, irreversible acts, the limits of science and the magnitude of love.

This incredibly moving novel takes a close look at a family who was torn apart by a horrific act of violence, as well as the aftermath thirteen years later. Picture if you will, skipping a stone across a pond and watching the ripples that form in its wake. That’s how I felt while reading this heartbreaking yet humorous story. The chapters alternate in the third person between Ethan, Claire, and Mark which gives the reader a real sense of each of them. Ethan is indisputably the heart and soul of this story. He’s an immensely likable and sympathetic character who is trying his best to understand and deal with what’s happening to him. Claire, as a single mother who loves her son and is desperately trying to keep her child safe, is someone that many readers will relate to. Mark is the weakest one in the book. It’s not made clear until near the end as to whether he was truly guilty of what he was accused of, but by that time I already actively disliked him. No matter what happened when Ethan was four months old, Mark could have made more of an effort to reach out to Claire and his son yet he chose not to. Instead he’s a self-pitying man who chooses to live in denial rather than be a part of his son’s life. The story itself is beautifully written and Antonia Hayes does a masterful job balancing each character’s backstory while through Ethan’s actions, she brings them inexorably together. There was one rather bizarre scene involving Ethan building a time machine with his newfound friend Allison which was a bit perplexing. It was the one jarring note in an otherwise smoothly flowing story. There was also the issue of bullying that took center stage at the beginning, but was rather hastily dropped without any kind of resolution. Overall though I think Relativity is a novel that successfully combines a coming-of-age story with thought-provoking life lessons and raises the question of whether someone can or should be forgiven for an abhorrent act committed in the heat of a moment. It would be a perfect selection for any book discussion group. I find it hard to believe that this is the first book by Antonia Hayes and I’m looking forward to seeing what she comes out with next.