About the Book
-
Author:
- Margaret Mahy
- Genre:
- Paranormal
- Voices:
- Cis Girl
- White (Non-Specified)
Cover Story: WHAT.
BFF Charm: A Self-seeking Yay And An All The Way Yay
Talky Talk: A Comfortable Shade Of Purple
Bonus Factors: Jacko, New Zealand
Relationship Status: The Blind Date That Took Me By Surprise
Cover Story: WHAT.
OH MAN HAVE WE HIT THE JACKPOT. Where to even begin? Laura’s mom jeans? Actually, those jeans are an insult to the people who wear mom jeans. Those jeans are like the people who invented the Hammer pants went back in time and were like, “what can we do to make our future Hammer pants look more cool? I know! We’ll invent these jeans made of semi-stonewashed denim which cleverly conceal a couch that people can keep their drugs/colostomy bags/baby kangaroos in! WE ARE TOO LEGIT TO QUIT!”
And you know, added to that, there is the fact that Laura is embracing some sort of ghost/albino (possibly a ghostly albino) as they stare deeply into each other’s eyes, despite the fact that Sorry (we’ll get to that) isn’t a ghost. AND it’s billed as a supernatural romance AND there is a Kirkus blurb about Stephen King on the cover and I just LOVE THIS ALL SO MUCH. I want to put on a hypercolor tshirt — excuse me, thermochromatic; thank you, American Apparel — wear mismatched socks, rock my side ponytail and go to town on this totally bodacious book.
The Deal:
Laura (Lolly) is a fourteen year old living in New Zealand (what what!!) and she wakes up one morning with a warning. See, Lolly’s had warnings before — moments when time seems to cave in on itself, the edges of objects begin to blur and blend together — and they always amount to something bad. Like the day that she woke up with a warning and came home to find her dad had moved out of the house to live with the young, pretty lady with whom he was having an affair. Laura tries to explain to her mom that something bad is going to happen that day, but her mom is too rushed to pay much attention. But when Laura’s younger brother Jacko falls gravely ill, Laura knows there’s only one person she can turn to: Sorenson Carlisle, the seventh-form prefect at her school, the almost-too-good kid from who knows where. Sorenson . . . the witch.
Sorenson (or Sorry, as he is often known) knows of only one way for Laura to make her little brother well. She must changeover into a witch herself.
But, check it. Here’s the REAL DEAL: The real deal is that I received this book from Alix, of Alix and Lee Pen Pal fame, as a thank you gift for helping facilitate Alix’s 12 Days of Christmas plan for Lee (which, yeah, we’re forcing them to blog about here. Cause IT WAS AMAZING). I took one look at the cover, burst out laughing, and decided I needed to review this book IMMEDIATELY. Because obviously it was going to be the most amazingly atrocious thing ever committed to paper before Breaking Dawn was published, right? Right? Wrong. I actually kind of liked this book. I KNOW. I AM AS DISAPPOINTED AS YOU ARE.
BFF Charm: A Self-seeking Yay And An All The Way Yay
Laura is a really nice girl and I totally understood her teenage angst. Her mom works too much and her dad never remembers to send child support checks, she’s “starting to almost look okay from a distance,” per her best friend Nancy, and her family is pretty poor. That in itself would have most kids in YA books today whining, but what I liked about Laura was that it was the threat that all that might change — that her mom might not have to work so hard, that there’d be an adult male around to pick up some of the slack — that she really started freaking out. Because as crappy as Laura’s life is, it’s hers; and sometimes it’s hard to take chances on something new, even when they might mean a vast improvement in your life.
But all that said, at the end of the day, I just didn’t feel like I’d want to hang out with Laura day after day after day and tell her all my secrets. EXCEPT! Being Laura’s best friend would actually be so good for me! Not just because she warnings when bad things are going to happen, but also because if I were Laura’s best friend, she might let me get to babysit Jacko, THE CUTEST KID EVER. And trust me, I hate kids, so this is one cute kid.
But I would unreservedly give a shining, platinum BFF charm to Sorry, whom I absolutely adore. (Yeah, I know, even though he’s totally a sexually harassing jerk. I’m hormonal? I don’t know.) Due to the circumstances of his life, Sorry’s tried to divorce himself from all emotion, so sometimes he says cold, unfeeling things because he’s forgotten how to feel. And sometimes he just says ridiculously hilarious things because he has no internal filter. Think Damon Salvatore with a mild case of autism. In order to relate to people, he reads (and gets almost all of his knowledge from) tons of books, including romance novels, and is forever applying the lessons learned:
“If you had read Wendy’s Wayward Heart,” he said, “you would recognize my expression. I’m trying to look rueful at being caught out in an act of sentimentality.
Laura said nothing.
“How am I doing?” he asked.
Plus, like I said, he’s brutally honest:
“. . . I turned up in the courtyard among the clipped trees, quite out of my skull and then Miryam realized something she hadn’t before — that I was all that she’d intended me to be in the first place, give or take the little matter of my sex.”
“Not so little!” Laura said.
“Well, thanks for your confidence,” Sorry replied. “About average, I suppose!”
Swoonworthy Scale: 2
For as much as this is billed as a supernatural romance, I didn’t find myself caring at all whether Laura and Sorry got together. Don’t get me wrong — it isn’t because I don’t like them as characters or don’t think they’re both adorable, because I do. I guess I was just having so much fun hanging around them as friends that I didn’t much mind if they got it on or not.
That said, you can so tell this book was written in the ’70s, because it’s — gasp! — open and honest about sex and people having it. Sex isn’t treated like a huge deal; it’s just discussed frankly and maybe even a little sarcastically. Will wonders never cease?!
Talky Talk: A Comfortable Shade Of Purple
Books written in the 1970s always seem to have a similar style of prose to me — a little overly flowery at times, more content to just describe something at length rather than make the plot all action!action!action!, and occasionally making a rather bizarre left turn into acid flashback territory. This book definitely had all that, but it also had these little nuggets of simple truth, plainly put, that made me want to, if not exactly fist pump with righteousness, at least write an EXACTLY! next to the page in indelible ink.
“Be that as it may, Sorenson can be civil in order to make me feel comfortable,” his grandmother said. “We are a fond family rather than a loving one, so consideration is doubly important. We can’t afford to abandon it as loving families may choose to do out of confidence in themselves.”
And:
“I’ve got to say these things, even though I know it’s the wrong time to say them. Laura, you are a consolation to me, but you can never be an escape, because I feel responsible for you. I have to try and protect you and look after you, and anyway, one of the things about sex . . .” She stopped and began again. “You make me more myself than I want to be, at times, you and Jacko between you. And there are times when people make love that they get a rest from being themselves. Just for a few moments they can become nothing and it’s a great relief. That’s what I mean by escape.”
Bonus Factor: Jacko
JACKO, WHY ARE YOU SO COOL? Guys, this little dude is just the cutest fictional three year old ever. Remember how just looking at the old Lily on Modern Family (no offense, new Lily!) kind of made you want to reproduce baby-things because she’s just so fucking cute? JACKO MAKES ME WANT TO HAVE A TODDLER. And who likes toddlers (other than Mr. T, who looks smooth in his sailor suit)?! No one! Because they’re almost all awful people! But not Jacko. Jacko is awesome. Jacko’s hands have feelings and they get sad when they don’t get Mickey Mouse stamps on them. Jacko likes to check out the same books at the library as he has at home because he thinks somehow the story will change. You guys, I am ready to knit this fucking kid a blanket, that’s how much I like him.
Bonus Factor: New Zealand
Actually, Laura doesn’t seem to like New Zealand all that much, but it’s probably because she lives there. Laura, NEW ZEALAND IS SO COOL! Why don’t you know that?! One day I’m going to live in New Zealand and I’m going to make a variety of cheeses from the goats and cows that will live on my farm in New Zealand and you are all invited to come eat cheese with me! In New Zealand!!
Relationship Status: The Blind Date That Took Me By Surprise
Listen, book, let’s not play around. You knew I wasn’t into you when I picked you up for our date. I mean, look at you. Yeah, okay, I’ve been known to go around town with some pretty shady characters, but I still have standards, okay? Standards that I can’t let slip for a book for which the cover features a girl in grandma jeans making time with some sort of spectral illusion. So MAYBE I might have suggested that we meet up for coffee at the airport just so no one I know would see me. And MAYBE I tried to hide you behind a Town and Country Weddings magazine, as if that would somehow make me look less pathetic.
But I’m going to shoot straight with you, Book. You really did take me by surprise. Okay, so you rambled a little bit on our date, and at one point you sort of went on a side trip into crazy land and there were, like, talking tigers and shit, but whatever. The point is, you made me laugh, Book! And you made me want to hug a baby! How many dates achieve that? Few. Very, very few. So not only am I glad we went out, Book, but I might just ask you out again.
FTC Full Disclosure: I received my copy of The Changeover from Alix. I did not receive money for this review, but I did receive a cocktail (in the form of a French 75, bought for me by Lee), which may or may not have contributed to the warm feelings I have for Sorenson. The Changeover is probably available somewhere in your local library’s used book sales.
