Monday, April 5

Bounce - Natasha Friend

Evyn and her brother Mackie are used to their life the way it is, just them and their dad, Birdie. She's shocked when, over dinner in a restaurant, Birdie breaks one piece of life changing news after another - he calmly announces that he's getting married, to a woman they'd never met, and moving into her house, with her five kids. They met while Evyn and Mackie were at camp, and Evyn could kick herself when she thinks of all the references to Eleni that snuck into his letters to them, references she chose to ignore. And now it's too late.
There's a lot to like in Bounce, as Evyn adjusts to a very different life to the one she'd always known. Grief for her dead mother, anxiety over change, adjustment to all the new and different things, wrapped up in the self-focused preoccupation of adolescence. And yet somehow I didn't feel that interested on invested, and I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's just that I've been spending a little too much time on angsty teen novels lately, or maybe it's just that this didn't resonate on some level. - Alex

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