Writing Contests

This week’s book came off the new book shelf, so that’s cool. It’s called Edgewater by Courtney Sheinmel. This is her first young adult novel, but not her first book. She seems to work in middle grade and young reader’s mostly, she’s got a Junie B. Jones-esque young reader series called Stella Batts that seems pretty standard. But holy shit, her middle grader books. One of them is about a girl who was diagnosed with HIV at age four. The other subjects she deals in aren’t much lighter. All of the praise she gets seems to be about how realistic her books are, which, yeah, I can see that. But, damn, you’d better be prepared for some heavy material if you’re gonna read a Sheinmel novel. Lord help us if she branches off into adult fiction.

So Edgewater. It is, in essence, the story of a little rich girl who loses all of her money. A reverse Cinderella, if you will. A story that has been done before, of course, but… not… quite like this.

It opens with our main character Lorrie Hollander at horse camp. Nothing inherently wrong with that. I went to horse camp. But I did not go to an all summer horse camp with my own horse. Lorrie has been going to this horse camp for years, it would seem. I don’t want to seem bitter, but

But all is not well in paradise. Lorrie tries to get money because it’s her turn to pay for lunch, but her account is overdrawn. So, what does she do? Say nothing and go to lunch anyway. Because the credit cards should work! That’s… a great way to burn through your money.

And honestly it’s really annoying. Her grandfather got rich through land development. Making those cookie cutter houses. So this money’s been in her family for two generations now and at this point Lorrie has no idea about how money works. It’s frustrating. Luckily, it doesn’t last long because her life goes to hell in a handbasket pretty darn quick.

Her cards get declined at the restaurant and she ends up making a bet with her arch-nemesis Beth-Ann Bracelee that costs her twenty dollars. Before she has a chance to pay her, though, she gets pulled aside by the camp director and told that she’ll have to leave because her aunt never paid. They had waited because she had been a regular at the camp, but you can’t just not pay. She does the whole ‘you’re making a huge mistake’ thing and it sounds quite a lot like

But, of course, the director still boots her ass. Before she leaves she does go and pay Beth-Anne though, because she’s sure her aunt just forgot to put money in the account like she always does and happens to not be answering her phone.

No one accused her of being smart.

So she’s got, like, six dollars to her name and is stranded in South Carolina. She calls her best friend, Lennox, which is… an interesting name and makes me think of computers, and Lennox buys her a plane ticket. Though her horse is stranded at camp until she can get home and send money for a transport company to come and get him.

She intends to pay Lennox back once she gets home because her Aunt Gigi keeps a stock pile of money in a drawer in their house. Which… isn’t safe. But when she runs inside the drawer is empty and she can’t pay Lennox back. To her credit, her friend isn’t worried about it. Money isn’t an issue for her and had never been, so she isn’t about to care about giving her friend a plane ticket. But Lorrie cares and the fact that she can’t pay her friend back really bothers her.

A lot of things bother Lorrie, really. She and her sister live in the large house her grandfather built called Edgewater with her Aunt Gigi because her mom ran off with her boyfriend to England. Sad, but I read a book like that. Sometimes parents leave and it’s sad, but it’s an important subject so, kudos. The problem with her aunt is that she’s an extreme hoarder and occasionally can’t get out of bed. At this point in the book I can’t tell if she’s bipolar or just has your garden variety depression, but the effect is the same. She shouldn’t be the sole care provider to two young people.

And as a result, Lorrie’s little sister Susanna is also a hoarder. Just… of animals.

Yeah, so cute. But she’s not just collecting cute puppies and kitties. Oh, no, there’s a raccoon running around in there. And dead birds in the freezer. And they’re running around in filth and everyone’s up to their ankles in animal feces and it isn’t healthy for anyone involved. Including the animals. But everyone besides Lorrie is like

I feel really bad for Lorrie, but I gotta be honest, I have a… thing about cleaning/fixing up houses. It’s one of my reoccurring story lines, although it usually takes place during the zombie apocalypse or some such. But the point is that when I read that the house was a disaster zone I was like

But, alas, I guess I’m just weird. Because I didn’t get my story of overcoming the past and the struggle of making a new future by cleaning out the house. D: It’s really more of a romance mystery type of book.

So Lorrie decides to try and take over the trust fund her mother left them, that way she can take care of the financial things and her aunt can stop running them into the ground by buying Louis Vuitton shoes instead of paying the electric bill. That’s… That’s not a random example, that’s a thing that actually happened.

Normally I’d be yelling about child services and how they should have come and inspected the living situation before this point. But I honestly don’t think anyone would know. They’ve got money, and Lorrie goes to a boarding school. Who would notice? Who would care? So I don’t have any issues with the reality of the story. Which is a nice change, really.

Lorrie’s plan is to just go to the bank and ask about changing over the trust. She’s only seventeen, but she’s hoping that she can be emancipated or something and it’s not an altogether awful plan. But before she can get to the bank she has to put gas in the car. Which is easier said than done when you have, like, five dollars. And of course they have a gas guzzler. But she doesn’t have a choice so she heads to the station.

She’s trying to get a coke because she hasn’t had anything to drink all day but she doesn’t have enough money. And in the middle of this horribly embarrassing situation she meets Charlie Copenland. Of /the/ Copenlands. His dad’s a senator, basically they’re extreme bourgeoisie and she’s all star struck. He pays for her gas and the coke and she resists, but agrees when he says that she can pay him back tomorrow at this party his parents are throwing.

Yaaay things are looking up! Right? Wrong.

Nothing ever goes right in this book. It’s one giant shit storm from beginning to end. You think things are ok? You are wrong.

The guy at the bank doesn’t just tell her that she can’t take control of the trust, he tells her that there is no trust. None. No money. Lorrie, understandably, freaks out and goes home to yell at her aunt. It doesn’t help because Gigi just tells her that she moved the trust but won’t tell Lorrie where.

But Lorrie and Lennox put that aside for a minute to go to the Copenland party. Lennox because she’s a budding journalist and loves politics, Lorrie because she wants to pay Charlie back. Plus Lennox reeeeeally wanted to go and she wasn’t actually invited.

Lorrie and Charlie hit it off, and this budding relationship is the only good thing that’s happening in her life right now. Except… we might as well call her Lorrie the Lier because the girl will not stop. She’s /terrified/ of Charlie finding out about her financial problems and home life. So much so that she won’t tell him where she lives, won’t tell him that the reason she won’t give him her number is because her phone’s been shut off, and even goes so far as to give her name as Lorrie Hall. You would think with such extreme deception there would be some consequences, yeah?

Nah. Charlie gets over it pretty quick. I can still kinda see why, but still, I’d think he’d be at least a bit miffed.

After the party, Lorrie’s life quickly turns into an even bigger ball of shit. Like I said, they lose their phones. But they also lose their power, and their water. Lorrie ends up pawning her grandmother’s silver, as well as her mother’s watch just to try and pay some of the bills. But before she can pay even one, there’s an accident with a candle (because of the lack of power) and she has to take her sister to the hospital. Where is her aunt in all of this? Who knows! After that child services does get involved. But Lorrie realizes that they would be taken away from Gigi and she would probably be separated from Susanna, so she lies and says everything’s fine.

Now we’re getting near the climax of the book, so if you wanna read the twist for yourself, now would be the time to extract yourself. It was a decent book, so if you enjoy spoiled rich girls being smacked in the face with reality, you might want to give it a shot.

Ok! Now, to the dramatic climax!

Lorrie found out that her mother had an affair with someone called Junior and that Susanna is only her half-sister. She vows to take this to the grave, but she still has to pay the bills, because she had to use the money she got from the pawn shop to pay Susanna’s medical bills. So she makes the hard decision to sell her horse she had only just gotten back because she managed to get a job at the stable and the owner gave her an advance to get Orion back.

She has to sell him to Beth-Anne, too, just to add insult to injury.

Right after she does, she finds out that this creepy guy who used to work for the Copenlands paid for the rest of Orion’s board. And as she is dealing with her recently hospitalized sister, selling her horse and generally watching her life crumble, Charlie shows up. She, of course, snaps at him, because she couldn’t possibly tell him she’s going through a tough time right now and she really doesn’t want to talk about it right now, but maybe later. And to please give her some space. Not forever. Just for now. But noooo lies are much better than honesty. And then she gets into a fight with Lennox because as much as her best friend loves her, she can’t understand the financial issues Lorrie is going through. Mostly because Lorrie won’t TELL HER ANYTHING.

So now she is penniless and friendless.

She goes to the Copenland estate, hoping to find the creepy guy, and to apologize to Charlie. But the senator answers the door. He calls Lorrie by her mother’s name and said he was sorry and asked if she had gotten the flowers he sent and Lorrie is freaked out and more than a little confused. Charlie comes to the door and ushers his father back inside and tells Lorrie that this isn’t a good time and asks her to leave. Wow, look how easy that was!

Of course, she’s sad, but it isn’t anything she can’t deal with. That is until Lennox shows up on her doorstep saying that there was a wreck and they identified the car as Charlie’s. She can’t get a hold of Charlie and the girls make up because they really do care about each other and that’s what friends do. They’re there for you when things get rough.

Lorrie lets Lennox into her house and is barely even embarrassed about it. They fall asleep and when they wake up Lennox has a text from Charlie. It was his dad driving and he died. They go over to be there for him and you’d think all the shit had finally hit the fan, right?

OF COURSE NOT!

While they’re there, Gigi shows up half out of her mind and it turns out that the senator had been having an affair with Lorrie’s mom. It ended the way a lot of affairs do, with the woman wanting the man to leave his wife and the man being unwilling. But it seemed that the senator didn’t want to leave his wife because his advisor (Mr. Creepy) said that it would ruin his campaign. Lorrie’s mom had told her husband and he left them so she had to move into Edgewater with her sister. They got invited to a Copenland party and Lorrie’s mom took her new boyfriend. The senator was kind of jealous, but I’m guessing he hadn’t meant to CRASH THEIR CAR when he offered to drive them home. He drove them off a cliff and only the people in the front seat managed to get out and Lorrie’s mom friggin DIED.

And because everyone’s just brilliant they cover it up. Going so far as to tell the girls their mom abandoned them and moved to England. Like, holy shit, what?

Who does that?! I mean, yeah having a parent die is awful and sad and it would feel like she abandoned them for a long time. But as they grew they would understand that if their mother had been given a choice she wouldn’t have left them. But nooo it’s much better for them to grow up believing their mom didn’t give two shits about them. That won’t give a person a complex.

And furthermore! The senator had been giving money to Gigi since the accident. So that school she’s going to, the camp she goes to every year, those days on that exclusive beach where people just bring you drinks and add it to your tab, the designer bags, and twenty dollar salads she used to spend money on were all. Paid. With. Blood. Money. How skeezy is that?

That is not something that seems to occur to her, though, so it isn’t something the book addresses. But I noticed. Boy did I notice.

That’s why they had been having financial problems. The senator basically had dementia and had forgotten to make the deposit like he normally did, and he had never told anyone. The payments started back up after Gigi went to the Copenland house and begged Mr. Creepy to help them, which is where she was when Susanna had to go to the hospital, and why Orion’s board was paid.

It’s pretty cool how all of the tiny questions they sprinkled throughout the book got answered in a way that I really didn’t see coming. Like, at all. If you had asked me to guess how this was going to end even in the middle of the book I would not have guessed that.

So I guess that is a good thing. That was a twisty twist. But the ending was sort of a disappointment. The senator wrote the girls into his will so they’re rich again, and somebody leaked Susanna’s parentage to the press so that’s not a secret anymore and while Lorrie’s upset, she makes it clear that Susanna will never be anything other than her full sister.

Gigi gets admitted to the hospital to deal with her depression and Susanna realizes that the way she grew up was not normal. She decides to go to a boarding school upstate. It’s, like, on a farm or something. But the point is that she acknowledges that she needs time away from Edgewater. Lorrie lost her spot at her boarding school, and while she could probably get it back, she decides that she needs to spend time at home. So they sort of swap, which makes sense.

They clean up Edgewater but then they just sell it. And I kind of get it. A lot of painful things happened in that house and it’s better for them to get a fresh start. But it’s sad to think that after only three generations the house that a man worked so hard to build is leaving his family.

It just felt like all of that happened and we ended up right back where we started. The girls are rich, they don’t have to worry about anything anymore. Even the pain of their earlier life has been removed and even though Lorrie went through hell and back it doesn’t feel like she deserves this happy ending. She dealt with, what, two weeks of hell? I mean, Gigi was scatterbrained and messy before, but they had everything they could ever want. And it wasn’t like Lorrie spent very long in the mess. She went away to school and when she was home she was at the stables or that fancy beach or just out with Lennox. I honestly would have enjoyed it better if Lorrie had lost everything she had and learned to be happy with her situation anyway. You know a whole ‘money isn’t everything’ sort of message.

Whatever. Maybe I’m just bitter. *side eyes my massive student loan debt* Friggin rich people.

I’m sorry to say I don’t know when next time will be, but hopefully the next time I post it will be as a newly employed writer!

But with the advent of this development, I feel it’s only fair that what I do for my friend I do for everyone. So I’m now accepting requests. Find a book and you’re like ehh??? And want me to find out if it’s worth your time? Have a book you /love/ and want to share it with the world? Have a book you hate and want to torment me with it? Just send me an ask with the title and author, you sick bastards.

So the book in question is The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater, which makes me feel a bit weird about this review. Firstly because I’m sure many of you have already read this book, and secondly because Stiefvater actually has a Tumblr. The thought that the actual author could stumble upon my humble review is friggin weird, man.

But, I mean, it’s not too weird. The book’s good. We all know it’s good. There. Review’s done. See you next time!

…

You still here?

Fine. I’ll do it right.

The book opens not exactly how I expected it to. Books generally open up with the main character, and with a book called The Raven Boys, I expected it to open with a raven boy. Instead we got a girl, Blue. And I wish I had known that it was going to open up with Blue’s psychic family and a discussion about tarot cards because I WAS IN CHRUCH. Wanna talk about awkward, read about tarot cards in the middle of a Baptist church. See what happens.

I just like to know when I have to watch over my shoulder, is all.

But, in all seriousness, Blue’s family is interesting. Her house is filled with aunts and cousins, all of them psychic except for Blue. No, Blue has the lucky gift of being a supernatural amp. She makes things louder. It sort of reminds me of Lirael. It has the same kind of set up, Lirael lived with a bunch of cousins and aunts too, and the entirety of the Clayr sees into the future. It’s what they do. And, like Blue, that psychic gift got turned on its head in Lirael. But unlike Lirael, Blue doesn’t seem all that upset about it. She does have a few moments of ‘I wish I could see things like my family does’ but it never even gets in the same zip code as angst.

No, what Blue mostly focuses on throughout the novel is the prophecy that has been with her since she was small. That if she kisses her true love, he’ll die.

I friggin swear. This… this… just fuck. This isn’t a problem at the beginning of the book. And it’s all over Tumblr. Or, at least, it’s all over my Tumblr because someone won’t stop spamming Raven Boy stuff. So I knew the spoilers. I knew everyone’s freaking out about Gansey dying. But fucking hell Gansey’s gonna die.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Like I said, it’s not a problem at the beginning of the book. Blue’s heard this since she was, like, six, so of course she’d decide never to fall in love. But then her half-aunt Neeve shows up and is all like you’re going to fall in love this year, ladida.

And then we bounce over to the actual raven boys. The raven boys is the title give to boys attending Aglionby privet school. Because they have ravens on their polos. And really, the only problem with this is I can’t for the life of me pronounce Aglionby. Like, I have to slow down if I want to actually pronounce it right. And when I’m reading fast it generally ends up some kind of garbled Agglebee mess. But whatever.

The Raven Boys we care about consist of Gansey, Ronan, Adam, and Noah. Oh, poor, poor Noah. *cuddles him*

Honestly, all of the raven boys need cuddles in some way, but Noah is my precious son and no one else is gonna hurt him. *wraps Noah in blankets and shoves him in a closet*

The main plot revolves around Gansey. He’s the leader. He’s the one with the quest. He’s trying to find the legendary Glendower, who is said to be locked in an eternal sleep until someone finds him and wakes him up. Much like the King Arthur in Avalon myth. Blabla golden age blabla. But Gansey’s like, hella obsessed. And he dragged Ronan and Adam along with him. Not that they mind too much. Gansey’s the ringleader and they follow him wherever he goes.

Ronan’s the tough guy. As much as a guy who hand feeds a baby raven every two hours can be tough. He’s basically a nougaty center surrounded by PAIN. Because his father was killed in mysterious circumstances and his brother’s a dick. Like, he gets into a fistfight with his clearly troubled little brother. Who does that? I mean, yeah, Ronan was being an ass, but not only is his brother older he’s an adult. Don’t rise to the bait. Don’t PUNCH YOUR LITTLE BROTHER. Not gonna lie, there are times I wanna punch my little sister but I don’t because SHE’S MY LITTLE SISTER AND I AM THE ADULT. Force him to get counseling, avoid him if you must, but don’t antagonize him, and for the love of God, don’t HIT HIM.

AND SPEAKING OF HITTING! Adam has a similar problem, but his is more… immediate. Ronan doesn’t live with his brother. And they’re more… mutually abusive. Adam is just abused. Like, straight up. And Gansey has offered to let him stay with them, but Adam doesn’t have as much money as the other boys and he feels like if he goes, Gansey will own him. Which, I get. Kinda. But there’s a certain point where you have to let your friends take care of you. And maybe living in Gansey’s apartment rent free is too much, but they could come up with a solution. They could draw it up like a loan. Adam could pay him back, but nooooo. He’s gotta be concerned with what other people think. And he doesn’t want people to think that Gansey bought him. Fffffffffff pride is the deadliest sin for a reason.

And then there’s Noah. My poor baby Noah. He’s basically the driving force behind the climax of the book and he doesn’t deserve it. We don’t see /too/ much of him in the book, but he’s smarmy and sweet and nobody deserves what he went through.

So those are the boys, and of course they eventually meet up with Blue. And… Blue kind of gets with Adam. So I was confused, but even the book is like ‘no, no, Gansey is end game. Don’t worry. We just want to make this extra painful.’

And of course, because Blue amplifies everything, their search for the Lay Line that they believe will lead them to Glendower makes some extreme progress. And it’s so weird because this book feels incredibly slow and incredibly fast. At this point it really felt like the book was just starting, but this is basically the midway point. But it also feels like I’ve known these characters forever. Like I’ve been reading this book forever and I care about them all so much. I’m not lying, when I finished this book my soul felt raw. I have access to the other two books and I can’t start them yet because I know the shit’s about to hit the fan and it hurts. I honestly don’t think I’ve been this affected by a book in years. This is the sort of book that leaves a hole after the series is done.

And I was honestly going to go through the climax and everything, but I don’t think I will. Because if you know, then you know and you’re probably laughing at my pain like

And I know. I know it’s going to get worse. Especially after what happened to Adam, but y’all know I can’t stop, either.

And if you don’t know, I would be doing you a disservice to tell you. Because I can’t capture the story. I never can in these short reviews, but it would be worse for this one. So if you haven’t read it yet, I strongly encourage you to do so. Please, come join me in hell.