Oskar is startled to discover Evie in his family’s orchard, and even more surprised to see himself on her canvas. Too ashamed to reveal his stutter, he remains silent as Evie returns day after day to paint, spilling confessions she wouldn’t even tell her priest.
As Evie’s life back home unravels, Oskar wants to comfort her with words, but he knows he’s waited too long, so he uses music instead. But when it all comes to the surface, he knows that if Evie can’t forgive him for lying, he may never forgive himself for surviving.
I am never going to read Jen Marie Hawkins again. I never enjoy this book which is the important thing when reading for fun and entertainment, but that's not the reason. No, I'm never gonna read Jen Marie Hawkins again because in the acknowledgements she thanks her husband by saying he's "The Joker to her Harley" which tells me she does not understand relationships. I know tons of people somehow miss that Joker and Harley are an abusive relationship, but seriously you need help if that's your ideal. The darker interpretation is that she outing her husbands in the acknowledgement. I don't normally review what authors say in their acknowledgements unless to see if they had information given by their knowledge on the subject the book deals with. Like if they used sensitive readers which Hawkins did.
This is another book with a weird stereotypic Scottish character who has red hair and uses Lad and Lass as though she is 180 years old. It's not that she uses lad or lass instead of boy or girl. No, it's that she says it at nasal as though you might forget that she a walking stereotype. Every other sentence, at times. The Catholic main character asks the Scottish character who named Agnes by the way, another reason why I think she 180 if she is Catholic. I get American wouldn't know how bad that is to do, but it's just a terrible thing to ask someone in general. This a book that wants to be about religion, but goes in no
I almost DNF the book when she appeared, even before I knew she had red hair because I knew by the way she was described I wasn't going to enjoy this nonsense. However, I thought that was kinda silly to be my last straw. They were other things in the book that I wasn't enjoying but this book had revealed itself to have one of my pet projects. This is a proof so I'm not meant to quote from it, so let's call this paraphrasing. Ages is called pushy like most Scots. What? Frankly, that's a new one and blatantly American thing to say. Like it's Heritage has the most to do with nature, rather than culture which varies town to town.
This a contemporary with magic cherry trees. It has the usual tropes, including the one I dedicate too much time, it seems, to discussing.
That's right a Silent Protagonist, okay, I don't expect everyone who reads this review to know what that is. Basically, a Silent Protagonist is the main character who for some reason does not speak for the majority of the novel. Sometimes this because they have a medical disorder where they are mute or have a mental disorder such as Selective Mutism but most of the time they're just doing it for kicks. So I have Selective Mutism so I'm interested whenever I see this in media, and since it's relevant, I also have a speech impediment and a slight stutter. Actually, a lot of kids do develop anxiety around talking due to speech impediments (not me, I just don't know how people work) so this interesting in its realistic but it's a 17-year-old boy that's decided not to talk to a single person because he dislikes her and then he fancies her. I've seen worse ways of doing it and he is my first boy. It goes on too long and Evie really should have figured out that he understood English, even if he didn't speak it. It never discussed properly why he did it.
The way language is used in this book is very performative and doesn't feel natural at all. Random mixing in Icelandic words into English sentences for no reason and the same with Spanish ones in a way that does not flow naturally. I'm not someone who has two first languages. I have Scots and figuring out what of those words don't exist in English, which is another reason why Agnes play as stereotype more than a general. I have been learning Gaelic so I can tell you that Welsh and Gaelic are not the same thing. I could have you that before, but now I know more of the differences. I could get Confusing Irish and Scottish Gaelic since they have similarities but besides being both Celtic languages they not that similar.
English is a useful language to have, but it has no sentimental value because its not our language. It's not Scots or Gaelic, its something that was forced on to us. I probably speak English to my kids if I lived in a foreign country because it's my first language and English is a useful language to know. No idea why his dad thought it was important they know both through, like its a thing. It made it seem like it was a sentimental thing for him when they living in Iceland and he was the Icelandic parent.
I think the biggest problem is that I don't like the main characters. I feel sorry for them sometimes but they haven't presented themselves as real people. This book is told in the third person closely following Evie and an obvious fake journal by Oskar, who writes in verse. Him writing in verse does nothing for me and often is not poetic at all. I'm not expert on poetry and I didn't read any of his poems out loud, so I don't have the tools to judge fully, however, I do have a Higher in English and learnt different forms of poems and I do like the style of poetry its meant to be but it doesn't feel like poetry, just random space lining which this book had a lot.
This isn't the novel's fault but the e-arc I received was badly formatted. Sometimes I could not read Evie's parts because the lines went off the page into the text into the next page. The Kindle version was fine, but that meant I had to keep switching formats from the preferred method of reading e-arcs. So in terms of fair reviewing, that probably lessen my enjoyment of this book but it didn't have much to take from.
Overall, I give this book 2/5 stars for Rotten Cherries. I know I obsessed over the Scottish stereotype thing but hey I'm Scottish and it was annoyingly distracting any time the character appeared. Nevermind, that Oskar was meant to be half Scottish, he was written very American. It's hard to get anything perfect if you don't belong to that culture, but they was literally no reason she was Scottish anyway. She could have just been English and it would have been the same thing. Druid is not a Scottish thing in our Culture, sure Paganish and witches but so is the rest of Great Britain.
Most importantly I didn't like the characters and they were the story.
On a serious note, I'm sort of joking about never reading again because of the Harley thing, Hawkins is a decent writer but this book does just a lot of things wrong for me. I would be interested to see more Own Voice reviews of this book about the elements that I can't speak on. This book just doesn't leave me excited to read anymore but never say never. This a debut.
Read: 5/2/2020 to 11/2/2020
Reviewed: 12/2/2020
Published Date: 11th February 2020
Publisher: Owl Hollow Press
Source: Netgalley
I received this book as an e-arc from the Publisher for free, my reviews are always honest and my own opinion.
Content Warning for Book: Fire; Car Accident; Death; Dementia;
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