Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Solemn - Review and Excerpt

http://images.macmillan.com/folio-assets/macmillan_us_frontbookcovers_1000H/9781250091598.jpgIdgie Says:
This is a coming of age story with many sharp corners.  No time for general angst and whining.  Solemn is a girl who lives in poverty and sees not only the harshness of life, but also the community togetherness of neighbors banding together in times of need.  This closeness can be a comfort, or can stifle.  

The novel tends to jump between storytellers in each new chapter, so that you do get to see many different sides to the events that happen. 

I don't want to tell too much of the story and give away key discoveries, but I will just say that Solemn definitely doesn't get to grow up mooning over posters of cute rock stars over her bed and worry about making the team, she has much deeper issues that could definitely guide her attitudes in life as she grows up.

Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Press (May 3, 2016)

 Click HERE to read excerpt.
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Solemn Redvine is a precocious Mississippi girl who senses a nearby baby may be her half-sibling: the outcome of her father's mistakes with a married woman who lives in their trailer park. After Solemn witnesses a man throw the baby down a community well, she struggles to understand the event, leaving her forever changed.

As Solemn finds refuge in fantasies of stardom as well as friendships with her brother's wife and a nearby girl, the ill-fated baby's doomed mother disappears without a trace. Solemn remains trapped by connections to the missing other woman and an honest cop who suspects more to the story than others on the small local police force want to see. When her father's next mistake - a robbery - lands Solemn in a group home for troubled girls, she meets a Chicago delinquent who wants to escape. There, Solemn must face the truth of who she really is and what she is really made of.