Ballads of SuburbiaAuthor: Stephanie Kuehnert
Series: ---
Publisher: MTV Books
How Received: publisher
Ballads are the kind of songs that Kara McNaughton likes best. Not the cliched ones where a diva hits her highest note or a rock band tones it down a couple of notches for the ladies, but the true ballads: the punk rocker or the country crooner telling the story of their life in three minutes, the chorus reminding their listeners of the numerous ways to screw things up. In high school, Kara helped maintain the "Stories of Suburbia" notebook, which contained newspaper articles about bizarre and often tragic events from suburbs all over and personal vignettes that Kara dubbed "ballads" written by her friends in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago. Those "ballads" were heartbreakingly honest tales of the moments when life changes and a kid is forced to grow up too soon. But Kara never wrote her own ballad. Before she could figure out what her song was about, she was leaving town after a series of disastrous events at the end of her junior year. Four years later, Kara returns to face the music, and tells the tale of her first three years of high school with her friends' "ballads" interspersed throughout.
This got a LOT of positive feedback from those I asked about it - my other blogger friends absolutely adored it.
Me? It was pretty good.
It took me a while to get into it - about two thirds of the way in, actually - but the characters were amazingly heartfelt and real.
It's hard to review this book, because by the end of it, you just kind of sit back and go, "Wow." It's that kind of book.
So have some words:
Emotional. Raw. Gritty.
Final Comments: Just wow.
Cover Notes: Love!
Those are always the best kind of books :)
ReplyDeleteooooh! I'm kind of curious about this one now. I like the cover too, very different. =)
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to read this one!
ReplyDeleteI LOVED this book. I got an ARC of her other book -- I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone, which I actually liked better -- before reading this one. You're right when you say gritty, raw, and emotional. It was very interesting to me that way. Different from other things I've read.
ReplyDeleteI loved this book. It was just so different from any other YA book I've read, and yes it's such a raw book. Sometimes, I found it a bit difficult to even read it!
ReplyDelete