SSR Quarter 1 Book Review

Willow

The book I read for the first quarter was Willow, by Julia Hoban.  The genres that take place in the book I would say are: Young Adult, Romance, and Realistic Fiction.  The story is a total of 329 pages long in the hard cover version.  The book starts out by describing Willow, the main character of the book.  The book is read from Willow's point of view.  She is a young girl who is currently attending college at the time of the story.  She quickly lets you know that she was driving her parents in their car when she accidentally crashed and caused them both to die.  She was way too young at the time to be operating that vehicle but she had to, her parents were too drunk to drive.  She now lives with her older brother who takes care of her.  Willow blames herself for the death of her parents.  She struggles with very strong feelings of guilt and sorry.  Her actions represent how she feels about the death of her parents, including the blades she keeps hidden from her brother so she can "satisfy" her guilt.  She meets a boy at her college named Guy and he finds out about the things she is doing so they must stay close in order to keep her secrets.  Willow deals with difficult social interactions, guilt, sadness, and self blame throughout the story.  It is very entertaining trying to relate to this main character.  Since she is the one speaking, you hear the thoughts inside her head and you get an insight to how she tackles each situation.  In my opinion she makes a lot of wrong choices but it is interesting to see her reasoning behind everything and it opens your mind to a new way that people can think.  Although the book was very predictable for me, it was still very entertaining to read, because I was constantly in anticipation to see if what I thought would happen, would actually happen.  The story was very poetic.  What made it so poetic was Willow's thoughts, hearing things she thought and trying to see things how she saw them.  The characters in hindsight were very static but while reading, they are dynamic because while in reality they are static, hearing the story from Willow makes them seem very dynamic.  Willow and Guy made the story very interesting especially because I could relate with Guy so much.  I wouldn't change anything about this book.  The story was good and it ended exactly how I wanted it to end.  I was happy reading this book and it was very interesting to try and put yourself inside of the book in either Willow's or Guy's position.  You'll have to read the book in order to find out the big details and the ending, I would 10/10 recommend spending your time reading this.  It opens your mind, and I'm glad I read it.