Saturday, October 29, 2011

Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy - Sonya Sones




"Stop pretending.
Right this minute.
I'm your sister.
Don't you tell me you don't know me.

When her older sister has a shocking and unexpected mental breakdown, Cookie embarks on a fierce emotional journey to keep her own sanity, deal with friends who shun her, and find new love. Sones's powerful poems explore the chilling landscape of mental illness, revealing glimmers of beauty and of hope along the way.
Inspired by the author's true story."

It only took be about 20 minutes to read this book, and throughout those 20 minutes, I both enjoyed and disliked this book. I feel that Sonya Sones did an amazing job of explaining what Cookie felt as her older sister snapped and had to go into a medical institution, but I didn't like that there was really no character development. This book is so short that you can't really get a feel for the characters, until the book ultimately ends.. I absolutely adored the way this book was written, leaving out many of the details and only telling the main details and leaving the bulk of the book to the reader's imagination. However, some of the branches of this book aren't explored. Around the middle of this book you find out about a kind-of love interest that Cookie has, but that supporting character isn't explored and only shows up once, leaving the reader confused as to why the character was introduced in the first place. It doesn't make sense to me that Sones would introduce a character that could have major influence over Cookie's character development and then not bring them up again. Another thing that I disliked about this book was the way it ended, I wanted to read more and I wanted to see how the events progressed. I don't know if there is a sequel to this book, but if there is, I'd love to pick it up and see if any of these things are explored more. Overall, I'd give this book a 2/5, and I would recommend it to people 10 and up.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...