Mini-reviews: The Stars Are Fire and Ramona Blue

Grace Holland is living a normal, if unexciting, life with her husband Gene and two small children. When the coast of Maine catches fire after months of drought, she must find away to save herself, her kids, and her unborn baby. Grace and her best friend Rosie escape the flames at the ocean's edge, where they dig themselves into the sand and hope that the water will save them. In the morning, their lives have changed forever: their homes and town are destroyed and they don't know the fates of their husbands. The Stars Are Fire follows Grace during and after that terrifying night, as she finds out what her life holds after the flames have been doused.

This is my second Anita Shreve book and I find myself really impressed with her ability to create a mood. From the opening pages, it is apparent that things are not right with Grace's town or with her marriage. You know what is going to happen, but Grace does not. Shreve expertly builds the tension until the night of the fire. Just when you (and Grace) become comfortable with her new life, something surprising happens with the potential to destroy everything Grace has worked so hard to build. I certainly understand why so many readers get excited when a new Anita Shreve book comes out and I am happy to have a backlist to enjoy.

The Stars Are Fire
By Anita Shreve
Knopf Publishing Group April 2017
241 pages
From the library

Ramona had a wonderful summer with a girl who was visiting her Mississippi town. But fall begins and things are about to get difficult: her dad is barely making ends meet, Ramona is juggling several jobs, her sister Hattie is pregnant, and Ramona's best friend Freddie just came back to town. Ramona and Freddie quickly fall into a rhythm, as if the two friends had never been separated. They start spending all their free time together, even swimming at the local pool together in the mornings. But Ramona is confused by their growing affection: does she date girls or boys now?

Ramona Blue is an excellent follow-up to the unforgettable Dumplin'. Julie Murphy has written another heroine that you can't help but adore. This story gently, but firmly, points out and challenges privilege and assumptions about race, gender, class, and orientation, all without veering into treatise territory. While I don't think everyone has a year that changes everything, some of us do. This is that year for Ramona and it is a joy to follow her as she discovers what is important to her, who she loves, and what she is willing to fight for. I always finish a Julie Murphy book feeling like I experienced everything myself alongside fascinating and lovable people, which is a pretty wonderful way to remember a story.

Ramona Blue
By Julie Murphy
Balzer and Bray May 2017
432 pages
From the library

Review: Dumplin'

Willowdean Dickson has come to terms with being fatter than her peers...some of the time. It's not always easy with a thin and beautiful best friend and a former pageant queen mom who still works for the pageant each year. Will goes to work, goes to school, and just tries to live the normal life of a teenager. When a handsome co-worker at her job starts to take interest in her, Will's feeling of insecurity come out full force. Does he really like her? If he does, why are they keeping their relationship a secret from everyone else? In a moment of temporary insanity, she decides to enter the Miss Teen Blue Bonnet beauty pageant and prove to herself and everyone that she is just as capable and deserving of wearing a swimsuit, showing off a talent, and being seen and admired by everyone in her small Texas town.

Willowdean is a gem of a character. She is beautifully realistic. She makes dumb choices. She makes smart choices. She apologizes for her mistakes. She is hilarious. She is unsure about herself. While there is a romance in this story, the great thing is that Willowdean is not defined by her relationships. Having a crush or making a new friend or even seeing things differently than her mother does not change who she is. 

I sometimes look through some other people's reviews after I have finished a book to see if they loved or hated a book as much as I did. I was rather shocked to see a lot of readers railing against this book because Willowdean can be just as unkind to other kids as they are to her. As the book progresses, she gains some new friends in other girls who don't fit into the narrow box of "thin, gorgeous, straight, and able-bodied." And yes, at first, she is dismissive or mean in her head to those same girls. But I think we all do that. Even if Julie Murphy wrote Willowdean as "body-positive," it's not something that is perfect or consistent. She thinks that her body is great, except when she doubts it. She snickers at the perceived flaws of other students, but the point is that she does eventually befriend them. Being "body-positive" doesn't mean we don't notice what makes people different from us. It's that we don't let it define them or our relationships with them.

Dumplin' is a fantastic book. It's as funny and self-assured as Willowdean herself proves to be. This story reminds us that we are not what others think of us, whether we are teenagers or adults. In a world of seemingly endless cruelty, we need books like this to remind us to be kind to each other. It turns out we aren't as different as we might think.


Dumplin'
By Julie Murphy
384 pages
Balzer + Bray September 2015
From the library