The First Evah...Book Review!

~Curiosity Quills Query here.~

Huzzah! The first book review I've ever done! And this one, ladies and gents, is for a fantastic book I recently read called...

Jellicoe Road

by Melina Marchetta

 

 

Rating: 10/10 (Drat. Now you'll all think I'm one of those who gives perfect scores to everything...I'm not. This book was just ridiculously amazing.)

 

Okay, so basically, the idea of the story is this: it's a dual narrative, so the opening scene, which I believe is a prologue, (and quite a few more in subsequent chapters) is told from the perspective of someone from the past whose family got killed in a car crash on Jellicoe Road. :-( That whole POV, from beginning to end, is AMAZING. More on that later. The actual 1st chapter starts in a more modern time, from the POV of a girl whose mom abandoned her on the same road, hence the title: Jellicoe Road.

 

The story follows Taylor Markham, who lives at a kind of boarding school, as she deals with being the head of the school's secret society, piecing together pieces of her mysterious past, and trying to fight some undeniable feelings for a rival gang's leader: Jonah Griggs (sigh.) The other narrative (the one in the past) tells a fragmented story of a group of friends living in the same place years ago. Those parts almost have a "Stand By Me" kind of feel. (If you haven't seen "Stand By Me," what the heck are you doing on my blog? You should be watching "Stand By Me.")

 

At the beginning, it is rather confusing (though it helps when you realize that the prologue and 1st chapter are told by different people and don't have to re-read that second like 20 times...) but as the story goes on, you start piecing things together, and by the end, the result is fantastic. The romance, pacing, everything...I'm usually more nitpicky about these kinds of things, but I can't be here.

 

The mood of it is something I've never felt before in a book...like this great combination of nostalgia and suspense and peace and tragedy. There's no real way to put it. But, trust me. Read it! And the end was so beautiful, it nearly made me cry.  had to call up my brother and say, "Chase, I've just read a perfect book. Read it."