I was interested to read this book as it seemed to be a YA story about death that took new paths about the subject, it is and it isn’t.
“It is almost as if snow has come in the night, just for my pleasure,”
The main character Lily manages to get a few extra days on earth courtesy of her brother and she uses this time to help her friends start to accept her death. There are a few missed opportunities for storylines in the book and while we have a first person p.o.v. for Lily, every so often there are a few pages in the third person for another character such as her mother or a friend which I feel wasn’t necessary to see things from the other characters p.o.v. as well as Lily’s.
“A bright moon casts a blue light across the room,”
I did enjoy the writing style, feeling that it was close to actual teenage speech and I have read many books where this was not the case. The writing style does make the more obvious themes of the story entertaining to read meaning I wasn’t tempted to skip parts of the book at any point.
“I picture their golden heads waving under the orange African sunshine in a few months’ time,”
The book explores themes of grief, regret and acceptance in a way I have not read before and as this is a debut novel I would be interested in reading more by the author.
3/5
ChristyESWriter 