Wild Roses -- Deb Caletti
Deb Caletti's books continue to totally rock. This one is narrated by seventeen-year-old Cassie Morgan:
I guess we should also begin with an understanding, and that is, if you are one of those easily offended people who insist that every human breath be politically correct, it's probably best that we just part company now. I'll loan you my copy of Little House in the Big Woods (I actually loved it when I was eight) and you can disappear into prairie perfection, because I will not dance around this topic claiming that Dino Cavelli was joy-impaired (hugely depressed), excessively imaginative (delusional), abundantly security conscious (paranoid as hell) or emotionally challenged (wacko). I'm not talking about your mentally ill favorite granny or sick best uncle—I'm not judging anyone else who's ill. This is my singular experience. I've lived it; I've earned the right to describe how it felt from inside my own skin. So if your life truths have to be protected the same way some people keep their couches in plastic, then ciao. Have a nice life. If we bump into each other at Target, I'm the one buying the sour gummy worms, and that's all you need to know about me.
As you may have gathered, Wild Roses is largely the story of the downward spiral of Cassie's stepfather, the famous violinist Dino Cavelli. (The book is completely fictional, but Deb Caletti included footnoted references from 'nonfiction' sources, which added to the realism. As if she needed to—I always end up thinking of her characters as real people. She's so super.)
Of course, Dino isn't the whole story. It's also a love story:
Here is something you need to know about me. I am not a Hallmark card, ooh-ah romance, Valentine-y love kind of person. My parents' divorce and my one other experience of love (Adam Peterson, who I really cared about. Okay, I told him I loved him. We hugged, held hands. He told me I was beautiful. He told half the school we had sex.) has knocked the white-lace-veil vision right out of me. Love seems to be something to approach with caution, as if you'd come across a wrapped box in the middle of the street and have no idea what it contains. A bomb, maybe. Or a million dollars.
Even better than a regular love story, it's a forbidden love story. Cassie falls for Dino's student, Ian Waters. (Watch for Bunny and Chuck—Ian's older stepbrother and his best friend—the metaphysical non-motorcyclists that dress like bikers but don't actually ride them. (They drive a Datsun.))
It made me laugh, it made me cry. All that good stuff. Right up until the end, I didn't know how things were going to work out.
If you haven't read her, she's a lot like Joan Bauer but maybe a bit harsher. Still comfort food, but with more tang? She also reminds me of Sarah Dessen. Good stuff.
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Amazon | Indiebound.