Bliss -- Lauren Myracle
Bliss is the reason I haven't read Breaking Dawn yet.I'd just started it when I got my copy of Breaking Dawn. I started it without knowing that to start Bliss is to immediately create the need to finish it. I was hooked from page one, sentence one, and there was no contest -- Bella, Edward and Jacob fell by the wayside.
Until very recently, Bliss has spent her whole life traveling with her hippie parents, living in communes, squatting and camping. But now her parents have headed to Canada to avoid the draft. Rather than take her with, they left her with her grandmother. Her hippie-hating, very conservative, Southern grandmother.
Very soon, Bliss will be going to school for the first time. She will be attending Crestview Academy, the most prestigious, the most elite private school in the South, and she will be a freshman. It sounds like the perfect set-up for a fish-out-of-water-coming-of-age historical fiction novel, right? Yeah, well, I'm not done: Bliss is a ghost story. A creepy, tense, thrilling, hair-raising, goosebump-inducing, yicky and sometimes downright twisted ghost story.
I LOVED IT.
Bliss is likable from the get-go, and her voice is calm and clear and bright and not at all snarky, which, as the YA section houses a whole lot of snark, felt especially fresh. She's bright in that I, as the reader, never felt like yelling, "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOU STUPID GIRL, DON'T GO IN THERE!!" On the occasions that she does do the things she shouldn't, she has good reasons for doing so. (Or at least understandable reasons...)
The story surprised me a whole bunch of times, from the way Lauren Myracle spun out the identity of the journal's author (you'll see...) to the climax of the story to the end of the story*. Some readers might find some of the story elements a little over-the-top, but it worked for me.
The chapters are all pretty short, and each begins with a quote -- most of them are either from the Andy Griffith Showor from the Tate-Labianca murder trial. The quotes (both the wholesome and the nothing-close-to-wholesome), of course, add to the creep factor of the ghost story, but they also complement Bliss' new surroundings -- the ugliness underneath a supposedly idyllic existence. If the design of the galley is similar to the design of the finished book, you'll all be in for a treat -- it's super-fun, with lots of bloody droplets on some of the pages!
Highly recommended -- I can't wait to give this one to my fave YAs when it comes out later this month!
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*Speaking of, I LOVED THE END OF THE STORY.
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