Review | Keeping Pace, by Laurie Morrison

Keeping Pace is such a powerful book for any child, teen, or adult who’s ever felt they don’t quite measure up. For all of middle school, Grace has been pursuing one goal: be named top scholar at eighth grade graduation. To get there, she just needs to beat former friend, now top rival, Jonah.

Grace’s motivation to succeed is understandable: she wants to impress her father, who once made an off-hand remark about her becoming top scholar someday. See, Grace is struggling to deal with her parents’ divorce. Her father now lives with his girlfriend and her kid, and Grace feels like the odd duck out living with her two-peas-in-a-pod mother and sister.

Except that come eighth grade graduation, it’s Jonah who’s named top scholar and not Grace. Worse, her father is too distracted caring for his girlfriend’s kid to actually pay attention to Grace at her own graduation. And when Grace mentions wanting to win top scholar for him, he admits he doesn’t even remember ever saying that. It’s a heart-wrenching moment, and all too real. How often do we make offhand remarks without realizing their impact on the people who love us? And how often do we pursue challenging goals to impress people who probably don’t care as much as we hope they do?

As an adult reading this, I wanted so badly to just tell Grace to relax. I wanted so badly to tell her that her father will never give her the response she’s longing for. It’s not necessarily that he’s a bad person; it’s just that Grace is longing for a past that no longer exists. I wanted to tell her to go for things because she wants to, not because she thinks it will impress someone else. By the time she gets to my age, all these lessons will have been learned the hard way, and more than anything, I wanted to just give Grace a hug and tell her she’s terrific just as she is.

Alas, Grace is fourteen, and has to learn these lessons the hard way. Fortunately, she has a wonderful support system around her — her mom, her sister, and her cousin may all fumble a bit when it comes to knowing how to connect with Grace, just because they’re all such different people. But they clearly love her very much, and do try to connect in their own ways. Even Jonah, whom Grace claims to hate (no surprise to any reader where this storyline is headed!), is really a wonderful friend. The whole history of their friendship is alternately sweet and heartbreaking and again, very very real.

Keeping Pace is such a wonderful, complex, powerful story. I don’t know if I would have been ready to hear its wisdom when I was an overachieving fourteen-year-old myself, but at forty, this story hit hard, and I wish I could send a copy back in time to my teenage self. I wish I could send copies to the teenage selves of people I care about, who, like Grace, were also too hard on themselves for one reason or other. So many of us have had to learn these lessons the hard way, and I think going along with Grace on her own journey could help so many readers feel less alone.

The bulk of the story takes place over the summer after eighth grade. While Grace’s sister and cousin advise her to take it easy, Grace decides instead to pursue a new goal, and beat Jonah in a half marathon. She also attempts to reconnect with her father by baby-sitting his girlfriend’s son. And it’s a tough summer for Grace, but ultimately a heartwarming and triumphant one. I loved seeing her grow, and I loved seeing her eventually learn to redefine her own happiness. Morrison is skilled at creating complex, multi-layered characters; she’s created a whole world of people around Grace, and while Grace is definitely the star of the show, I’m glad her journey involved learning a bit about other characters’ growth arcs as well.

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Thank you to Amulet Books for an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review | A Friend in the Dark, by Samantha M Bailey

A Friend in the Dark started strong. Eden Miller is struggling: her husband Dave has filed for a divorce, and their seventeen-year-old daughter Ava, newly off to college, seems to blame Eden for the split. On impulse, Eden reaches out to her college crush, Justin Ward, with a Facebook friend request.

To her delight, he accepts the request and admits he’s never quite gotten over her. They start exchanging sexy messages online, and despite a few red flags — he seems to know where she is all the time, he pretends not to know her when she unexpectedly drops by his house — Eden decides to trust him and follow her happiness. After all, his reluctance to acknowledge her in person is just because his wife (really his ex, who just happens to still live in the same house as him, just in a separate wing) is mentally ill, and he doesn’t want Eden to be a target of her jealousy.

See where I’m going with this? Eden doesn’t, and while I can appreciate that her loneliness can lead her to act out a bit, there’s a point where her naiveté is just a bit too much to believe in anymore. There’s a moment where Justin stands her up on a date, and yet almost immediately afterwards, Eden gratefully accepts his offer to help with a serious situation involving her daughter. Seriously? Eden is in her mid-40s, so she’s a bit too old to be this naive. And despite her divorce, she has a pretty solid support system: two best friends who are often mentioned but barely actually make an appearance, and Dave himself who may be her ex but is still a decent co-parent. So why she would turn to an online booty call for support during a personal emergency makes zero sense to me, especially since he’s already proven himself unreliable at least twice.

The story picked up again for me when it switched to the point of view of Justin’s wife, Olivia. Through her, we learn the reality behind their marriage, and the actual motivations behind Justin’s Facebook conversations with Eden. I found Olivia’s part of the story truly compelling and terrifying, and part of me wishes she’d been the protagonist throughout. I felt for her, and even though she did do some truly terrible things, part of me couldn’t help but root for her to succeed.

Without giving too much away, the events in the present-day are somewhat rooted in things that happened during a college party twenty-three years ago. The big reveal wasn’t all that surprising, given all the little tidbits we learn along the way, but it was tragic, and I felt for some of the characters involved.

Like I said, this novel started strong, but the big climax felt like a bit of a letdown. I think I was so invested in Olivia’s story that I wanted to see that plot line level up, but instead, it was Eden’s story that regained top billing. Eden’s daughter Ava also randomly makes an appearance, and honestly, the whole subplot involving her felt both convoluted and unnecessary. I’ll give her a pass because of her age, but the ending didn’t feel quite as triumphant for me as I think I was meant to feel.

Overall, I think the premise had promise. There were also parts that made me hold my breath and keep flipping the page to find out what happened next. But I felt the book focused on the less interesting main character, and as a result, despite some moments of pure thrill, it ended up being a bit disappointing for me.

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Thank you to Firefly Distributed Lines for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review | Little Book of Awakening, by Mark Nepo

Little Book of Awakening is a handy pocket-size book of weekly reflections excerpted from Nepo’s earlier book The Book of Awakening, published in 2000. I haven’t read the original book, so I can’t speak to the comparison, but the portable nature of this version appealed to me. As much as I often enjoy books that invite me to immerse myself in its pages, for something like this, I feel like bite-size tidbits work better for reading over my morning cup of tea.

The book is set up into weekly reflections. Each week features a quote or pithy statement, followed by a brief reflection by the author, and guiding prompts and questions for our own reflections. His reflections are sometimes about a story from his own life, other times about a story he’s read somewhere. Week 2 for example talks about salmon, and how their powerful way of swimming can teach us about facing situations without fear.

I haven’t read through the full book yet; I want to space it out over a year. But I did flip through it for interesting tidbits for review, and I really like what I found in Week 43: “Birds don’t need ornithologists to fly.” The reflection that follows is about how much we long to be seen and understood by others, but not necessarily recognize the greatness that already exists in ourselves even without that external affirmation. Definitely food for thought!

I would consider the book secular, in that it’s definitely not a devotional, nor does it focus on philosophies or stories from any particular religion, but there are religious elements to it. From my quick flip through, Nepo does make some references to God and the story of Nicodemus from the Bible. So this may not be a good fit for readers who prefer more fully secular reflections, nor for readers who would prefer for fully religious content.

Overall, this seems like a handy little book. I don’t particularly love Nepo’s writing style, meaning I don’t really see myself looking for more of his books. But I do like some of the reflections he provides, and some of the prompts he suggests. These prompts may also be good for journaling; they don’t particularly inspire me to journal about them, but that’s just a personal response to the prompts I’ve seen and the way I respond to Nepo’s style. Other readers may feel differently, and honestly, if this was set up with some space for writing, I may have tried a bit of journaling.

Still, I do see myself using this before starting work on Monday mornings. It’s a nice bit of quiet and thoughtfulness before launching into the work week, and perhaps a nice complement to the mindfulness practice I’d like to re-start.

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Thank you to Firefly Distributed Lines for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.