Wishing For Someday Soon
by Tiffany King
I would like to say, before I begin,
that I only read up to page 15, and I read this book after reading a
bunch of really great New York Times bestsellers and such, so I might
judge this a bit harshly. After all, maybe this book is for someone
younger? I hope, for Tiffany King's sake, that it is.
Wishing For Someday Soon,
as far as I have read, is about a girl named Katelyn Richards, who
has family issues. Her mother, Lucinda, drags Katelyn and
her brother Kevin from town to town, marrying and divorcing men as
she goes, leaving Katelyn and Kevin in constant fear of the
moment when “Lucinda decided yet again that the grass was greener
somewhere else”. Plus, when they're not in homeless shelters,
they're sleeping in the family car, which has a big hole in the
bottom. And, to make matters worse, Kevin is malnourished, and has
ceased to grow! (I must say, I was excited about this story at this
point. Many questions ran through my mind, including, “How will
Katelyn and Kevin survive? Who is this boy that the blurb
describes and how will he effect the family's situation?)
The novel begins in
late September (why aren't they in school already?), as Katelyn, Kevin, Lucinda, and Jim, the latest stepfather (or, as
Katelyn and Kevin refer to him, step-dork! Ha. Ha. Ha.) pull
into their new hometown, Four Corners, Montana. Four Corners is named
such because it literally consists of four corners, with a run-down
establishment on each one – Higgins Grocers, Sunny-Side Up,
Withers, and the trailer park, in which Katelyn and her
family would now be living. (Hardy har har. Four Corners. I get it.
My question is, how small is that trailer park, that it fits in the
same size corner as the grocery store? Or, rather, how big is that
grocery store?) Finally, they arrive at their trailer, and Katelyn marvels at the size of the trailer and unpacks the car as
Lucinda and Jim disappear into the back bedroom - “by the grunting
and moaning I had heard … I knew Mom and Jim would be busy for a
while”.
While unpacking the
car, Katelyn meets another senior from our school, who has a
“splotchy and greasy” complexion, “dingy” overalls, and hair
that appeared to have not “seen shampoo in days”. Pleasant. She
informs Katelyn that the senior class only consists of
seventeen students, and that the elementary, middle, and high schools
in Four Corners are combined. This horrifies Katelyn.
Eventually,
Katelyn heads to the supermarket to buy food for herself and
her family, using her mother's food stamps, and meets a bagger boy (I
don't think they mention his name), whose dad owns the grocery shop,
and who offers her a job on the spot (um, what?!) (she refuses).
This, I believe, is the boy the blurb describes. Katelyn describes him as “boyishly cute” and “steamy”
(the book italicized steamy, that isn't my doing). Unfortunately, the
boy sees her paying with food stamps, which leads to her hurrying out
of the store and vowing to avoid him, even though they will be in the
same class next year.
I stopped at this
point. I can't describe it, the story just seemed to be trying so
hard to be good that it sucked. I feel bad saying this, because I try
to give every book the benefit of the doubt, but this was the first
book in a long time where I just had to put it down and say “No!”.
It was full of literary cliches. I do not recommend this book,
especially not as a serious read. The best part about it was that the
nook version was cheap.
No comments:
Post a Comment