Book Review: Scribbler of Dreams

Scribbler of Dreams
Mary E. Pearson
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Pages: 223 (soft-cover copy)
Star Rating: 4.3 out of 5

Synopsis:

Seventeen-year-old Kaitlin Malone was born to hate the Crutchfields. The hatred her family has harbored for generations is the one thing Kaitlin knows she can count on.

But with her life turned upside down as she starts her senior year among strangers at a public high school, Kaitlin discovers that even her family's hateful legacy can't steady her---and that hatred and love are sometimes separated by nothing more than a heartbeat.

It's young Bram Crutchfield, a gentle and compassionate artist, who wins Kaitlin's heart. And when she tells one lie and then another to conceal her identity to protect their love, Kaitlin is quickly caught up in a web of deceit that threatens to destroy everything she knows and values.

Thoughts:

Whoa.

This book hit me like a train wreck. I'm not usually one for realistic fiction being the Fantasy/Sci-Fi nut I am, but I actually really loved this book.

This story is almost like a modern-day Romeo and Juliet story, with two families that hate each other and two people from those families that fall in love. This edition doesn't involve the two lovers dying, however.

The beginning was a little confusing as I tried to piece together what was what and who was who. Even at the earliest chapters the author was hinting at a dark past for the Malone and Crutchfield families. The author did well to hide just what exactly had happened until around the middle of the book.

I can't really say that there was a heap of suspense to this book, but I was always hoping. Sometimes my hoping paid off, other times my hoping was all for nothing. My fictional world crashed. I guess sometimes I knew that my hopes would be for nothing, but something about the way the author writes made me really root for Kaitlin.

The reason I ranked this book so high is because I could really connect with the characters. They felt real to me, and I actually got teary-eyed a few times near the end. That has not happened in a long, long time, so cheers to you Mary Pearson for your amazing writing.