Birthday by Meredith Russo

Everyone raved about Russo’s debut novel, If I Was Your Girl, but it fell flat to me because it lacked emotion and realism. I thought Amanda had it too easy as passing, and the trans issues were glossed over. My thoughts on the lack of depth in If I Was Your Girl doesn’t make it a bad book, but I had hoped for more struggle, more reality, and more information that trans teens (or anyone, really) might need to know to understand this issue better. (You can read my full review here, so I don't hijack this review with something only semi-related.)

That being said, I definitely wanted to give Russo a second chance, so I was eager to read Birthday. And wow, did it deliver!

  

Eric and Morgan were born on the same day, and a freak September blizzard in their small Tennessee town left their families stranded in the hospital together for several days. They bonded and became close family friends, and Eric and Morgan became best friends. They celebrate their birthday together every year, and this book is told from their alternating points of view, only on their birthdays from the ages of fourteen to eighteen. Seeing just these glimpses into the lives of Eric and Morgan was enough to get a good story rounded out, with enough room to imagine what the characters are like during the rest of their lives.

Over time, Eric and Morgan's families grow apart. Morgan loses his mother to cancer and struggles with the aftermath. When Morgan quits the football team, Eric's father labels him a sissy and doesn't treat him like family anymore. When Eric joins the football team, he and Morgan start to grow apart.  There were so many layers to this story - family relationships, school struggles, self-loathing and self-acceptance, friendship, love. It wasn’t too much, and it was all well-done and balanced to create a realistic world with characters you can easily identify with and understand.

Eric and Morgan are such deep characters, and I loved getting to see inside of both of their heads and hearts. They both struggle with identity and self in such real ways, and I was so glad all of that was laid out on the page for readers. I highly recommend this book, and hope it gets as much, if not more, attention than Russo’s first book. It is well-deserved.

The Whisper Man

Backstory:

The Whisper Man by Alex North was my first selection from Book of the Month. This is totally a #bookstagrammademedoit type of thing. I've tried two different subscription boxes, years ago. One was a selection of local goods - food, crafts, coffee - that I really enjoyed, but got pretty pricey over time. The other was a young adult book club subscription. I was sent a YA book that had post-it notes marking certain pages, and small gifts wrapped up with the corresponding page number labeled on it. The idea was that it was an immersive experience - you're reading the book, then opening a gift that relates to what's happening in the story. It's a great concept, but I didn't enjoy many of the books, and the gifts were things I didn't really need or use, so I stopped that subscription as well.

Cue seeing The Whisper Man all over #bookstagram, with all the blurbs saying how creepy it is, how you shouldn't read it at night. I looked it up online to get my own copy, but it didn't release until August 20th, and this was the beginning of August when I was seeing it all over the internet. So I read more into everyone's posts, and saw that they were getting it from the Book of the Month subscription club. I found a code to get my first book for $10, and selected The Whisper Man.

It got to me a few days later, but I was finishing up one book, and had one that I needed to read to review. Once those were out of the way, I started The Whisper Man.

Plot:

Tom Kennedy's wife dies unexpectedly, so he moves his young son, Jake, to a new town for a fresh start. Jake had been pulling away from his dad since his mother's death, and while they had never been close, the distance bothered Tom. It also bothered Tom that Jake was talking to himself. Except... not to himself. Jake seemed convinced that a little girl was his friend and was always around, even when no one was with him. Jake has trouble at his new school, which adds to the stress Tom is feeling about the state of his life. Their new house is odd and unsettling, too. Tom is determined to find out the history of the house, and especially the mystery of the junk in the garage.

At the same time, the local police are investigating the latest kidnapping of a young boy. Twenty years ago there had been a string of related kidnappings, and the cops were sure they had arrested the correct man. He's been in jail since, but now another kidnapping has occurred. It could be a copycat, but some of the details were never released. The police realize that their suspicions of the killer having an accomplice might be true.

My Thoughts:

I enjoyed this book overall, but I had no problem reading it at night. It was creepy and unsettling, yes, mostly because the boys being kidnapped were approximately the same age as my son, so of course that might bother a person a bit. Some of the twists were pretty entertaining, but I do wish we had gotten more information about the killer who was in jail and the accomplice. I can't say too much without spoilers, but there was a lot that could be explored there, or perhaps better explained. I'm glad I read it, and I'm looking forward to more Book of the Month books, but I don't think this story lived up to the hype.