I was fortunate enough to meet McCall Hoyle at Book Con 2017, where I received an ARC of her debut novel, The Thing With Feathers.

Summary: Emilie Day is quite comfortable with playing it safe; after all, she’s been homeschooled since she was eight years old, her best friend is her service dog, and she’s pretty okay with  being the only girl on the Outer Banks of North Carolina who can’t swim. Life gets turned upside down when Emilie’s mom enrolls her in public school, not to mention the fact that within the first week, she gets paired with all star point guard Chatham York on a research project about Emily Dickinson. As Chatham shows interest in Emilie and friendships start to form, Emilie is terrified to tell anyone that she has epilepsy.

My Rating: 3.5/ 5 Stars

My (a bit spoilery) Thoughts:

The Thing with Feathers sparked my interest because it features a main protagonist who has epilepsy. I’ve never read a book with a character who is epileptic, so it was interesting to see how Emilie’s condition affected her day to day life. We see her taking new medication that helps control her seizures, interact with her service dog, Hitch, who is one my new favorite fictional dogs, and most importantly, live in fear of having a seizure at school. I understand Emilie’s fear of having a seizure in school and in public, and I wish that Hitch had been able to accompany her to school from the start. Granted, we wouldn’t have too much of a story, as Emilie must learn that she can have a life while living with epilepsy. It was fun to see her make new friends, specifically Chatham and Ayla, and see her shine as an English student. While we do get to see her hangout with Ayla and Chatham out of school, I wish we got to see Emilie doing more “normal teenage” or student type things—did she ever actually agree to writing to the lit mag??

I did not understand why it took one hundred plus pages for Emilie to tell one of her friends that she had epilepsy. Why was she so afraid to tell Chatham and Ayla about her condition? It’s not like she’s confessing that she committed a crime! Emilie wants to be able to form relationships without her epilepsy affecting them or making others wary of her. Yet, if one of my friends had a medical condition that could affect their day-to-day activity, I would want to know for their safety!

We had so many “filler” chapters where Emilie could have easily told Chatham about her epilepsy. While it was sweet seeing their relationship build, she spends half of each chapter worrying about how Chatham will react. Chatham’s little sister has Asperger’s syndrome, he wants to be a counselor one day , and he’s always volunteering—if there’s one guy that can understand Emilie, IT’S HIM! The guy recites poetry that she tutored him in for crying out now. Speaking of poetry, while I’m not the biggest Emily Dickinson fan, it was cool to see her work in the novel and how Emilie connects to her. I figured that her work would have something to do with the title.

My favorite aspect of The Thing with Feathers was the focus on Emilie’s family life, including Hitch (HITCH IS FAMILY). Hitch made my heart so happy! While she isn’t exactly family, I also enjoyed Cindy’s role in the novel, showing Emilie that you shouldn’t be afraid to speak up. It was hard seeing Emilie and her mom be so divided, between the pain that they both feel from Emilie’s father’s death and Emilie’s discomfort with her mom moving on. While it’s a bit more understandable in this case, as Emilie’s mom doesn’t know what it’s actually like to have epilepsy, we have some classic YA “my parent doesn’t get what I’m going through and I’m going to have some animosity about it.” However, throughout the novel, we see Emilie’s mom try to connect to her daughter and I’m glad by the end that both Emilie and her mother are rebuilding their relationship.

Have you read or are planning to read The Thing with Feathers? Share in the comments!

Big Little Lies has been on my TBR since its TV adaptation’s trailer came out earlier this year. I’ve been dying to watch the TV show, as its received tons of amazing reviews and sixteen Emmy nominations–even though I’ve never watched the Emmys but this might be the year between BLL and Master of None. However, not only due to the fact that I don’t have HBO (yes, that means I haven’t watched Game of Thrones either), but also that I am the type of reader that HAS to read the book before seeing the show or movie. As you can imagine, it’s been impossible to get a copy of BLL through my local library system because of how many people want to read it. But then came one magical Monday night.

As I was scrolling through my library’s online catalog, I saw that a copy of BLL was sitting on my local library’s shelf. I ran (okay, I drove) there and finally picked up the book and started reading it the next day. A bit of a sidenote, but it took me to actually hold this book in person to see that there was a broken lollipop on the cover. I was hooked on BLL throughout reading it, and I’m excited to talk about why you need to read BLL, especially if you’re nervous about all the hype .

It takes place in Australia. I had no idea that BLL took place in Australia, as the HBO mini series takes place in the US. While the setting of Australia doesn’t play too much into the plot, it was cool to see how that affected the characters’ dialogue and a few cultural aspects. I will admit that most of the time BLL could have taken place anywhere, so I understand how the TV adaptation was able to change the setting easily.

There’s a big cast of characters AND IT WORKS. Each chapter alternates between the POVs of our three main characters, Madeleine, Celeste, and Jane. While having three POVs isn’t an earth-shattering feature, each of the women have their own “set” of characters and their stories interweave. There’s Madeline, the schoolyard queen bee, with her husband Ed, two daughters, Abigail and Chloe, and son, Fred, her ex-husband Nathan, and Nathan’s wife, Bonnie, who happens to have a daughter the same age as Chloe in the same school, same kindergarten class. There’s Celeste, known in Pirriwee for her beauty, her wealthier-than-you-could-ever-imagine husband, Perry, and twin boys, Max and Josh. There’s Jane, the newest mom in the neighbor, not to mention, the only single one, with her son Ziggy. Additionally, at the end of each chapter, we get tidbits from fellow parents and members of Pirriwee as they’re interviewed in an on-going police investigation.

It deals with some heavy topics, specifically violence and physical abuse. The book starts off with Mrs. Ponder watching some suspicious activity at Pirriwee Public’s trivia night and we learn that in that same chapter that there’s been a murder at the event. Each chapter from then on goes back six months in time and with each chapter, we get closer to the dreaded trivia night. Our “real” plot begins with a bullying situation between the kindergarteners, as Jane’s son, Ziggy, is accused of choking Renata’s daughter, leaving bruises on Amabella’s neck (this isn’t a typo, the girl’s name isn’t Annabella). As the story progresses, we learn that some of our main characters have dealt with physical abuse in their romantic relationships and we see it start to affect their everyday lives.

As mentioned, there’s a hit TV adaptation. Once I saw the trailer for BLL, I knew I wanted to watch it immediately. I think I would have changed my bookish ways for one exception if the TV series had been a bit more accessible. Reese Witherspoon and Adam Scott are two of my favorite actors, not to mention that the cast as a whole is an A+ crew. As I’m writing this post, I have just started watching the first episode, and so far I’m very impressed with how many of the lines from the show come straight from the book! I’m hoping to eventually get the season on DVD from my library, but like the book, it’s a long waitlist, so my iTunes gift cards may be getting a bit of use in the next few weeks.

Have you read Big Little Lies? Share in the comments!