Saturday, July 12, 2014

Golden by Jessi Kirby - OPTIONAL

Kirby, Jessi  Golden, 277 pgs.  Simon and Schuster, 2013.  $16.99  Content: Language: R (31 swears; 2 “F”); Mature Content: PG-13; Violence: PG.  

Parker is a teacher’s aide for Mr, Kinney, a teacher who asks his seniors to write in a journal for their end of year project, then he boxes them up and sends them to the seniors in ten years.  Parker is in charge of finding the seniors current addresses, and she comes across the journal of a girl that went missing and was presumed dead at the end of her senior year.  She decides to read the journal and it changes the way she wants to live her life and sends her on an adventure with her friends.  

I love Jessi Kirby’s other books and you can’t deny that she writes well, but this wasn’t my favorite of hers.  The mystery of the missing girl is great and I liked the characters.  The ending was disappointing because I wanted the character to reconcile who she was before she read the journal with who she changed into because of what she learned.  Instead, I felt like she gave up on all of her hard work because she didn’t feel like she knew who she was, which made the ending unsatisfying.  Also, the “F” words were out of left field and totally unnecessary, bumping it into high school level, otherwise it would have been good in middle school.  

HS-OPTIONAL.  Reviewer, C. Peterson.

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