More reviews

Sadly I am already behind on writing reviews. Which is kind of pathetic since they aren't very long to begin with. This next one isn't so much a review but just some thoughts I had about this particular book. I couldn't really write about it in a way that sounded like a review.

Stay With Me, by Garrett Freymann-Weyr, 2006. Audience: teen.

This book (along with a few others I have recently read) was about the death of a loved one and this one specifically about suicide. Leila had two half-sisters from her father's first marriage. One of them commits suicide and Leila goes to live with her other sister while her parents are out of the country for a year. During this year the two remaining sisters strengthen their relationship (which was not very close before) and help each other cope with the loss of a sister.

One thing I found slightly disconcerting in this novel is the inclusion of the older boyfriend. Leila is 16/17 years old and begins a relationship with a man in his thirties. This is viewed as a relatively natural thing in the book because the women around her have also fell in love with older men. The difference is they did it as adults and Leila is not an adult. The way the author gets around this is having Leila turn 17, the age of consent in New York but this still leaves it somewhat odd.

I also found that the use of the World Trade Center attack a bit strange. While the book was published in 2006 the time in the book is 2002. There are a few moments when Leila mentions "the attack on the city" but I must not have been paying much attention because I didn't realize what she was talking about until she mentioned the 1st anniversary of the event. Since this is a book meant for a young adult audience I wonder how they pick up on it. By 2006 the teens that are reading this book could have been as young as nine when the attack happened, and by 2009 they could have been as young as 5. The way this book uses the World Trade Center attack dates the book in a way that makes it almost historical when it was published, let alone in the years to come.