When Gia Rossi returns to her hometown to help her dying mother she expected to have to confront the hostile neighbors who think she ruined the life of Mr. Hart, the teacher who molested her seventeen years prior. She did not expect her sister to disappear with Gia's two young nephews and to navigate her brother-in-law's hostility.
Of course I could hardly resist reading this one for Banned Books Week, although it wasn’t really what I expected.
There was in fact only a little of the story that involved book banning. While some action takes place around a reunion of a high school banned books club (a club that was started as a rebellion against the PTA who insisted on removing The Catcher in the Rye, The Outsiders, and The Handmaid's Tale from Honors English) with a bit of editing the same story could have been written about an ecology club, a drama troupe, the Gay Straight Alliance, the Student Government Organization, or any other high school group. Likewise, there aren't any heroes who vanquished book banning villains.
The Banned Books Club is still meeting after seventeen years and are reading Stephen King's Cujo. One member suggests that she understands why some people would want to ban it, as it was "upsetting" and furthermore had no "message". Gia points out that horror novels are simply meant to entertain, and don't necessarily need a message. This might have been my favorite line in the book. I think that too often book publishers, especially for children's and Young Adult books, seem bent on everything having a moral. We also need silly stories that simply entertain, and make reading fun. Reading fun books is how people learn to love reading.
I ordered a signed copy of this book from the author’s website. It came with a little puzzle in a test-tube shaped container
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