Hurricane Season

This was as beautiful as everyone said it was. Wow this book. For some reason I have trouble getting into middle grade stories. It isn’t that I don’t enjoy them, or that the writing is bad (actually most of the time it is the exact opposite for both) but I just have trouble starting and getting through them. This book was sadly not an exception. It was slow moving for me in the beginning but once I found a rhythm and was able to keep picking it up, I really really fell in love with the story. It is about a 6th grade girl named Fig and her mentally ill father. Fig knows almost nothing about her mother, other than she left right after Fig was born, so it has always just been her and her dad. He was once a really well known/respected musician (piano) but now he struggles to write any kind of music let alone finish a song or perform. The reason for that is because he is “sick” though neither of them know what is wrong with him. After an embarrassing outbreak at school where her father bursts into the classroom and insists that he needs Fig, a teacher calls social services and now the small family is under surveillance. They have until November to convince the social worker that her dad is fit to have Fig in his custody. And in a mysterious new neighbor, and a connection to Van Gogh’s life and you have a truly unique story. There were a lot of elements but I really thought they were beautifully woven together. If you read middle grade, I highly recommend picking up this book.

Disclaimer: I was given this book by Algonquin Young Readers! Thanks! All opinions are my own. Book Series: Standalone Rating: 4/5 Publication Date: May 7, 2019 Genre: YA Contemporary Recommended Age: 10+ (mental illness TW, drug addiction TW, parent abandonment, child protective services, and finding out who you are) Publisher: Algonquin Young Readers Pages: 288 Amazon Link Synopsis: Fig, a sixth grader, wants more than anything to see the world as her father does. The once-renowned pianist, who hasn’t composed a song in years and has unpredictable good and bad days, is something of a mystery to Fig. Though she’s a science and math nerd, she tries taking an art class just to be closer to him, to experience life the way an artist does. But then Fig’s dad shows up at school, disoriented and desperately searching for Fig. Not only has the class not brought Fig closer to understanding him, it has brought social services to their door. Diving into books about Van Gogh to understand the madness of artists, calling on her best friend for advice, and turning to a new neighbor for support, Fig continues to try everything she can think of to understand her father, to save him from himself, and to find space in her life to discover who she is even as the walls are falling down around her. Nicole Melleby’s Hurricane Season is a stunning novel about a girl struggling to be a kid as pressing adult concerns weigh on her. It’s also about taking risks and facing danger, about love and art, and about coming of age and coming out. And more than anything else, it is a story of the healing power of love—and the limits of that power. Review: This book was so beautiful. I loved the realistic approach to this story. The thing that really gets me in a lot of books is that when a child is in trouble or in crisis, especially a younger one, adults don’t tend to act as how they would realistically and things happen in the criminal justice system that never realistically would. This book took a very realistic approach to it and the author didn’t write the process as overly scary. Trust me, it’s frightening enough without the author using myths and falsehoods to make it more traumatic. I loved how the character was questioning her sexuality and how the book tackled real issues like drug addiction and bipolar disorder. The book was well written and the story flowed really well. However, I worry that there was a lot going on in the book. I don’t doubt that all of that doesn’t happen in a child’s life, it can and it does unfortunately, but I fear that throwing so much to younger readers who are just entering into more adult topics might make the book seem like too much to fully grasp. I think that, mostly because of the length of the book, that there wasn’t a lot of time devoted to all of the problems and solutions in this book. I think it would have been better longer rather than shorter. Verdict: Prepare thy tissues!