Name: Trail of Crumbs
ISBN: 9781459821217

Lisa J. Lawrence

In this young adult novel, Greta and her twin brother are abandoned by their father and stepmother, and Greta struggles with the confusion and shame she feels after being raped.

Trail of Crumbs

Lauren Tabor

This story follows teenage twins who are learning to navigate their life after their father leaves them to fend for themselves. It was sad and dealt with a lot of hard things that they both had to go through. I enjoyed this book and watching these characters grow within themselves and the people they become surrounded by. The ending felt a little rushed for me, but over all really good. 

Thank you to Orca Book Publishers and Netgalley for letting me read an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review. This comes out March 26, 2019

Ariel Himboi

Trail of Crumbs is not a book for the faint-of-heart. It is a story of grief, death and somewhat a cliche of a found-family trope and a promised Hansel and Gretel retelling. It is not a retelling. 

This is a story of two high school siblings who have lost their mother to cancer and have a grieving father who is mentally absent from their lives. They are in the middle of dealing with their new step-mother who is just as manipulative and verbally abusive as you'd expect. As this book starts off we are quick to be told that this Hansel and Gretel-like story will be a tear-jerker. 

This book does delve into the topic of rape and slut shaming, so please be careful of any triggers. 

To talk about the things that I liked it would be a short but sweet list. The seemingly random but nice relationships between the people the siblings have met wrap around the story like a string of fate. There's Nate as the weird neighbor who helps them in odd situations until they've become closer, albeit towards the end it feels like a cliff-hanger with a dead-end street. 

There is the landlord that takes them in and we soon see that a lonely man of his own age has his baggage and as he takes these kids in we see him grow, and I personally liked that both he and Greta understood each other and were able to find peace in silence. They had a certain friendship that was interesting to watch grow and it was heartwarming to see Greta relate to someone. 

We have Alice, the daughter of the landlord who has grieved as Greta and Ash have who somehow becomes Greta's pillar and another friend in their weird new group of misfits. 

We have a cast of cliche characters with no face time who push and pull Greta's decision after Greta starts to openly feel and talk about her sexual assault, and how it plays at school and who her friends are. I like that Greta's brother Ash immediately stood by Greta's side and fought for her, and it was nice to see the sibling relationship they had. Albeit it was not healthy for the two of them to die for each other, I do think that the characters were written pretty well. 

I felt that the scene where Greta outed the people who hurt her was underdeveloped and a cheap-shot, but I acknowledge what the author was trying to do and I applaud her for that. I love seeing characters stand up to their evil and make hard decisions that only they can make.

I also liked that while Ash was so angry about their father abandoning them that Greta was a middle ground willing to hear both sides and make a conscious decision, and her decisions alone shaped how the siblings would react to their father reappearing and asking for a second chance. The ending felt cut and to be truthful I thought that I wanted to stick around and see more of where Greta and Ash went. It was to my disappointment that it ended so abruptly and that it was left to our imagination as to how characters would act next.

I often enjoy imagining how and what characters would do, say or think next but there are times like these that I wish the author had shown us. All in all, I think it was a good book with average writing and plausible characters. I did cry, maybe because I did relate to Greta and her actions moved me, but there was a lot to be improved such as the writing style, and whether or not the author should expand on her stories and characters rather than cut their story short.

3 stars!

Trail of Crumbs

Reviews

Highlights