Tag: The Lucky Ones

Sara Taylor – The Lauras | Review

Title: The Lauras

Author: Sara Taylor

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 298

Rating: 5*/5

 

Sara Taylor - The Lauras

Sara Taylor – The Lauras

 

Disclaimer: I was sent a copy of this book for free to review as part of my position on the Young Writer of the Year Award shadow panel. Click here to find out more about that.

Despite this being the only of the books I’ve given five stars to so far, I’m retroactively upgrading The Lucky Ones to five stars as well. As far as I’m concerned, the competition for the overall winner of the award should be one or the other, although I liked them for different reasons.

I went into this thinking that it’s a road trip novel, but it’s so much more than that. It covers gender identity issues – but in a moving, meaningful way – and it asks the reader a lot of questions that they have to answer for themselves. But it’s also a gripping story, almost a double coming of age story for both Alex and Ma. It achieves that through a sort of dual narrative that delves into the past while literally driving forward in the present. That doesn’t always work well, but it worked well here.

The result is the sort of novel that could bridge the gap between literary fiction and the mainstream with a story that whether you can relate to or not, you’re still sure to enjoy. The characterisation is also fantastic, and in many ways it has to be – the book is about the characters as much as it’s about the plot, as the title of the novel starts to hint at.

Overall then, I thought this was a fantastic little read, and just the thing whether you read one book a year or whether you read hundreds.

 

Sara Taylor

Sara Taylor

 

Click here to buy The Lauras.


Julianne Pachico – The Lucky Ones | Review

Title: The Lucky Ones

Author: Julianne Pachico

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 264

Rating: 4*/5

 

Julianne Pachico - The Lucky Ones

Julianne Pachico – The Lucky Ones

 

Disclaimer: I was sent a copy of this book for free to review as part of my position on the Young Writer of the Year Award shadow panel. Click here to find out more about that.

This is the first of the five books that I’ve read so far from the Young Writer of the Year Award shortlist, and it sets a strong precedent that it’s going to be tricky for the others to live up to. What we have here is a collection of short stories that span several decades and take place in Latin America, and it’s interesting because it’s kind of interconnected and kind of not, with a few running themes like coca leaves that tie them all together.

Pachico’s writing is stunning, and just the way she strings sentences together was a joy to behold. Flicking in at random, I get: “They cast their bluish-white searchlights over the campsite, slowly illuminating one item at a time; the wooden picnic table, the hammocks, the tin cups, the black rubber boots with yellow bottoms, the packets of Frruitino strawberry juice powder, the Saltine cracker wrappers, the enormous blocks of unrefined panela sugar in plastic bags.” There’s just something about her writing style that I loved.

Overall, it was fun and ethereal, and I’ve since compared it to watching someone else’s dreams and said it reminded me in some vague way of William Burroughs. It’s most definitely a tough act to follow.

 

Julianne Pachico

Julianne Pachico

 

Click here to buy The Lucky Ones.