GENRE: Contemporary Fiction
SETTING: England
MY GRADE: B
SYNOPSIS: Olivia, almost fifteen, feels like a piece of unwanted baggage left over from her parents' broken marriage. Daddy is about to marry one of his former students, who is young enough to be his daughter; Mummy's men friends sometimes stay the night. Neither of them has room for her any more, and she feels a burden to everyone she loves.
Then Nick enters her life: Nick, her mother's new lover, an amoral, street-wise photographer with an insolent, assessing gaze. Nick violates the sanctuary of Olivia's home by moving in with her mother, and before long he has violated Olivia as well, teaching her the meaning of desire. Hopelessly addicted to him, she comes at last to a shocking solution which will change forever her life and the lives of those who have denied her love.
MY THOUGHTS/SPOILERS: Olivia, nicknamed Lia, is just about to turn fifteen when her thirty-five year old mother Emma starts dating thirty-two year old Nick Winter, of the blond hair and light blue eyes. She moves him right into the house with herself and Olivia and tries to pass him off as a boarder. She lives with her jewelry designer mother and is left to her own devices most of the time. Olivia feels unloved by both parents and we can feel it. She's basically forgotten about by her forty-one year old father, who's about to marry his much younger pregnant girlfriend who he's already living with.
Nick is an awful character with no redeeming qualities. He's the type I like in fiction but I was hoping he'd get killed off. He and Olivia begin a sexual relationship with each other a couple weeks after she turns fifteen. There's a lot of sex between them and the author went for quantity of quality. Outside of lusting after Olivia, he couldn't care less about her. He gets violent a couple times and rapes her, once repeatedly smacking her and ripping her dress off, and never once apologizing for it. She doesn't care that he's done that because she's in love with him, and even gets aroused despite it. See photo. I never felt the love she had for him despite her saying so several times.
Olivia gets a harebrained idea that involves pregnancy, twice. Once was fine but the story got less interesting and a bit boring when the author wouldn't let it go. The story ends very abruptly.
I enjoyed this though I don't think the writer, a Canadian woman writing British characters, is that great of a writer and doesn't really know how to write teen dialogue. Olivia and her friend Megan sounded too mature and never like the children they were. The story went on a little too long with not a whole lot happening, then it ended very abruptly. Total overuse of the expression "make love" and the word "terrific" in here too. Those words and expressions weren't true to the time this book was published. I don't quite understand the title, either. She's not a daddy's girl and Nick is seventeen-years older than her but he's only in his early thirties. She's not really his girl either.
No comments:
Post a Comment