felinity's review
2.0
2.5 stars
The main reason I didn't get on with this book is that it wasn't clear what it was meant to be. The title suggested it was the story of Huntsville, but there were a number of Shelly-specific flashbacks to her life and growing up, making it more like a memoir that focuses on tornadoes and other natural disasters in Alabama.
The other reason comes down to editing: it feels disjointed because of the disparity between the Huntsville/Alabama stories and those which are just Shelly's life. It begins with the short urgency of stories during the tornado, then moved abruptly to a long section about Shelly's life, throwing the pacing off entirely. There were too many cutesy phrases trying to be clever but which just seemed twee rather than funny. (On a personal note, a few things grated because she suggested some things were Huntsville-specific but they really apply to Alabama as a whole. See the "Either this... or that" list on p60 for an example. Those sweeping generalizations really irked me.)
It does show some of the good decisions - and bad ones - that people made during the tornadoes, the effects they had, and how planning can help. It includes some shocking statistics about the number of tornadoes and the damage they cause, along with stories of families spared, debris scattered, and possessions found hundreds of miles away. It shows how communities from all over the state, the Southeast and the U.S. came together during the relief effort to offer whatever they could, and confesses the guilt that non-affected people felt, the guilt of being lucky.
So all in all, if you want to know more about Alabama and the April 2011 tornadoes do pick this up, but be aware that it is self-published and contains many flaws that a good publisher and editor would have fixed.
The main reason I didn't get on with this book is that it wasn't clear what it was meant to be. The title suggested it was the story of Huntsville, but there were a number of Shelly-specific flashbacks to her life and growing up, making it more like a memoir that focuses on tornadoes and other natural disasters in Alabama.
The other reason comes down to editing: it feels disjointed because of the disparity between the Huntsville/Alabama stories and those which are just Shelly's life. It begins with the short urgency of stories during the tornado, then moved abruptly to a long section about Shelly's life, throwing the pacing off entirely. There were too many cutesy phrases trying to be clever but which just seemed twee rather than funny. (On a personal note, a few things grated because she suggested some things were Huntsville-specific but they really apply to Alabama as a whole. See the "Either this... or that" list on p60 for an example. Those sweeping generalizations really irked me.)
It does show some of the good decisions - and bad ones - that people made during the tornadoes, the effects they had, and how planning can help. It includes some shocking statistics about the number of tornadoes and the damage they cause, along with stories of families spared, debris scattered, and possessions found hundreds of miles away. It shows how communities from all over the state, the Southeast and the U.S. came together during the relief effort to offer whatever they could, and confesses the guilt that non-affected people felt, the guilt of being lucky.
So all in all, if you want to know more about Alabama and the April 2011 tornadoes do pick this up, but be aware that it is self-published and contains many flaws that a good publisher and editor would have fixed.
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