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A review by heykellyjensen
Aftershocks by Marisa Reichardt
I sat down to start this and blew through it in a day. Ruby is angry at her mother when she learns her mother and water polo coach are dating. Rather than attend practice, Ruby makes her way to the local laundromat, where she knows she can get someone over 21 to buy her alcohol. But just as she's zoomed in on Charlie as the person she'll ask to do the deed for her, the big earthquake hits and everything about their lives changes.
Told primarily over the course of a week, this is a book about survival. What does it mean to survive? To get through something challenging? To allow the memory of another person to survive? Well-paced and engaging, the book offers the present interspersed with glimpses of the past and what caused Ruby's friendship with Mina to begin falling apart.
Readers who love stories of natural disasters, of triumph in the wake of tragedy (without ever dismissing the raw, real circumstances one is in), and contemporary YA that tangoes with the power of relationships, forgiveness, and what it means to love and care for someone, this is a winner.
Told primarily over the course of a week, this is a book about survival. What does it mean to survive? To get through something challenging? To allow the memory of another person to survive? Well-paced and engaging, the book offers the present interspersed with glimpses of the past and what caused Ruby's friendship with Mina to begin falling apart.
Readers who love stories of natural disasters, of triumph in the wake of tragedy (without ever dismissing the raw, real circumstances one is in), and contemporary YA that tangoes with the power of relationships, forgiveness, and what it means to love and care for someone, this is a winner.