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A review by alexblackreads
Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy by Sonya Sones
4.0
This book is beautiful. I always enjoy Sonya Sones and she has a really lovely writing style, but I especially adored this one.
While all of her novels are written in verse, this one felt the most like straight poetry to me. There definitely is a narrative, but I feel like where a lot of her other novels are story first and poetry second, this one is a book of poetry set around a general theme. Her sister is hospitalized and these poems are more feelings than straight narration. I loved it.
The emotions are so strong in this book. It had me tearing up at points because it is sad, but Cookie feels so real. She's just a kid dealing with this situation and it's not always melodramatic or the worst thing happening, but it is her life. Sones is great at capturing small moments that really touch your heart.
It's such a short book and I kind of do wish there was a bit more length to it. That's the main reason it's stuck at four stars for me. 150 pages of poetry is not a lot of time and I flew through this in about twenty minutes. I loved it so much I just wish there was a little bit more of it to round out the story some more.
But this was fantastic, as are most of her books. If you like YA contemporaries and novels in verse, I'd highly recommend picking this up. It's such a lovely book and captures the struggles of a younger sister so well.
While all of her novels are written in verse, this one felt the most like straight poetry to me. There definitely is a narrative, but I feel like where a lot of her other novels are story first and poetry second, this one is a book of poetry set around a general theme. Her sister is hospitalized and these poems are more feelings than straight narration. I loved it.
The emotions are so strong in this book. It had me tearing up at points because it is sad, but Cookie feels so real. She's just a kid dealing with this situation and it's not always melodramatic or the worst thing happening, but it is her life. Sones is great at capturing small moments that really touch your heart.
It's such a short book and I kind of do wish there was a bit more length to it. That's the main reason it's stuck at four stars for me. 150 pages of poetry is not a lot of time and I flew through this in about twenty minutes. I loved it so much I just wish there was a little bit more of it to round out the story some more.
But this was fantastic, as are most of her books. If you like YA contemporaries and novels in verse, I'd highly recommend picking this up. It's such a lovely book and captures the struggles of a younger sister so well.