A review by megreadingbooks
The Sky Always Hears Me: And the Hills Don't Mind, by Kirstin Cronn-Mills
4.0
In my journey through the Young Adult Fiction genre, I've found that my level of annoyance with a narrator is in direct proportion to just how closely that narrator resembles my teenage self. Thus, I caught myself rolling my eyes more than once at Morgan Callahan who, like me, comes from the sort of town where the gas station parking lot is a hip hang-out spot and there isn't much else for teens to do but drive around the back roads until they run out of gas money. And much like 16-year-old me, Morgan is consumed by her dream of fleeing "Central Nowhere" to write "The Great American Novel." While it sounds like this character (and my teenaged self) are in danger of being small-town cliches, the snarky narration in this voice-driven novel makes Morgan's teenage grandiosity feel more authentic and familiar than tired and corny.
That said, I sometimes found myself only marginally engaged with the central plot of Morgan's effort to navigate her many romantic entanglements. She has a boring boyfriend and she can't stop checking out her assistant manager's ass while she's stocking candy and straightening rows of baby food at her after-school grocery store job. This is further complicated by the kiss she shared with her neighbor Tessa, and the rumors about Morgan's sexuality that have already circulated around her super-conservative town before she has even had a chance to examine her own feelings.
The love triangle (or is it quadrangle? love parallelogram?) and the themes of sexual confusion are standard fare for YA novels and they are well-done here (though the Tessa plot sometimes felt a bit tangential and tacked-on.) But this novel becomes something more than just another YA romance when Morgan learns a family secret that forces her to reexamine her relationships with her bitter drunk of a father and the Grandmother whom she's always regarded as saintly.
The Sky Always Hears Me: And the Hills Don't Mind is at its most compelling when it's examining the ways sickness and abuse cycle through families, what it means to love someone who has done terrible things and just how much can be forgiven.
That said, I sometimes found myself only marginally engaged with the central plot of Morgan's effort to navigate her many romantic entanglements. She has a boring boyfriend and she can't stop checking out her assistant manager's ass while she's stocking candy and straightening rows of baby food at her after-school grocery store job. This is further complicated by the kiss she shared with her neighbor Tessa, and the rumors about Morgan's sexuality that have already circulated around her super-conservative town before she has even had a chance to examine her own feelings.
The love triangle (or is it quadrangle? love parallelogram?) and the themes of sexual confusion are standard fare for YA novels and they are well-done here (though the Tessa plot sometimes felt a bit tangential and tacked-on.) But this novel becomes something more than just another YA romance when Morgan learns a family secret that forces her to reexamine her relationships with her bitter drunk of a father and the Grandmother whom she's always regarded as saintly.
The Sky Always Hears Me: And the Hills Don't Mind is at its most compelling when it's examining the ways sickness and abuse cycle through families, what it means to love someone who has done terrible things and just how much can be forgiven.