A review by scorpstar77
Tomato Girl by Jayne Pupek

4.0

I actually finished this book over a week ago, and I haven't reviewed it because I'm having a hard time figuring out what I want to say. It's heart-wrenching, there's no doubt about that. The main character is a pre-teen girl named Ellie in Virginia or North Carolina, I think during the 1960s. She's in a terrible situation and she's just trying to make the best of it. Her mom is utterly batshit crazy. As in, she should be institutionalized, but she's not. Her dad has tried to take care of both of them for a long time, but seems to have reached his limit being married to a crazy woman and has fallen in love with someone else - who can really blame him? His faults lie more with his putting the well-being of his new girlfriend above the obvious emotional needs of his daughter. Ellie is terribly emotionally traumatized throughout the events of the book, though by the end, you have hope for her as she talks about finally opening up to the therapist she's seeing and how she's settling in with a good foster family. Still, the entire book makes your heart bleed for this little girl. I enjoyed the story, I really did. What holds me back on this is that there's something...off about the writing. I can't put my finger on what it is, and I've been trying to figure it out for a week with no success. It is the author's first novel, and I think most authors improve their craft with every book, so I don't want to be too critical, but I have to be honest that sometimes I was jarred out of the story by the writing, but I just can't identify what it is that bothered me. It's a good story, though, and I think the book is worth reading for that.