Life, Loss, and Puffins - Book Review

Review of a novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde

For two teenagers, their bucket list isn’t about dying. It’s about finally living.

Highlights of the Story

Life, Loss, and Puffins: A Novel

The two main characters in Life, Loss, and Puffins are teenagers Ru Evans and Gabriel.

Ru lives in California with her mother. She is freakishly smart. She taught herself euclidean geometry at age seven and has a photographic memory and total recall. As the story begins, Ru is about to enter college, and she is only thirteen years old. 

The college is 150 miles from Ru’s home, so her mother arranges for her to board with a family near the college campus. This family consists of a mother and her seventeen year old son, Gabriel.

Gabriel is very much an outsider like Ru. They both have trouble making friends; Ru due to her intelligence, Gabriel because he has his own way of ‘being’, which includes wearing makeup on his eyelashes and nail polish on his fingers.

Ru and Gabriel, perhaps because they recognize the ‘uniqueness’ in each other, form a deep sibling-like bond. Being able to relate to someone else in their world that they can talk to is a first for each of them. 

Originally, Ru’s mother planned to come pick up Ru each weekend, but the first few weeks she comes up with excuse after excuse why she cannot come. Finally Ru gets Gabriel (who drives her to the college campus every day and picks her up in the afternoons after his own college classes) to drive her home to see her mom. She discovers her mom’s sister is there and that her mother is terminally ill. She had tried to keep this from Ru. Quite soon, Ru’s mother dies and Ru is expected to go live in Kentucky with her miserable aunt, her only remaining relative and one she has never gotten along with. 

The Trip of a Lifetime

Not able to bear the thought of life with her aunt without ever really having a normal life (wanting to go from being a smart person to just being a ‘person’), Ru tells Gabriel what she would like to do. Gabriel agrees to help her fulfil her ultimate dream. They set off from California and head for Canada. Ru’s bucket list includes seeing the aurora borealis and the Atlantic puffins in the wild. 

Summary

Atlantic Puffin (Source: Pixabay)

Ru & Gabriel know that they will be in trouble when caught, but their special friendship, combined with help in unexpected places, combine to help them both see what it feels like to really ‘live’ as a normal person as they take life one beautiful and spontaneous day at a time. 

This is a delightful feel-good, coming of age story about two young people you will really enjoy getting to know. 

• For more books by and about Catherine Ryan Hyde, click here.
• For more book reviews, check out ReviewThisBooks.com

*Book Review of Life, Loss, and Puffins written by Wednesday Elf

 

Note: The author may receive a commission from purchases made using links found in this article. “As an Amazon Associate, Ebay (EPN), Esty (Awin), and/or Zazzle Affiliate, I (we) earn from qualifying purchases.”

FOLLOW US ON:

Rolling Toward Clear Skies by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Book Review of a novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde, a favorite author who combines relatable dilemmas and interesting characters who often tug at your heartstrings. This is a heartfelt novel of hope and second chances.

A Synopsis of Rolling Toward Clear Skies

Rolling Toward Clear Skies: A Novel

Maggie Blount is a California GP and divorced mother of two teenage girls. In addition to her private practice with 3 other physicians, she also works with Alex, her professional (and romantic) partner, running Doctors on Wheels.   Their mobile non-profit vans provide free medical care in the aftermath of disasters.

The story begins as Maggie & Alex get ready to head to Louisiana where a hurricane is about to make landfall. Maggie’s daughters, Willa and Gemma, go to stay with their father for the duration, complaining all the way, as they have grown up to be very entitled, spoiled girls. 

During their time in Louisiana, Maggie and Alex treat 2 loving teenage sisters whose parents were killed in the storm that destroyed their home.  There is also a terrified puppy who becomes as attached to the girls as the girls do to him. 

When it is found that these sisters' only remaining relatives are very elderly grandparents who are unable to care for them, Maggie decides to foster Jean and Rose. After some preliminary paperwork and home visits by social services, Jean & Rose come to live with Maggie and her family. 

It is an emotional story that eventually finds Maggie’s new blended family in chaos. The foster sisters, Jean and Rose, are polite and appreciative and feel blessed to have found a safe new home. Maggie’s own daughters are self-involved teenagers who have grown up always having everything they wanted and who resist this intrusion by strangers into their privileged lives. Maggie knows she has made some mistakes in parenting her daughters, giving them too much to make up for her long work hours and the divorce. 

Maggie seeks help through a therapist to admit her role in Willa & Gemma’s entitled upbringing, and to learn how to teach her daughters about gratitude and empathy. She begins to learn to undo the damage and anticipate the needs of all four girls, Alex, and the puppy. 

Summary

Wise words and insightful observations combine to bring about a satisfying conclusion to this topical, thought-provoking, and appealing story. 

Related Reviews:

For more reviews of Catherine Ryan Hyde books, click here.

For a review of author Catherine Ryan Hyde, click here.

For more book reviews on ReviewThisReviews, check out ReviewThisBooks.com

*Review of the book “Rolling Toward Clear Skies” was written by Wednesday Elf

Note: The author may receive a commission from purchases made using links found in this article. “As an Amazon Associate, Ebay (EPN), Esty (Awin), and/or Zazzle Affiliate, I (we) earn from qualifying purchases.”

FOLLOW US ON:

Just A Regular Boy Book Review

 

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

I recently selected a book from a display of New Fiction by an author I was not familiar with. I chose the book because the story summary on the flap described one of the characters as being a small boy, which appealed to me. It turned out to be a wonderful, and quite unique, story. 

Afterwards, reading about the author, I discovered why I liked her style so much. She is also the author of Pay It Forward, a book that has become a movie and enjoyed world-wide fame. I remember reading Pay it Forward several years ago. If you also read it and liked it, I think you would like her newest publication Just a Regular Boy.  Let me tell you about it here.

Just a Regular Boy Characters

There are two main characters in the story

REMY – A little boy who's mother dies and his father becomes convinced that the collapse of society is eminent. To that end, the father sells their house, buys several acres of very isolated land in northern Idaho, lays in a year's supply of food and other necessities, and takes his five-year-old son from all he has ever known in Pocatello, Idaho to live 'off the grid' in the woods. In effect, the father becomes a survivalist and tells Remy that this is their new life. 

Remy can't believe that everything he has known – TV, electricity, indoor plumbing, his best friend Lester – is now gone. Over time, Remy learns to fish to supplement their meager food supply while his dad does the hunting for food. If the fishing and hunting were not successful, you went hungry. A hard lesson for a small boy. The isolation is also very hard, even though his father tries to teach him that 'freedom' is most important when you can no longer trust civilization. 

Two or so years go by in this manner, and then the unthinkable happens: Remy's dad dies of a heart attack. Remy, not even eight-years-old yet, fends for himself until he realizes he is going to have to find some help. Loading some supplies into his dad's old truck, he tries to drive out, maybe hoping to find his friend again in Pocatello. But he is too little to both see out the windshield and reach the pedals. Thus he crashes the truck and breaks his leg. He manages to last until the leg heals, but now his supplies have run out. 

Desperate, Remy sets out on foot to find help, but is uncertain what he will find because he has been taught that civilization may now be a terrible thing. He is very fearful, but knows he will die if he doesn't do something. 

ANNE – A nurturing mother who has fostered several unwanted children and adopted two of them, now teenagers, learns that a near feral, silent, and terrified child has been found. 

She immediately takes him in, even though he has severe medical issues suffered while trying to walk to civilization and will need constant care for several months.  And even though he won't speak and they have no idea who he is or where he came from.  But, Anne knows in her heart he is not a lost cause as everyone else seems to think; just a challenging one. 

Summary

As the story continues, Remy slowly adapts to his new foster home, but doesn't trust the world. Anne is still dealing with her own childhood rejections, as are the two adopted teenagers.

Remy's journey into the real world begins as the whole family learns how to navigate the path. Because, all Remy really wanted was to be 'just a regular boy'. 

A special story of compassion and understanding I truly enjoyed. 

Just a Regular Boy by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Available Right Here

For More Book Reviews

Check out ReviewThisBooks.com

*Just a Regular Boy Book Review written by Wednesday Elf

Note: The author may receive a commission from purchases made using links found in this article. “As an Amazon Associate, Ebay (EPN), Esty (Awin), and/or Zazzle Affiliate, I (we) earn from qualifying purchases.”

FOLLOW US ON:

Brave Girl, Quiet Girl - Book Review

Read an Excerpt

Every extraordinary book has that moment when you fall irrevocably in love with it.  For me, that oh-I-just-love-this-so-much moment in Catherine Ryan Hyde's Brave Girl, Quiet Girl came from the mouth of a babe.  You can pretty much count on a two-year-old to get right to the heart of the matter and Etta doesn't disappoint.  When she whispers brave girl, quiet girl to her trembling rescuer, the story is made... the book's soul is revealed... and this reader was completely smitten.

Because you can follow links to the official book synopsis, I won't spend time rehashing what you can discover for yourself.  Let me just give you the broad strokes and then cut to the chase.  After all, that's what I want in a review—not so much facts, as the alchemy of what makes for an unforgettable reading experience.

I have already mentioned Etta.  If you ask me, this amazing toddler is the pivot upon which everything turns.  As the story begins, Etta is ripped away from her family in the course of a carjacking.  Her mother, Brooke, is desperate to find her baby, but the odds are stacked against a safe return.

And then there is Molly, a cast-off teen, living on the mean streets of L.A. after being discarded by her rigid, unaccepting parents.  It is so perfectly fitting that a child who has lost all sense of worthiness is the one who comes to find, and protect, Etta after the jackers abandon her in the dark of night.

Despite the bleak circumstances that embrace both Brooke and Molly (or, I'm now thinking it is because of that bleakness), the broken pieces of two psyches will discover a way to fit together in perfectly imperfect ways to form a new sense of acceptance, belonging, and family.

Brave Girl, Quiet Girl is ultimately the story of how the light gets in through the broken places to illuminate the beauty that was formerly hidden within the bleakness.  I've come to the recognition, after reading a majority of Catherine Ryan Hyde's books, that one of her many gifts as a writer is something I can only compare to the Japanese aesthetic known as wabi-sabi.

The thing I find so appealing about this aesthetic, especially as it applies to CRH's consistent approach to bringing together beautifully flawed people, is how the imperfection causes me to love them more.  Just as the Japanese do, the author highlights rather than hides the flaws.  In her skillful hands, the flaw becomes the work of art.

Just as wabi-sabi features that which is authentic, and acknowledges that nothing is finished, so too do we see that in this book's work-in-progress characters.  We experience them in their raw state of becoming.  It makes them entirely relatable and, in my case, made me feel great empathy for their plights.

Finally, I was deeply struck by how the homeless in this story viewed those who sought to help them.  It made me reflect on my current relationships with those who are without a home.  Why is help offered?  When is help not at all helpful?  What is the best way to reach out to those in need?  How do they define the need?

Those who appreciate the humanity at the center of Catherine Ryan Hyde's writing are sure to find much to love, just as I did, in Brave Girl, Quiet Girl.  I knew I could count on coming away from this read with a feeling of greater compassion—not only toward Brooke, and Molly, and Bodhi—but also for my own flawed self.

Brave Girl, Quiet Girl releases on May 19, 2020.  I received an Advanced Reader Copy (e-galley) from NetGalley in return for my honest review.  I highly recommend this book and encourage you to pick up your copy today.

Note: The author may receive a commission from purchases made using links found in this article. “As an Amazon Associate, Ebay (EPN), Esty (Awin), and/or Zazzle Affiliate, I (we) earn from qualifying purchases.”

FOLLOW US ON: