Unfortunately, this book didn’t work as well for me as Mercury did, but it was an intriguing story. Marijohn is 18 years old in 1991, spending the summer working at her father’s gas station and writing songs she plays on her broken mandolin. Her best friend Lazarus is her cowriter, duet partner, and overall sidekick.
Marijohn’s father swears that he was the last person to see country music phenomenon Elle Harlow before she disappeared in 1973. He’s obsessed with keeping Elle’s legacy alive, and there’s a distinct possibility she could be Marijohn’s mother. She longs to know the truth.
The last night before Lazarus leaves for college, Marijohn is determined to tell him she loves him. But when a meteor strikes their town that night, it changes the course of everything, and brings secrets long hidden to the surface.
The book shifts to Elle’s story for a bit. We see her apprenticing to a healer, craving a musical career, and feeling unloved and unsupported. Her story shows that talent can flourish anywhere.
I felt like a lot of the dialogue in the book, particularly where Marijohn and Elle were concerned, was almost stream of consciousness. There’s a lot of miscommunication here, which is my least favorite trope to read about. But the central themes of loss, longing, and love really resonated with me.
No comments:
Post a Comment