Book 3

Book #3: "Departures" by Lorna J. Cook. The main characters in "Departures" are two teens, brother and sister, and the narrative shifts back and forth between their perspectives. Suzan VanderZee is seventeen; her story is a fairly typical coming-of-age tale: she feels misunderstood, is impatient and critical of the rest of her family, at odds with her mother. She lives in her head, and her head is full of the Brontes, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, The Secret Garden. She dreams of fleeing the confines, the constraints, of home. And she has a secret.
Brother Evan is fifteen, and is struggling with typical 15-year-old boy issues: girls. One girl in particular. He, too, dreams of escape from family, from small town life. But all families have secrets and complexities and tensions and vulnerabilities, and the VanderZees are no exception. How their lives play out over the course of this telling, a space of several months, demonstrates well that what appears to be an average American family is, like most, anything but average.

While I enjoyed the book overall, I occasionally felt that the main characters were a little too, shall we say, insufferably self-aware for a couple of youngsters. At times I couldn't decide who the intended audience was for this story, whether it was directed more toward young adults than the more mature variety. Either way, it was a relatively quick read, and had a few twists that kept it interesting.