Frankie
Shivaun Plozza
Frankie is a hard hitting teenager faced with expulsion from school for smacking someone over the face with a dictionary. Apart from that, she’s just discovered that she has a half-brother and that love isn’t always what you expect it to be.
I found myself confused at times. I don’t think it was ever explained exactly why Frankie was angry, even though the events surrounding her life were certainly messy. I’m not sure I’m objecting about this, except that perhaps the blurb focusses on that anger too much and not enough on Frankie’s changing life.
I feel completely inside Frankie’s character. She lept off the page at me, and then spent the rest of the novel in my head, narrating the well-depicted scenery. I could understand how each of her actions was motivated, and how easy it was to keep lying once she had started. That’s often how it works isn’t it…
There’s a great range of character relationships here. It’s not as straight-forward as Frankie falling in love and everything being happy after that. Instead it’s a meaty drama that explores complicated family relationships, how far you will go to protect someone you think you know, and friendship.
The ending! Devastating. But as expected I suppose. I didn’t know how else it could end. Well, I can guess. But the way it ended was just perfect as far as I was concerned. Ahh. Happy.
4 stars from me, a fabulous contribution to teenage literature that should be on the shelves of every school library.
I didn’t like the cover, and the synopsis didn’t set me on fire. But I was promised some queer characters, and then I read the first page or so and I was hooked. I got attached to characters too quickly, and then they died! Talk about a masterwork by the author on hooking me in realistically with her character building then just easily killing off my heart.
The whole time, I was on Laura’s side. I couldn’t believe how shallow some people were. But at the same time, I couldn’t believe how stupid Laura was. As if you would let an unknown person unlimited access to your computer! And use the same password for everything. And not have backups!
For a novel which could have been quite dry as a translation, it spoke powerfully to me and I was thinking about it while I wasn’t reading it. It seemed like more of the straight forward questions I had were answered, yet at the same time, more questions were raised. Is this really possible? Can you be raised by dogs, or wolves as in The Jungle Book?
At times, I felt exactly as David did about his son. Ben couldn’t be dead. It was painfully clear that David’s self-deception as a character came through as an unreliable narrator. This was such powerful writing, and I could feel all of the characters leaping out of their pages like real people.
Romance. Romance, romance, romance. I forget that I generally don’t enjoy the ‘smoking’ sex scenes or powerful erections. I appreciated the differences between James and Joaquin’s love-making styles, but I wasn’t left asking for more. I read other great romances (Deep Blue) lately, and they just have an individual spark that makes them great. This novel attempted to keep me interested in Mexico, specifically Acapulco, but it just didn’t happen.
I could hardly put this novel down, which was surprising because its basically a memoir. I’ve never heard of her though, so it was all new to me. I did enjoy the ‘journey’ right from the beginning of her life.
Where can I start talking about this novel? It arrived, I spotted it, and next thing it was 2 hours later and I still couldn’t put it down. …yes I have problems with being attracted to new books. The pages grabbed me right from the beginning, pulled me in, and kept me reading because things could change at any moment. And of course, I love reading about the training of new and innovative skills.
As always, it can be dangerous reading a sequel of 
The blurb of the book suggests that “a letter. In Jenna’s handwriting. Along with a key.” is the most important driving force behind the novel. In fact though there is so much more to the story. The interactions of the characters and the flipping time periods do a much better job of exploring the story.