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Kissing Annabel: Love, Ghosts, And Facial Hair; A Place Like This (1996)

by Steven Herrick(Favorite Author)

3.29 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1416982876 (ISBN13: 9781416982876)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Simon Pulse

review 1: What an awful title and unfortunate cover art for a pretty spectacular collection of poems. What's up with teen books and 3-item list titles, anyway? This book (at least the edition I just read) sells itself as a teen boy coming of age book- and it is, but it is so much more than that dreadful title implies.What we actually have is a montage through a year(ish) in the life of a teenage boy, his girlfriend, his dad, his sister, and a pit stop here or there with other characters. Jack's mother died seven years ago, and his family is struggling with the reality of life without her. The poems fly through different events of the character's lives and focus on letting us see more and more of them and their hearts as the story progresses.The poems are wild, fierce, beautiful, unp... moreredictable. They are haunting, sad, funny, and I couldn't get enough of them. The characters have depth, they think about things, and Herrick gives us little snapshots of them that tantalize and make us want to know them better.A beautiful, sometimes flat-out stunning, collection.
review 2: With a cover like the paperback, it would be hard to get it into the hands of boys, when the narrator is a boy! What a disconnect between the story and cover. There are times when I can't appreciate the narration and story because the author is not American. Herrick is Australian, which affects my understanding of a lot of the humor, conversations, and situations. I did not like this novel-in-verse. Jack's character didn't grab me and his sometime whiny thoughts over the death of his mother seemed too unemotional to be plausible. less

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