Tag Archives: abandonment

Review: The Worst Perfect Moment Shivaun Plozza

Book Review and Content, Fantasy, Romance, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , , , , , ,
The Worst Perfect Moment by Shivaun Piozza

The Worst Perfect Moment
Shivaun Plozza
Holiday House
Published May 14, 2024

Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads

About The Worst Perfect Moment

Equal parts tender and edgy, this inventive queer romance imagines what it might feel like to come of age in the afterlife.

Tegan Masters is dead.

She’s sixteen and she’s dead and she’s standing in the parking lot of the Marybelle Motor Lodge, the single most depressing motel in all of New Jersey and the place where Tegan spent what she remembers as the worst weekend of her life.

In the front office, she meets Zelda, a cute and sarcastic girl Tegan’s age who is, in fact, an angel (wings and all). According to Zelda, Tegan is officially in heaven, where every person inhabits an exact replica of their happiest memory. For Tegan, Zelda insists, that place is the Marybelle—creepy minigolf course, revolting breakfast buffet, broken TV, and all.

Tegan has a few complaints about this.

As Zelda takes Tegan on a whirlwind tour through Tegan’s past to help her understand what mattered most to her in life, the stakes couldn’t be higher. If Zelda fails to convince Tegan that the Marybelle was the site of Tegan’s perfect moment, both girls face eternal consequences too dire to consider. But if she succeeds…they just might get their happily-ever-afterlife.

Full of humor and heartbreak, The Worst Perfect Moment asks what it means to be truly happy.

My Review

First of all, what a fantastic opening line. I love it. This book starts off with a bang, for sure. I like Tegan, too. She’s sparky, but so wounded and vulnerable underneath, and even when she doesn’t mean to let readers into that, she does. Her character easily kept me reading the book.

Zelda, the angel who designed Tegan’s personal heaven, grew on me a little. She’s very Manic Pixie Dream Girl, which I love seeing in a female-female romance, but isn’t my favorite trope, so I struggled with that. She’s goofy and fun, but determinedly crude, which, again, is not my favorite. Too many “butt-face” comments for me.

The scenes that revisit Tegan’s past and show what actually happened, especially the moments she doesn’t want to remember, hit hard. They showed how complex trauma and grief can be. Each one built up emotionally so that by the time I hit the final flashback, it hit hard. That was so well done.

Readers looking for a new spin on the Manic Pixie trope and who enjoy no-holds-barred humor will probably enjoy this one a lot.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Tegan and a few other girl characters are romantically interested in girls..

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Lots of crude comments. Lots of swearing. A few f-bombs.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between two girls.

Spiritual Content
Tegan wakes up in the afterlife, in which heaven is supposed to be living at the site of your best memory forever. Purgatory is for people who die with too much unresolved trauma, and means people watch memories of their lives and have the emotions they experienced painfully scrubbed away. Hell, of course, is eternal torture.

Angels are assigned different jobs. There are guardian angels and angels who design a heaven scenario for someone. Tegan visits a counselor, someone who helps her process her death.

Tegan attended Catholic school for a part of her education. There are some references to sins and Catholic doctrines like purgatory, but very little reference to God or faith practices.

Violent Content
References to a girl on a bike being hit by a car, which killed her.

Tegan remembers arguments between her parents, which seem scary and chaotic to her. She sees her dad lose it and kick a door repeatedly. The story deals with abandonment by a parent.

Drug Content
Tegan’s aunt gets drunk and tells her something cruel.

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which do not cost you anything to use but help support this blog. I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Review: When Light Left Us by Leah Thomas

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Paranormal, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , ,

When Light Left Us
Leah Thomas
Bloomsbury
Published on February 13, 2018

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

About When Light Left Us
When the Vasquez siblings’ father left, it seemed nothing could remedy the absence in their lives . . . until a shimmering figure named Luz appeared in the canyon behind their house.

Luz filled the void. He shot hoops with seventeen-year-old Hank’s hands. He showed fourteen-year-old Ana cinematic beauty behind her eyelids. He spoke kindly to eight-year-old Milo. But then Luz left, too, and he took something from each of them. As a new school year begins, Ana, Hank, and Milo must carry on as if an alien presence never altered them. But how can they ever feel close to other people again when Luz changed everything about how they see the world and themselves?

In an imaginative and heartfelt exploration of human—and non-human—nature, Leah Thomas champions the unyielding bonds between family and true friends.

My Review
When Light Left Us is a really odd book. Some of the oddness kind of made it hard for me to get into the story at first. I liked all three of the kids, though, so as I got to know them, I got more into the story. The writing is amazing. Even when the plot didn’t hook me, I would find myself lost in the stark descriptions of things, especially of the emotions of the characters. Thomas finds these really powerful and often unorthodox ways of describing things that is like tossing you into a swimming pool of that emotion. Suddenly, you’re swallowed up by feelings. I loved that about her earlier books and found it to be equally true in this one, too.

I liked that the siblings had really distinct traits and ways of thinking and talking. Ana with her sarcasm and Hank with his uncertainty. Milo with his helium-filled optimism. So great! I wasn’t crazy about the fact that their mom had her own point-of-view scenes at first, but it did add to the story. I’m not sure if teen readers would connect with her the same way that I did as a mom, though. Lots of the things she said and did resonated with me.

All in all, the story never gets un-weird. A strange alien-ish creature changes the lives of the humans it contacts. They must fight their way back from the trauma of losing their dad and then losing contact with the alien presence. But the characters, the power of the storytelling make When Light Left Us a strong, unforgettable story.

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Cultural Elements
Hank, Ana, and Milo’s dad is Mexican and their mom is white. Hank is gay.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing and references to kissing between a boy and girl and a boy and boy.

Spiritual Content
Luz is possibly an alien or other sentient being who communicates with his hosts and can take control of their bodies.

Violent Content
Hank remembers attacking two people and trying to choke them. Ana has a history of cutting herself and briefly remembers some of those experiences. A boy attacks Hank, punching and kicking him. Luz seems fascinated with death and nearly forces two people to end their lives while he controls them.

Drug Content
None.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.