Lo so, l'avete vista anche l'altro giorno - e ora la vedete di nuovo, stavolta in inglese.
You have to know English isn’t my first language, so feel free to correct me if I make some mistakes while writing this review.
Author: Denise Brown
Publication Date: November 11th 2021
Pages: 234 (Kindle Edition)
Publisher: Hashtag Press
Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/3n2HOq2
Plot: When Summer’s best friend Cee dies from cardiac arrest after both girls have taken pills, the accusations on social media begin, but as the bullying intensifies, Summer grows closer to revealing the secret both families are harbouring.
Publication Date: November 11th 2021
Pages: 234 (Kindle Edition)
Publisher: Hashtag Press
Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/3n2HOq2
Plot: When Summer’s best friend Cee dies from cardiac arrest after both girls have taken pills, the accusations on social media begin, but as the bullying intensifies, Summer grows closer to revealing the secret both families are harbouring.
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From those blurb's few lines, it looks like a mystery young adult - and while it's true a little mystery is in there, it's not as broad and present as it might seem at first.
As much as I love the American setting in a book or a movie, I have to say that when I find myself reading about stories set in the UK, I already feel more in my element since I'm Italian - I don't know, maybe it's because of the same continent or similar stories and ways of doing things. For example, we most come of age at 18 instead of 21 as in the US - and if you are a teenager here, it's easier enough to look more mature than your age or to have an adult friend to get you alcohol, which is more difficult if you have to bridge a gap up to a 21-year-old someone.
And I've seen a lot of European teenagers' lives in Summer and Cee, who are used to go out with Cee's older brother - Ritchie, the boy Summer has always been in love with - and his company, gathering at the park to party and have almost always some alcohol at hand. Seriously, it was all perfectly believable in my eyes - in the eyes of my 14-year-old self who already drank low-alcohol content cocktails, in the eyes of my 16-year-old self who went dancing in the clubs and already drank vodka or tequila because in 2005 there was no law banning the sale of alcohol to minors under eighteen years of age.
Summer and Cee, despite not having immediately started their journey together as best friends, later found in each other the person who understood them the most. Both have difficult family situations: Summer has a mother who rarely behaves like one and her priority has always been keep her boyfriends content and have all their attention on her - even now that she has been with Mac for some time and has had a second child, Jonah, she can't manage to live up to the role; Cee, instead, has a mother whom she calls "the Ovary" who always had children with different men and somehow it's up to Cee to raise them. School is seen as a waste of time, so much so that even the teachers have given up on them and no longer call home to report absence - for Summer and Cee, the most important thing is to go out with the guys, go to clubs and find relief where they can in a life they hate.
But one night Summer goes out with a guy she has recently met and she didn't expect Tom to bring a friend along, so she begs Cee to join her. Summer knows she's whiny and always in need of her friend, but she finally manages to convince Cee - Cee reaches her in the car with a bottle of gin and pills, Drake is on the radio and everything seems to be fine, but in an instant the car skids and at the exact same moment, Summer sees Cee's lips turn blue.
When Summer wakes up in the hospital many things have changed, the first one Cee being dead. Why didn't Summer know Cee had a heart condition? Cee's mother blames her for the death of her daughter because Summer made her leave the house in the middle of the night, on social networks they attack her and say that her tears are fake, her old friends avoid her and basically everyone thinks that she was the one who brought the pills that killed Cee - but that's not true, Cee brought them. And where did Cee get them?
The part of the pills and where they come from - although it remains a latent question in Summer's mind for most of the book - does get an answer, but it's not the main focus of this story.
I Am Winter is a somewhat introspective novel, which immerses us in Summer's family life and shows us the spiral of depression and guilt into which she falls. If only she hadn't called Cee that night, if only she hadn't been so needy ... And it's not just because of her guilt that Summer falls into depression, but we also see how she becomes a prisoner of her own home due to threats she receives not only online, but also through the letterbox on the door.
I appreciate how Summer continues to "see" and "talk" to Cee in her room - how the missing of her is something tangible. I appreciated how she reunites with an old childhood friend, Kofi, and how she discovers another soul akin to hers. I appreciated how the estrangement to her old life and old habits have made her rediscover her little brother with Down syndrome and his needs - making her even more attentive to her mother's mood swings and the furious arguments Lizzie has with Mac.
I have seen a lot of myself in her reflections on friendship, especially when you have one special friend that you somehow depend on for a variety of things - in the end, other people were really friends with you or they were because they were first friends with your friend and basically you were just the "plus one" to them that no one really wanted around?
I less appreciated the way a few events of the past, especially in the first half of the book, were inserted into the narrative: very often it wasn't so clear if they were things that happened a long time ago or if they were things that just happened or even contemporary. Surely it was due to the fact that I read an eARC, but certain points didn't go exactly as smooth as they were supposed to and the rhythm was jammed.
Another thing that was unclear to me is the animal that Summer defines as her protector and that lives in the woods, in an oak hollow where Summer took refuge when needed as a kid and hid her treasures. Was it real? Does it exist? Summer calls it her "bear-wolf" throughout the book because as a child she didn't know how to identify the species but, in addition to the doubt about its existence, the doubt about the type of animal also remains.
I would have also appreciated a few more initial moments dedicated to the development of Summer and Cee's friendship - in the prologue they are classmates and neighbors who accidentally spend an afternoon together when their usual friends are not available, the next page we find them as a couple of fifteen-year-old girls and best friends, with Cee who spends most of her nights sleeping at Summer's house to escape her mother.
The pills' source totally took me by surprise, but even about this important matter we discover the minimum necessary as there's no real discussion that explains why and wherefore - if it was a "one and only" type of situation on the part of this person or if that's a habit, since Summer witnessed something worrying before.
In general I appreciated I Am Winter: it provides a more than accurate drawing of adolescence in which I've also seen part of my own, it has important themes within it and on many occasions I felt so sorry for Summer, for she has to behave like an adult when the real adults are focused only on themselves and not on the needs of their children - I cheered for her when she finds the strength to rebel, even if we don't find out exactly how it goes given the open ending. Too bad for the rhythm that gets jammed on more than one occasion and for certain circumstances and dynamics that I would have liked to see a little more in-depth.
I Am Winter is a somewhat introspective novel, which immerses us in Summer's family life and shows us the spiral of depression and guilt into which she falls. If only she hadn't called Cee that night, if only she hadn't been so needy ... And it's not just because of her guilt that Summer falls into depression, but we also see how she becomes a prisoner of her own home due to threats she receives not only online, but also through the letterbox on the door.
I appreciate how Summer continues to "see" and "talk" to Cee in her room - how the missing of her is something tangible. I appreciated how she reunites with an old childhood friend, Kofi, and how she discovers another soul akin to hers. I appreciated how the estrangement to her old life and old habits have made her rediscover her little brother with Down syndrome and his needs - making her even more attentive to her mother's mood swings and the furious arguments Lizzie has with Mac.
I have seen a lot of myself in her reflections on friendship, especially when you have one special friend that you somehow depend on for a variety of things - in the end, other people were really friends with you or they were because they were first friends with your friend and basically you were just the "plus one" to them that no one really wanted around?
I less appreciated the way a few events of the past, especially in the first half of the book, were inserted into the narrative: very often it wasn't so clear if they were things that happened a long time ago or if they were things that just happened or even contemporary. Surely it was due to the fact that I read an eARC, but certain points didn't go exactly as smooth as they were supposed to and the rhythm was jammed.
Another thing that was unclear to me is the animal that Summer defines as her protector and that lives in the woods, in an oak hollow where Summer took refuge when needed as a kid and hid her treasures. Was it real? Does it exist? Summer calls it her "bear-wolf" throughout the book because as a child she didn't know how to identify the species but, in addition to the doubt about its existence, the doubt about the type of animal also remains.
I would have also appreciated a few more initial moments dedicated to the development of Summer and Cee's friendship - in the prologue they are classmates and neighbors who accidentally spend an afternoon together when their usual friends are not available, the next page we find them as a couple of fifteen-year-old girls and best friends, with Cee who spends most of her nights sleeping at Summer's house to escape her mother.
The pills' source totally took me by surprise, but even about this important matter we discover the minimum necessary as there's no real discussion that explains why and wherefore - if it was a "one and only" type of situation on the part of this person or if that's a habit, since Summer witnessed something worrying before.
In general I appreciated I Am Winter: it provides a more than accurate drawing of adolescence in which I've also seen part of my own, it has important themes within it and on many occasions I felt so sorry for Summer, for she has to behave like an adult when the real adults are focused only on themselves and not on the needs of their children - I cheered for her when she finds the strength to rebel, even if we don't find out exactly how it goes given the open ending. Too bad for the rhythm that gets jammed on more than one occasion and for certain circumstances and dynamics that I would have liked to see a little more in-depth.
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