Published by: Dutton Juvenile on June 14th, 2011
Genre: Magical Realism
Pages: 348
Format: Paperback
Source: Purchased
Goodreads
🌟🌟🌟🌟
Synopsis:
Chloe's older sister, Ruby, is the girl everyone looks to and longs for, who can't be captured or caged. When a night with Ruby's friends goes horribly wrong and Chloe discovers the dead body of her classmate London Hayes left floating in the reservoir, Chloe is sent away from town and away from Ruby.
But Ruby will do anything to get her sister back, and when Chloe returns to town two years later, deadly surprises await. As Chloe flirts with the truth that Ruby has hidden deeply away, the fragile line between life and death is redrawn by the complex bonds of sisterhood.
With palpable drama and delicious craft, Nova Ren Suma bursts onto the YA scene with the story that everyone will be talking about.
Review:
Ughhh, Nova Ren Suma is a freaking WIZARD! I mean, wow. Her books are so odd, so strange, so unpredictable, but above all else, her books are BRILLIANT. I read her books kinda backwards, as I have already read her later books and just last month, read her debut. I can see how she has grown as a writer & storyteller. Her books all have this mysterious & magical quality to them that I just ADORE.
Did I mention she's an auto-read author for me? Because she is and has been since last fall when I first read one of her books.
With Suma's books, you don't usually know what's going on. There's a lot of suggestible things in her books that make you really wonder what the hell is going on. With magical realism, you wonder what's real and what's magic. I wondered that in her other books, but I definitely wondered it in Imaginary Girls, maybe even more than her other books.
Ruby bugged the absolute crap out of me. She was annoying, clingy, pushy, authoritative, cruel and all sorts of other adjectives. While I couldn't stand the way she treated Chloe (I'll get into that later) it was the way she treated everyone else that pissed me off. Especially, the guys that lived in the town. She was utterly awful to them. I never thought I'd be defending the male gender in this book, but holy crap was Ruby cruel to them.
She treated Chloe like crap too. She was overbearing, critical, bossy and just basically acting like a parent. This made absolutely no sense because Chloe had been living with her father for awhile, so clearly she had at least one functional parent. Ruby saw herself as Chloe's mom, and I knew this was going to be a potentially big issue with unhealthy boundaries. And it was a big issue as the book unfolded.
As much as I couldn't stand the way Ruby treated those around her, I found her so captivating. Especially when strange things happens and she hints that she had a part in the strange incidents. The lengths Ruby goes to keep Chloe alive are both crazy & awesome. I won't say more about that because I don't want to spoil anyone who hasn't read the book.
Final thoughts: This book is so atmospheric as all of Suma's books are. So creepy, dark and mysterious. I cannot wait to get my hands on her upcoming release.
No comments