Rashika, The Book Owl

***This review has also been posted on The Social Potato

The Accident Season is a book I cannot completely make my mind about. I liked some things but other things didn’t work for me. There were also some things I liked in theory but ended up not loving.

One of the biggest issues I had was that even though I liked the characters, I didn’t feel like I could relate to them. There were so many things written between the lines about what was up with these characters and I am not sure if that worked for me. It’s not that reading between the lines was hard but because I spend so much time doing that, it was hard to really form a meaningful connection to these readers. I felt for them, I REALLY did but I felt for them the way a stranger might sympathize with a bad situation.

I DID love the way the relationships were done in this book though. There are great friendships, great relationships between parents and children and parents that aren’t portrayed as the bad guys. Relationships are so important in books and I like that there were so many positive ones in this book. It doesn’t mean that everything was happy but then again, no relationship is perfect.

I also loved the way the author brought diversity into the book. It’s done in a way that doesn’t really put much emphasis on it but rather normalizes diversity. It’s just there and readers can do whatever they want with it.

I expected a creepy element to this book and there really wasn’t one. I mean there was Elsie but she wasn’t creepy, she was just odd. This book had a certain dream like quality to it that was definitely charming and drew me in but I also just wanted to know more.

I don’t like the way things were wrapped up and was left wanting more. There seemed to be something missing. I hate that so many things were kept from readers (although it really isn’t hard to connect the dots… it’s just annoying that everything seems vague.) I like vagueness but I don’t like it when it’s done to such a degree that important issues that come up cannot even be discussed.

Overall, I don’t really regret reading The Accident Season but I sure would have liked it if some of the issues were discussed and not everything was shrouded under a layer of mystery.

Note that I received an advanced copy of the book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review