Putting a beautiful face upside down on the cover….you know this is a dead person, right? Reminds me of Six Feet Under. Author Jen Violi has written a book that is very readable, realistic and memorable. I admit it was a slow start for me as a reader but by the end, I felt the book made its point(s). Donna Parisi lost her father to cancer at age 14 and we meet her as a senior in high school. I am still not quite clear why Donna chooses mortuary school over college but she does and her relationship with her mother, still affected by the family’s loss, becomes a point of pain and dissonance for both of them. How do you move on from a loss like that? Do parents have a right to move on? Lots of choices confront Donna – friendships, Donna’s personal decisions about whether or not get involved intimately with a love interest, new love interests, life vocation choices. The book is written in first person with Donna’s voice exploring, judging, re-calculating, lamenting, forgiving, seeking all the challenges that come to an 18 year old. I like how her friends were portrayed. The encounter with Tim, a lovely but spacey young heart throb who’d love to sleep with Donna, presents her with some tough moments of ‘this is good’ but ‘is this good for me?’ questions. Jen Violi created believable situations (once you get past the idea that Donna is choosing at 18 to seek the vocational path of mortician school) with friends, family and life. Big themes in a daily life setting. I’d recommend this to readers who may be inhabiting some of those same moments of decision-making and life choices. Good Read.
