Jane Godwin
Forfatter af Red House, Tree House, Little Bitty Brown Mouse
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Image credit: Allen and Unwin Media Centre
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Værker af Jane Godwin
Look Me in the Eye 1 eksemplar
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Statistikker
- Værker
- 55
- Medlemmer
- 928
- Popularitet
- #27,659
- Vurdering
- 3.8
- Anmeldelser
- 19
- ISBN
- 129
- Sprog
- 5
Trigger warnings: Hospitalisation of children in the past, physical injury, blood, grief and loss depiction, death of a child and friend, car crash, cancer, medical content, surgery, near-death experiences
Score: Six and a half out of ten.
Find this review on The StoryGraph.
As Happy As Here by Jane Godwin wasn't as strong as When Rain Turns to Snow. I wanted to read this one for a while after enjoying When Rain Turns to Snow last year, but I put it off for a few months before it was time to pick it up. I glanced at the intriguing blurb, but headed in with low expectations after seeing the ratings. When I closed the final page, I thought it was okay.
It starts with a prologue with Evie seeing a car crashing into a van, with a piano falling out of it and hitting her legs, ending her dreams as a long-distance runner, then the story begins when I see two more characters hospitalised for different reasons--Lucy, who has leukaemia, and Jemma, who underwent surgery for a ruptured appendix. The premise implied these three girls would bond together, and I thought they might befriend each other, but that's not what happened. The mystery is more of a subplot and not part of the central storyline, and that only caused Evie, Lucy and Jemma to work together, not as friends, though, more like partners. However, at that point I didn't care for that anymore, nor could I connect or relate with them.
Anyway. Once the narrative sidelined that investigation, the three characters try to further develop their relationships, which wasn't that exciting, until all of them escaped the hospital. That's incredibly unlikely. Where's the security? All their parents only play a minor role and are mostly in the background, letting the nurses take care of them while they were in the infirmary. I enjoyed When Rain Turns to Snow more since it had better characters and execution, unlike As Happy As Here. The conclusion finishes the creation on a bittersweet note as Evie and Lucy get to leave the hospital alive, but Jemma succumbed to a hit-and-run. I wanted the best case scenario where all the protagonists survive, but I didn't get that.