The Girl and the Grove by Eric Smith
Title: The Girl and the Grove
Author: Eric Smith
Publisher: Flux
Release Date: May 8, 2018
Genre: YA Fantasy
My Rating: ★★★☆☆
Synopsis:
Teenager Leila’s life is full of challenges. From bouncing around the foster care system to living with seasonal affective disorder, she’s never had an easy road. Leila keeps herself busy with her passion for environmental advocacy, monitoring the Urban Ecovists message board and joining a local environmental club with her best friend Sarika. And now that Leila has finally been adopted, she dares to hope her life will improve.
But the voices in Leila’s head are growing louder by the day. Ignoring them isn’t working anymore. Something calls out to her from the grove at Fairmount Park.
Review:
The Girl and the Grove is an enjoyable read. When I first started reading it, I wasn't sure if I'd like it or not because it is slightly different than the fantasy stories I usually read. It has a few fantasy elements, but it's not the hardcore fantasy with Harry Potter-like worlds that I'm used to. Instead, this story focuses on present-day issues, such as saving and preserving the environment around us. I really liked this aspect of the story.
Another element I loved in this book is the representation of foster children. I haven't seen many books with representation like this, and the way Smith weaves the topic of adoption in with the fantasy elements through symbolism makes this book unique.
There are, however, a few weak points in the book. In the beginning of the story, I fell in love with the characters' personalities immediately. As I read farther into the story, I noticed the characters weren't changing much. There were a few instances where Leila's character developed a bit more, but other than that, the characters remained the same as they were from the start. I would've loved to see the characters grow more throughout the story, and since they did not grow much, I had a hard time feeling that deep connection with them like I did in the start of the book. Characters that grow and create new personal goals are the characters I strongly root for, but this wasn't the case in The Girl and the Grove. This leads me to my next point--conflict.
Since the characters didn't continue growing, there wasn't a buildup of conflict and suspense throughout the story. When a character develops throughout their arc, more conflicts--both internal and external--tend to arise. This means the characters will create new goals, giving the reader more reasons to continue reading the story to cheer the characters on as they battle their next obstacles. Without the introduction of new goals and personal conflicts related to the character arcs, the story had a few slow chapters that didn't captivate me as much as other chapters did. This lack of conflict and suspense made the pacing die off a few times.
There were also times when the story had rough transitions. This mostly occurred when a text conversation, a tweet, or a message board was inserted into the novel. More often than not, there was no transition leading us to the social media conversations. One moment we'd be going to, for example, the hospital. In the next moment, a message board would be on the following page with no context. This jumping back and forth between the story and social media conversations made some of the scenes a bit choppy. However, the use of social media (such as Twitter, message boards, and DMs) to tell parts of the story is a very unique aspect of this book. Most of the time, I only see authors use texting to communicate parts of the story. Here, the author uses other popular social media sites to show the vast communication network at our fingertips, along with the impact this opportunity can have on a community.
Although there were some areas of the book that could've been strengthened, I enjoyed this book from start to finish. I would definitely recommend this book to people who enjoy fantasy stories that relate to present-day issues.
*I received an eARC through NetGalley. Thank you to the publisher for the opportunity to review this book.