Reviewed
by: ?wazithinkin
Genre:
YA / Coming of Age / Adventure / Contemporary Fantasy
Approximate
word count: 75-80,000
words
Availability
Click
on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes &
Noble, or Smashwords store
Author:
“Aaron
Michael Ritchey was born with Colorado thunderstorms in his soul.
He's sought shelter as a world traveler, an endurance athlete, a
story addict, and even gave serious thought to becoming a Roman
Catholic priest. After too brief a time in Paris, he moved back to
the American West and lives semi-comfortably with three forces of
nature: a little, blonde hurricane, an artistic tornado, and a
beautiful, beautiful blizzard.”
Mr.
Ritchey’s Long
Live the Suicide King
was a nominee in BigAl’s Books and Pals 2015 Readers’ Choice
Awards under the YA category. For more, visit his website.
Description:
“Sixteen-year-old
Beth Meyers creeps through her days, terrified of her domineering
mother and viciously pretty sisters. Beth’s only comfort is reading
to her catatonic grandmother. Then the impossible happens. Grandma
May awakens, desperate to get to France by midnight on Halloween,
only five days away. Someone named Phillip will be there waiting,
someone she knew when she fought the Nazis during World War II. But
is Grandma May telling the truth? For the first time in her life,
Beth will defy her mother and sneak her grandmother out of the
nursing home and across the Atlantic. There she will find answers,
romance, and a world she never dreamed could possibly exist.”
Appraisal:
Beth
is a junior in high school, a bit over-weight, insecure, and a
terribly introverted sixteen-year-old. Mostly because of her verbally
abusive mother and younger sisters. Her twin sisters, Megan and
Melinda, are pretty, thin, and popular. All of which, Beth is not.
Beth has only one memory of her grandmother before the nursing home.
She was six years-old and they were making cookies, Grandma May
smiled with kind blue eyes and called her Elizabeth. Not Beth, not
Bethie, but Elizabeth. Beth longed to be headstrong and confident
like Elizabeth Bennet in Pride
and Prejudice, one of her
favorite stories.
While
Beth was reading to Grandma May, she suddenly awakens and wants to
make plans to fly to Paris to rendezvous with Phillip at midnight on
Halloween, Beth thinks her grandma is delusional. However, May seems
so full of life and promise that Beth follows along at first just to
keep her safe. So… the adventure begins. This is a wild adventurous
roller-coaster ride that tests friendships, loyalty, obligations,
responsibilities, reality, love, and truth.
The
plot is character driven and told through Beth’s eyes. She is
dismayed a lot of the time. (Ha! I get it!) But May keeps challenging
Beth to stretch outside of her comfort zone, to find the confidence
she needs to succeed within herself. May does this by showing her
examples. May can be quite a swindler, she knows how to read people
and connect with them. Is this a form of magic? At each stage of
Grandma May’s quest the goal is to be reunited with Phillip, her
one true love. May has held onto a poem written by Phillip for
sixty-four years. In this poem is a riddle they must decipher to find
the next poem and a small treasure. It’s like a scavenger hunt
through May’s past and they are being followed by tattooed men.
When
the tattooed men show up in France in force, Beth and May are chased.
It becomes clear that these men seek to end May’s quest by any
means necessary and things suddenly get real for Beth. At the train
station a young handicapped Frenchman, Quince, helps Beth and May
escape the tattooed men yet again. He offers them a safe place to
stay and decides to join their quest. But there is a dramatic turn
when Grandma May meets with tragedy and is weakening. All she wants
now is one last kiss from Phillip before she dies.
Beth
ends up risking more than she should to try to make that happen for
May by taking over her quest. As she meets the final stage head-on
Beth learns she can walk through her fear afraid. There are some
emotional twists and dramatic revelations towards the end of this
story that caught me unaware. Aaron Michael Ritchey has been able to
take this coming of age tale to a whole new level. The adventure is
engrossing, the tension continues to build through the entire story
with suspense and emotion. The characters are unique, charming, and
the relationships have a realistic feel to them. I have to say, well
done! This is a journey extraordinaire.
Format/Typo
Issues:
I was
given an advance readers copy to review. However, I found no
significant issues.
Rating:
***** Five stars
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