After reading the rather lengthy Giants in the Earth last week, I wanted a lighter read next. I decided on Jennifer E. Smith's Windfall, a young adult impulse purchase that I made last year (based on the pretty cover). I had a feeling that this would probably be a fun story, but would ultimately end up on the donate pile afterwards. Since I'm looking to get rid of some of my books before I move in August, I figured this was a good choice.
The plot concerns Alice, an eighteen-year old girl making her way through her senior year of high school in Chicago. She hasn't had an easy time growing up; both her mother and her father ended up dying just over a year apart from each other when she was nine. Ever since then, she's lived with her aunt and uncle. Her life with them is great, but she struggles daily with the pain of losing her parents. To make matters more emotionally complicated, she's been secretly in love with her best friend Teddy for years, and is on the verge of finally confessing her feelings to him.
At the start of the novel, Alice buys Teddy a lottery ticket for his eighteenth birthday. To everyone's astonishment, it ends up being a winner. All of a sudden, Teddy goes from scraping by in a one bedroom apartment with his single mom to being a multimillionaire. This windfall is a blessing for his family, but as the months wear on, this newfound wealth changes Teddy. A more arrogant, careless version of himself begins to emerge, which devastates Alice. She abandons her plan to confess her feelings and begins trying to resign herself to the fact that the jackpot she brought to her best friend might end up separating them forever. Windfall is a novel about the randomness of life and the power of money, with both of its characters learning about how some moments in life irrevocably change everything that comes after them--and it up to you to make those changes good ones or bad ones.
This was a nice read, with a surprising amount of emotional depth to it. While Teddy and his money are what most of the events in the novel revolve around, the story is still mostly about Alice and her quest to define herself after the loss of her parents. Since their deaths, she has filled her time doing what was important to them. She volunteers at a variety of places, plans to move back to their old hometown of San Francisco, and focuses her college search on Stanford, the university her mother loved. While her life is good and these plans are fine, she's beginning to realize that her identity is getting swallowed up in things her parents valued, and as a result, she's not sure who she is. Teddy's lottery winnings force her to reevaluate what she's doing with her life, as she starts to realize that the future she hoped for with him might not happen. Smith writes her inner thoughts and dialogue with others beautifully, with many heartbreaking and introspective moments emerging. Alice's character felt real and well-developed, and I found myself rooting for her as I read.
In fact, I could have done with way less of Teddy, as his self-centered, immature nature grew under the influence of all his money. He said so many uncaring, tone deaf, and mean comments to Alice over the course of the the story that I was completely fed up with him. I couldn't understand why Alice persisted in mooning over him when he hurt her so regularly. Alice comments several times throughout the story that she know he has flaws, but can't help feeling the way she does about him. This is a common trope in young adult fiction - liking the "bad boy" even though you know it's not healthy for you - and I don't find it to be particularly realistic or compelling. Of course, Teddy is revealed to have a heart of gold underneath all that bravado, which, hey, might be true. However, I didn't feel like Alice needed to deal with this project of a boy when she had so much work she needed to do on herself. It would have been a less orthodox, and more brave choice, to have her remain his good friend, but this novel ends the way that most young adult romances do.
So, my initial thoughts about Windfall turned out to be true. It was a fun read, but not a special favorite. I would not hesitate to recommend this to a teen reader interested in romance, but I don't think adults will find a ton to hang onto here. It was an entertaining few hours, with a surprising amount of emotion to it. It will be one for my donate pile, where I hope it will find its way into the hands of a teen reader who falls in love with it.
Challenge Tally:
Total Books Read in 2018: 26
No comments:
Post a Comment
So, what do you think?