Book Review: Hyacinth Girls




The storyline of Lauren Frankel's Hyacinth Girls hit a little too close to home. It is a disjointed story of a young girl being bullied and the lack of awareness by the adults as to what's happening.


Recently a 13-year-old middle school girl in our town killed herself after being bullied. The other kids called her all kinds of things, said she was gay, and made up websites to torment her. Her parents and the school officials were seemingly unaware. Her suicide is such a horrible tragedy.


I could not help but think of her as I read this book. But, the main character in Hyacinth Girls is a girl named Callie who was first a bully her self and then was bullied. She was completely unlikeable. I had trouble drumming up any sympathy or empathy for her, even as she moved toward suicide as the only way out. It's hard to like a book that doesn't let you care enough about it's middle-school-aged character to care whether she lives or dies.


Plus, the book had a lot of flashbacks to her caregiver's younger days and I found that storyline completely uninteresting. What kept me reading was the fact that I was trying to wade through the facts and figure out whether my narrators were even reliable. I didn't entirely trust that what they were telling the reader was true.


Thought-provoking.


*I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for this review.