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rsadelleI read about M+O 4EVR in a ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
50books_poc review that made a point not to spoil it. I went and read the summary at Amazon so I would be spoiled, and then put off reading it because I thought it was likely to be the kind of YA novel that would make me cry. Our protagonist is O (her real name is Opal, but no one calls her that). When we join her at the beginning of the book, she's being dragged out of the laundromat by Marianne, the M of the title. M and O have been best friends since they were children - a bond formed, in part, by being the only Black kids in their town - but they're not as close now. O is in love with M, and M has been publicly distancing herself from O in a bid for popularity. In part of the opening adventures of the book, M and O go hang out in a field where O declines to share in the heroin M is snorting. M runs off toward the ravine, and O chases her for a while before she decides she's had enough and goes home instead. In the middle of the night, O's grandmother wakes her up to tell her that M is dead, that they found her body in the ravine. The rest of the book is intermingled flashbacks of their growing up, O dealing with her grief, and the half true, half fairy tale story of Hannah, a runaway slave.
The problem I had with the book is that I couldn't quite engage with O's grief because we only see M treating her badly before her death. The rest of it is very well written; I was very engaged in both the flashbacks and Hannah's story, and while the flashbacks did make me better understand and sympathize with M, that initial dislike of her was hard to change. I don't know how that would be different if I were a teenager who might not be able to see M's initial behavior from a grown-up perspective.
50books_poc review that made a point not to spoil it. I went and read the summary at Amazon so I would be spoiled, and then put off reading it because I thought it was likely to be the kind of YA novel that would make me cry. Our protagonist is O (her real name is Opal, but no one calls her that). When we join her at the beginning of the book, she's being dragged out of the laundromat by Marianne, the M of the title. M and O have been best friends since they were children - a bond formed, in part, by being the only Black kids in their town - but they're not as close now. O is in love with M, and M has been publicly distancing herself from O in a bid for popularity. In part of the opening adventures of the book, M and O go hang out in a field where O declines to share in the heroin M is snorting. M runs off toward the ravine, and O chases her for a while before she decides she's had enough and goes home instead. In the middle of the night, O's grandmother wakes her up to tell her that M is dead, that they found her body in the ravine. The rest of the book is intermingled flashbacks of their growing up, O dealing with her grief, and the half true, half fairy tale story of Hannah, a runaway slave.The problem I had with the book is that I couldn't quite engage with O's grief because we only see M treating her badly before her death. The rest of it is very well written; I was very engaged in both the flashbacks and Hannah's story, and while the flashbacks did make me better understand and sympathize with M, that initial dislike of her was hard to change. I don't know how that would be different if I were a teenager who might not be able to see M's initial behavior from a grown-up perspective.