Jade DeLuna likes to watch elephants on the zoo's webcam as a way of dealing with her panic disorder. One day she notices a boy with a baby. They become regulars and Jade sees that on the days they don't come, the boy will show up at the elephant enclosure in the middle of the night. In her desire to meet this boy, Jade eventually starts volunteering with the elephants every day after school. But that's not what the book is about. It's about relationships and how they change and Jade taking control of her life and not letting the panic and fear rule her.
There is a lot going on in this novel. There are so many relationships being explored: Jade and Sebastian (the boy), Jade and her mother, Jade's parents, Jade's father and Jade's brother, all sorts of elephant-relationship craziness, Jade and her friends, Jade's father and sports...
Most interesting is the relationship between Jade and her mother. Jade's mom is super-involved at Jade's school and seems to try to be recapturing the high school experience she never actually had. So, Jade's mom chaperones the homecoming dance, complete with new dress, salon appointment hair, and a freak out about finding the perfect shoes, while Jade opts out and instead watches movies with friends. Jade and her mother are extremely close, but Jade can't help but slightly resent her mother's involvement at school. Their relationship is further strained by the ever-present fact that Jade will be going off to college next year and this colors their intereactions.
It does sometimes get bogged down under the weight of everything that's being explored. Near the end, Jade lacks the real anger needed to make her truly believable. Also, the final twist with Sebastain had me going "Really? That's where you want to go with this?" because it hijacked the rest of the novel--instead of being an exploration of all these relationships, the last bit became out this other thing entirely, which really wasn't necessary.
Overall though, I did generally like it although it dragged in places.
Book Provided by... my local library
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2 comments:
aStore by Amazon is a ripoff of webmasters.
Anybody who knows marketing knows that people rarely purchase when they first see a product.
So Amazon makes you an offer of paying you up to 15% of a sale through your website when they know only 4% of people will buy then, but another 96% will mark the Amazon page, to later come back and make the purchase thanks to you. But since the sale was not made at the time through your site you make nothing. What a ripoff!
Anon--
As a former marketing professional, I know you are right. (When advertising events, people have to see something 3 times before it even registers.)
On the other hand, getting that 4% is much better than getting 0%, at least in my book.
I'll also be frank, the vast majority of items purchased through my Associates link are not items I linked to, but rather things people buy through my site as a way to support my work.
While not 100% ideal, I'd hardly call it a ripoff! But then again, I'm not in it for the money.
Thanks for reading!
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