Skip to main content

THE LUCKY KIND by Alyssa B. Sheinmel



copyright date: May 2011
primarily marketed for: young adults (14 and up)

I picked up this book because I had fallen in love with Alyssa B. Sheinmel’s first book for young adults The Beautiful Between.  I have to admit I was slightly disappointed with The Lucky Kind because I had such high expectations. 

Both books are about family secrets, but I found the relationships and dialogue in The Beautiful Between to be much more realistically drawn than the family relationships and dialogue in The Lucky Kind.  I am wondering if that might not be due to the protagonist of this book being a guy instead of a girl.  I am curious to hear if guys find Nick more or less believable than I did.

The Lucky Kind tells the story of Nick Brandt, a high school senior who is well-adjusted and wants for nothing in life, other than to get Eden Reiss, the girl of his dreams, to notice him.

When things start to look like they’re working out with Eden, his relationship with his father starts to unravel.  He discovers a secret his father has been keeping from him all his life.  And for Nick, it changes everything.

Unlike the secret in The Beautiful Between, I didn’t really feel the weight of Nick’s family secret the way he did.  However, I was drawn in to the story by his character.  I wanted to see how things turned out for him.  I rooted for him and Eden despite the emotional trauma Nick was navigating with his father and the choices that drove him to make in his relationships. 

Like her first book, The Lucky Kind contains mature language and coming-of-age situations, but I suspect Nick’s experiences are just the kind of issues many of you are ready to experience vicariously before you are faced with them in your own lives.
 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ONE FOR THE MURPHYS by Lynda Mullaly Hunt

copyright date: May 2012 primarily marketed for: intermediate readers (5 th grade and up) I sort of expected One for the Murphys by Lynda Mullaly Hunt to be one of those overly sappy books with unrealistic, sickeningly sweet characters.  However, although the storyline might make it sound sappy, the characters are realistic and dynamic.  After a traumatic incident that lands both she and her mother in the hospital, Carley Connors is taken away and placed in foster care with the Murphy family.  The only life Carley has known is one of put-downs, food scraps, and shopping for clothes in Salvation Army drop boxes.  Until she meets the Murphys.  The Murphys are too good to be true: Julia, the mom, happily makes home-cooked meals for her three boys and firefighting, sports-loving husband.  In fact, Julia isn’t even rattled by Carley’s rough around the edges attitude.  At first, Carley despises the Murphys and the way they make he...
4 comments
Read more

THE LITTLE PRINCE by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

copyright date: 1943 primarily marketed for: everyone The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint- Exupéry was a reread for me.   I read this book for the first time when I was in high school.   All I remembered about it was that I expected it to be too complex for me to understand, and I was surprised when at its charming simplicity.   I always remember feeling like I had a special place in my heart for The Little Prince , but I didn’t remember exactly why. It was written so long ago and is translated from French that it is no wonder I first expected to find its meaning elusive.   However, I am sure that if you pick up this book, it will nestle itself into a special place in your heart as well. Simply, The Little Prince is the story of a clever man who has never lost the child inside of himself and finds himself stranded in the desert after a plan crash.   In the desert, he happens upon the little prince who is traveling to earth from his d...
4 comments
Read more

ALL THESE THINGS I’VE DONE by Gabrielle Zevin

copyright date: September 2011 primarily marketed for: young adults (8 th grade and up) I wish I would’ve known this was the beginning of a series before I started this book.   Then again, I might never have picked it up if I thought I might be committing to multiple books… At any rate, this is not a story I will be sad to return to this fall when the sequel is released.   Anya’s story takes place in New York City, in the future.   Around the time you will be old enough to be grandparents. This is a sort of post-apocalyptic, dystopian kind of book in a mild way.   Basically, the United States has self-destructed, and yet life seems to go surprisingly similar to the way we live nowadays.   Except that water and paper are costly and hard to come by.   Chocolate is prohibited.   Caffeine is an illegal drug.   Which is all to say that the setting alone is intriguing. Add to that setting, the fact that Anya is the oldest daughter of the ...
3 comments
Read more