Moonglass

I read once that water is a symbol for emotions. And for a while now I've thought maybe my mother drowned in both.

I'm not sure how I feel about this book. Kirby's prose is quite beautiful yet dry, at the same time, if you can imagine that. It's like looking at a pretty picture locked up behind a dusty, thick glass, from afar. I never really got the chance to connect with what was going on in there. There were a few moments when “this is good” was at the tip of my tongue, yet I never quite got there. Which was a bit frustrating.

I did enjoy the setting, the descriptions about living by the shore and the mermaid mythology. I haven't lived anywhere near the sea or the ocean so this was definitely something very appealing to my imagination.

The pacing was almost painfully slow for the first 70% of the book. It was all about how Anna gets involved in the track team, how she walks on the beach, how she flirts with lifeguards, how she goes to school, how she fights with her dad, how she almost breaks down while thinking about her mom etc. It was, basically, about how she keeps herself busy while running away from her feelings. I didn't like that we only got a clue, here and there, about what was going on with her, for the most part of the book, and then we got almost the entire puzzle in the last 30 pages.

Anna was tough to like. She was very bland, despite being seriously troubled. At times she seemed like she was dead inside. She sounded like a robot or a zombie that had never felt joy or pain. Other times she seemed totally the opposite. When it came to boys, it was like that's all that ever interested her and she was so shallow in her her monologues about Tyler. This side of her was so odd compared to the “vampire” girl that we were introduced to at the beginning of the book. If she would've been a real person I'd be concerned about her having her mother's illness.

Then, I wasn't fond of her relationships with the people around her. She was quite judgmental towards Ashley yet became her friend, which would've been ok if she showed any signs that she actually started to like her . She was very hard on her dad, yet in a completely useless way because she never confronted him about the elephant in the room. Her dad seemed completely clueless, but I'm not sure it's reason enough to dislike him, because we're simply not given enough information about him. And then her puppy love with Tyler is such a puzzle to me. She never talks about herself, her hopes and dreams, her troubles. He does't seem the brightest rock on the beach. What if they ran out of abandoned cottages to explore? This love angle was so pointless that the book would have been better off without it.

Coming back to Anna, she's just not the type of character I like to read about. I mean I like characters overcoming traumas,facing adversities and coming out stronger, but I don't think she fits into this category. She was so frail from start to end. And all she wanted to do was run away and hide. Up to the point she almost got herself killed just so she could stop herself from feeling pain. I don't like that type of people. Who would rather walk on burning coals than face what they're feeling. Who would rather stay in the dark rather than find out the truth. I get that she's had a horrible experience when she was a child, however she could've started the healing process a lot sooner if she stopped being so stubborn and talked to her dad about what happened. Only when life pushed her from all directions she did this. I also didn't see in her the need to understand why that event happened. Even when the answers came to her, on a sliver plate, she just pushed them away. I just couldn't connect to her character because of this.

The ending provided a rather unsatisfactory resolution, but I guess it's better than nothing.

I wouldn't say the experience of reading this book was unpleasant. I've had some issues with it, but it did get me thinking about some things, so all is well.