Matylda, Bright and Tender by Holly M. McGhee, 2017

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In a courageous debut novel, Holly M. McGhee explores the loss that shakes one girl’s world — and the unexpected consequences of the things we do for love.
Sussy and Guy are best friends, fourth-graders who share their silliest thoughts and deepest hopes. One afternoon, the two of them decide they must have something of their very own to love. After a trip to the pet store, they bring home a spotted lizard, the one with the ancient face and starfish toes, and they name her Matylda (with a y so it’s all her own). With Guy leading the way, they feed her and give her an origin story fit for a warrior lizard. A few weeks later, on a simple bike ride, there is a terrible accident. As hard as it is, Sussy is sure she can hold on to Guy if she can find a way to love Matylda enough. But in a startling turn of events, Sussy reconsiders what it means to grieve and heal and hope and go on, for her own sake and Matylda’s. By turns both devastating and buoyant, this story is a brave one, showing how far we can justify going for a real and true friend.

(224 pages)

Oof, this is a sad one.

Honestly, I was not emotionally prepared to handle such a heartbreaking topic. That's why I kept pushing it down my TBR list. But now I'm to the end of March, and it came out in March, so I really have to review it. I downed it in a single sitting last night.

I just . . . I don't like books about death. No, scratch that. Sometimes I love books about people getting over the deaths of loved ones (case in point: Suzanne LaFleur's Love, Aubrey). I like reading about the turmoil, watching characters face the very worst-case scenarios and come out the other side still living. There's something very poetic and encouraging about seeing someone recover from the unthinkable. And we get some of that in Matylda, as Sussy takes baby steps to begin functioning again after Guy's death, but I would have liked to see even more.

Actually, my biggest struggle with the book is that it was so short. Cut out the lizard trivia (and let's be honest, I want to cut out the lizard trivia–I am so not an amphibian person!) and the book becomes even shorter. We get a few chapters of background that gets us to care about Guy (who, for the record, is way more well-spoken than any nine-year-old I've ever known), one chapter in which the accident actually occurs, and then about a hundred pages dealing with the aftermath.

For the book's short length, it packs in a lot of details about Sussy's grieving process. She has wonderful parents, who know just when to push and when to leave her be, and Matylda is a great focus for Sussy's evolving emotions about Guy's death. I thought everything was very well done, and what I would imagine the grieing processing could be like (though I've never gone through it on such a scale as Sussy does). I did wish we got a little more background with Guy, a few more scenes with his grieving parents, more details about Sussy's and Guy's school life, an explanation about why these little kids run around saying they love each other all the time (no nine-year-old I know would be caught dead saying the word "love!"), and a little background on why all these nine-year-olds are allowed to roam free on their bikes all the time (even after Guy's totally-preventable death) . . . but, you know, maybe all that would have detracted from the raw story.

Anyway, I do recommend Matylda. I think if you're in the right mood, and a little less squeamish than I, you'll enjoy it much more than I did. Every once in a while a person is just itching for a good sad book to wallow in for a while; this is just that sort of book.

Disclaimer: This is an Amazon affiliate link, and I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Be Light Like a Bird by Monika Schröder, 2016

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After the death of her father, twelve-year-old Wren finds her life thrown into upheaval. And when her mother decides to pack up the car and forces Wren to leave the only home she's ever known, the family grows even more fractured. As she and her mother struggle to build a new life, Wren must confront issues with the environment, peer pressure, bullying, and most of all, the difficulty of forgiving those who don't deserve it. A quirky, emotional middle grade novel set in Michigans Upper Peninsula, Be Light Like a Bird features well-drawn, unconventional characters and explores what it means to be a family and the secrets and lies that can tear one apart.
(240 pages)

This is a fairly melancholy book, but not in an overpowering way. I was a little worried about reading Be Light Like a Bird right now, just because I'm already emotionally overextended from stressing out about college stuff, but it actually turned out to be an almost cathartic read for me. Nothing like reading about a girl with a dead dad to put things in perspective, you know?

I'm moved tons of times, so I know how hard it can be to let go of a past home and live somewhere new, but Wren's moves are like a thousand times worse than any I've ever done. She lived in one place–one house–her entire life, and suddenly she's forced to leave all of that behind and start completely from scratch! Add to that the reason for their sudden move (her father's plane crash, which didn't even leave behind a body to be buried), the fact that she didn't even have anything of her father's to remember him by, and things become extremely bleak.

Considering how horrible her experiences were, I can completely understand Wren's anger at her mother and her desperation to put down roots and be absorbed into a support system–any support system. That's why I really kind of despised her mom for most of the book. Even at the end, when we learn a little more about the reasons for her actions, I'm still not really okay with them. Wren shouldn't have had to befriend strangers just to talk about how much she missed her father.

Now that we're on the topic of Wren's new friends, though, I have to say that I really loved them for the most part. I didn't particularly like Carrie, the popular girl Wren decides to befriend as a way of fusing herself into the social hierarchy at school, but I thought the way Wren responded to Carrie's nastiness was much more mature and realistic than the ways characters in other books have handled similar situations. Theo was another slightly stereotypical character (the nerdy unpopular boy who's secretly an ideal best friend for the main character), but somehow I didn't really mind. He and Wren bond over interesting things like bird-watching and photography, and Theo–who's mother died a few years before–is as a compassionate friend who knows exactly what Wren is going through. I hope the two of them stay side-by-side for a very long time.

Honestly, though, I can't put my finger on it but I just wanted . . . more from Be Light Like a Bird. I don't mean more in the sense of having a heavier dosage of Wren's grief, because I think Schröder handled that aspect of the story beautifully, but I just mean more details. If Wren lived her entire life in that one town, why does she barely even think about it? You'd think she'd feel the loss of her old classmates, who were at least familiar even if they weren't her best friends, and that she'd spend more time comparing her old home with this new one. More than anything, though, I honestly felt like we don't get a very good description of her father. We get flashbacks and memories with him in them, but I never feel like I truly know him as a complex and nuanced human being.

To be fair, the focus of Be Light Like a Bird really isn't on Wren's father or her old town, or even on her mother. The focus is on Wren's struggle to move on from her father's death, and I think it does a great job of that. Be Light Like a Bird is a beautiful book in its own way, and I recommend it to anyone who thinks they'd like it.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the author in exchange for an honest review.