I am back with another book review, today it is a review of We Are Still Tornadoes by Michael Kun and Susan Mullen. Thanks so much to Raincoast Books for sending a copy of this book my way for an honest review. As always, all opinions are my own.
Ok, this book. Technically, its more a collection of letters than a book, so yeah... I did really enjoy this one, it's been a while since I read a non-traditionally designed book. And I have to say, I missed it.
This story follows two teens, Catherine and Scott after graduation of high school. Cath is off at university out of state, juggling the workload and family issues, and Scott is still in the backwoods town in Maryland where they grew up. He didn't do well in school and is now thinking he'll be working at his fathers clothing store for the rest of his life.
Oh, and its set in the 80s. You know what that means! They are sending each other actual letters in the mail, making references to Farrah Fawcett's hair, and talking about the best music of the time, and up and coming artists like Peter Gabriel (who, nowadays, everyone knows about, if not for the TFiOS reference).
At first, I had a bit of a hard time getting into the story. The letters only include so many details about what's going on in their lives, and sometimes they'd talk on the phone, and we wouldn't get what they were saying just "It was good to talk to you on the phone last night." For the most part everything was accessible through the letters.
Character-wise, I'm a little uncertain. I think I liked Scott a lot more than I did Cath. She just kind of came across as a bit mean in her letters. I mean, I guess that was just their banter, but at the same time, it was a bit much at times and she overreacted all. The. Time. Scott might not have gone to college, but he's still a human being with feelings. For the first couple letters, they are still getting the hang of being apart, but I think they take that frustration out on each other unnecessarily.
I did relate very much to Cath's struggles of being away from home for the first time. Being in my second year of university, I could easily recall those feelings of homesickness, and I'm only a few hours from home, let alone out of province.
Even though this is just a fluffier contemporary, they talk about a lot of serious issues. Both have family problems, which I think might have aligned a little too closely for my taste, but they were still dealing with that struggle.
The one thing I didn't love was the ending. I think maybe if we had gotten some inside thoughts as to what was happening in the characters heads, it wouldn't have been so abrupt as it appeared to me, but I think it was a little bit out of the blue. I won't say what "it" is, but you can probably guess. Everything was great, and then boom, ok that's new. I don't know, it just felt a little too forced to me. I appreciate that it wraps everything up, but at the same time, I just didn't see it.
Overall a really cute story about friendship and being away from home for the first time.