Independent Reading - WEEK THREE

Hooray! I've managed to procrastinate even more! How do I pull it off? (Poor Animal Farm is sitting sadly in my bag, waiting for me to finish it...)

Well, my interest is now involved in a new book I picked up at Habitat--Shadow People by Joyce McDonald. (I was drifting around the book section at the thrift store and Shadow People was calling to me eerily on the shelf... actually I just saw it and thought, 'Looks interesting. Guess I'll get it', but mysterious whispering between shelves of books sounds much more epic.)

So the book is about a group of teenagers: how they interact, how they each feel, how they act versus what they think, what their completely different worlds are like, and what is similar between them. So in other words, it's the style I've been striving for. It's a realistic description of humans, a method I'm drawn to when I write.

I'm mostly focused on how Joyce McDonald writes about her characters rather than the actual plot, but the plot is very interesting too. It's mostly focused on the one character, Gabriel, the young, depressed heartthrob who is silenced from the haunting memories of his dying brother. Then there's Gem, the restless, free-spirited girl who's in love with Gabriel, Lydia, the quiet, angry girl who favors alcohol and who's trapped in the insane world her father has built around the family, and lastly Alec, the wild, tough, gun-wielding bad-boy with emotional damage.
I like how the characters are so vastly different but in the story they meet together at least once a week to join forces and get into trouble.

I'm almost done with the book, because I can tell that the epic climax is getting closer. I like that I'm not already predicting the ending, because I tend to do that. This story is staying a fair distance from any stereotypes, which makes it easier for me to enjoy because I'm not sitting here already knowing what's going to happen.