Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Review: Crossing Into Brooklyn

Info: 
Title: Crossing Into Brooklyn
Author: Mary Ann McGuigan
Publisher: Merit Press
Publication Date: June 1, 2015
Source: I received a complimentary copy in exchange for a honest review.

Synopsis:
To Find Your Future, You Have to Face Your Past

At sixteen, Morgan Lindstrum has the life that every other girl wants--at least from the outside. A privileged only child, she has everything she could ever want, except her parents' attention. A Princeton physicist and a high-powered executive, they barely have any time for each other, much less for Morgan. Then her beloved grandfather dies, depriving Morgan of the only stable figure in her life. If that's not enough, she suddenly finds out he was never her grandfather at all. To find out the truth about her family, Morgan makes her way to Brooklyn, where she meets Terence Mulvaney, the Irish immigrant father who her mother disowned. Morgan wants answers; but instead of just satisfying her curiosity, Mulvaney shows her the people in his condemned tenement building, who are suffering and have nowhere to go. He challenges her to help them, by tearing away the veil of shame, and showing her wealthy parents and her advantaged circle of friends a world they don't want to know exists. The temptation to walk away from this ugly reality, as her mother did, is strong. But if she does, can Morgan ever really leave behind what she learned when she crossed into Brooklyn?

Review:
I was a bit apprehensive going in to this book, since it's not kind of book I would usually choose. Unfortunately, in this case, my gut feeling was right. This book just didn't work for me.

The characters, especially Morgan, didn't feel all that real and relateable. Her parents were useless and annoyed me a lot. Her grandpa was a asshole. Morgan was spoiled and naive.

Also, I felt like this book majorly overemphasized the income and class gap. It was this huge deal for her to find out her grandpa was poor and another huge deal for her to visit Brooklyn. Maybe things are different in New York/New Jersey, but where I'm from, things are not that divided.

Disliking the characters was a problem I could not overcome in this book. If you can connect with the characters better than me, you might enjoy this one.


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1 comment:

  1. At least you took a chance though right? Sorry it didn't pay off though.

    ReplyDelete