Review #33 - Year of the Rat by Clare Furniss

I got Year of the Rat as an ARC by Simon and Schuster (and I would like to thank them profusely for that). It's a YA novel about a girl, Pearl, who loses her mother through childbirth of her new sister "the rat". It covers Pearl's grief and hatred of her new little sister because she believes The Rat killed her mother.

What is different about this book on grief is that the mother comes back every so often to talk to Pearl. You don't know if it's a figment of Pearl's grieving imagination or if it really is her mother from the afterlife. I really liked that psychological twist.

The writing style was very clearly British Contemporary YA. There's a very specific style that is pulled off really well by some authors, and most authors make it tedious. I loved the style at first but it did start to grate on me after a while but that could be to do with my exposure to UKYA and most of my books are UKYA. I just sometimes wish that maybe we could adopt a different voice.

There were a lot of plot lines all happening at once which I really liked because often books only focus on one thing and this had lots of aspects: her grief for her mother, her relationship with her father, how she deals with a new sibling, her relationship with her best friend and her love interest. It made the book become much more real.

If I had a criticism it would be that the characters did change very quickly and that was a little unrealistic. I also felt that Pearl was an extreme antihero up to the point where she became annoying. I understand that grief is hard but she hated The Rat so much that it just made me dislike her. Otherwise the book was really good.

I wouldn't say this was a "summer book" but it's great for Spring. It's quite serious but the style is light enough so this isn't a chore to read.

I would recommend this if you feel like: 

Contemporary YA

A book that talks eloquently about grief

A book that focuses on all aspects of family and identity

 It comes out April 24th.