PRE-PUB REVIEW: Blind by Rachel DeWoskin

At 416 pages, this novel is a lot longer than most YA offerings.  Sometimes, as with Harry Potter, the extra pages are not an obstacle, but in this case, some editing was badly needed.  Blind tries to cover too much ground for one novel.  Emma has a horrible accident which blinds her.  She is whiny, any of us would be.  She goes to a special school, learns how to be more independent, returns to her own school and is mainstreamed.  She explains about Braille and ways of dealing with being blind.  She has a crush, several actually, she and her best friend fight and makeup multiple times.  One of the girls in her small town commits suicide, she helps another blind girl who is younger than herself…and the list goes on.  Blind lacks focus and while it has occasionally interesting passages, it could have used some major cutting.  There are just too many subplots and things going on.  Although the main story arc is about Emma coming to terms with her blindness, there are so many distractors and side trips along the way that the reader is begging for her to just get on with it already.  The Silver family is big, six daughters and one son, and likeable.  Emma is a fully realized character with flaws that the reader can relate to.  The problem is the lack of tightness in the narrative.  It is too meandering.  There are things that happen that seem to not have any point, for example, when Emma and best friend Logan have a dust up over Logan dating Emma’s long time crush, it just kind of goes away.  It might have been a turning point of some kind, but really, Zach (said crush) could have easily been left out of the story. 

I wanted to like this one, really.  It is serviceable, and if you have a population for whom this might have added appeal, it may be a good purchase, but I don’t think there will be a long hold list.

This book will be published in August 2014

June’s Rating System:  Language—R a few F-bombs;  Nudity—PG; Sexual Content—PG13;  GLBT Content—PG  There is some discussion that Claire, the girl who committed suicide, did so because she was a lesbian.  This is another subplot that just tries too hard.  It doesn’t go anywhere and there is no real meaningful resolution.  It is as if she had to stick one more thing into an already overstuffed novel—gotta be sure and hit the GLBT checkbox!  Violence—G;  Substance Abuse—PG some smoking and drinking by underage teens as well as some adults.  Adult Themes—G  

Robin’s Comments:  Although Viking recommends this for 12 and up, I would not recommend it for students under grade 9 due to the language and some of the situations in the novel.