Review: Sweetie by Kathryn Magendie

I don't know about you, but for me, it's difficult to break out of my regular reading genre and go for a book that may not immediately pique my interest.  I've been scouring Amazon.com for free books for my Kindle, and just picking up anything that sounded even the slightest bit interesting, knowing that I'd probably get a few bad apples.

I.  Love.  This.  Book.

Proof?  I started reading it yesterday morning, before work.  I finished it in the afternoon.  It was THAT good.

Granted, at 216 pages, it's a rather quick read.  No matter.  I would have torn through this little gem regardless.

Sweetie is the first-person narrative of Melissa, a chubby, stuttering, nondescript girl whose wanderlust-driven father and hypersensitive, nagging mother have moved her all over the country in search of her father's "inspiration".  Recently moved to a small town in Appalachian North Carolina, Melissa finds herself the butt of every joke at school, until she befriends the skinny, blonde, uneducated, free-spirited girl who has no other name than "Sweetie."  It is Sweetie who encourages Melissa to "breathe slowly" and learn to stop stuttering, and leads her on an adventure all over the mountains of their little town.  Over time, Melissa develops her own self-confidence and begins to question everything around her, including the secrets that Sweetie is holding close to herself.

Any girl who has ever been teased or tormented at school (including yours truly, I feel compelled to admit) will relate to Melissa, and if they hadn't already, will wish that they had had a friend like Sweetie.  I loved this book, and I'm hoping Ms. Magendie writes more, so I can read those.  I'm so glad that I took a chance on it.

Rating: *****

Up next?  Well, I have a few on deck.

Oh, Richard III.  You absolutely devious S.O.B.  Why must you be so compelling for me to try and figure out?  I'm still sad that Alison Weir, my favorite author of all things English royalty-related,  has never put out a book about Richard the Third.  I read her book The Princes In The Tower last year, and it was good, but that was more about the luckless Edward V and his brother Richard of Shrewsbury, with very little about Richard except that he was totally evil.

My parents bought me Paul Murray Kendall's Richard the Third for Christmas this year, and I cracked it open last night.  It's long (608 pages), but I'm already to Chapter Three and the action is pretty good (how could it not be, at the forefront of the War of the Roses?), so I'm going pretty fast.  Admittedly, Kendall is a bit more dry than Weir, but we can't have everything in life, can we?  I'm hoping for better insight into the life of the man who is known as England's most wicked ruler.

And, on my fiction plate...

The Healer's Apprentice by Melanie Dickerson.  A play on the classic Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, set in medieval Germany, Apprentice is the story of a woodcutter's daughter named Rose, the apprentice of the town healer who is determined to prove herself and become a healer herself, to avoid marrying a lecherous old suitor.  I'm about 10% into this one, and I started it last night.  This looks like it's going to be another quick read, but considering that I'm reading it at the same time as Richard, I don't know if I'll finish it as quickly as I did Sweetie.

Finally, because I really want to start tearing through everything and anything by Jane Austen, and at my sister's suggestion, I have begun Pride and Prejudice, that quintessential of pre-Victorian romances.  I'm not far into it at all (maybe 2%), but I'm mostly listening to it on the text-to-speech function on my Kindle (how I love that thing).

Happy reading!