Romance |
Young Adult Literature |
Young Adult Fiction |
Summary
Summary
An intoxicating debut novel that will leave you questioning what is real and why we escape into fantasy, perfect for fans of Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer and Falling into Place by Amy Zhang.
Secrets are con artists: they trick you into letting them out.
Sadie loves her rocker boyfriend Henry and her running partner and best friend Lucie, but no one can measure up to her truest love and hero, the dazzling and passionate George. George, her secret.
When something goes wrong and Sadie is taken to the hospital calling out for George, her hidden life may be exposed. Now she must confront the truth of the past, and protect a world she is terrified to lose.
"A teen learns to use her rich interior world to fight trauma, but is this the only way out? This honest, heartfelt tale is deep and mysterious as imagination itself." --Judy Blundell, author of What I Saw and How I Lied and Strings Attached
"You'll inhale as you skid into the first chapter and only exhale as you cling to the last. A beautiful book about longing and loss . . . and what is real." --Teresa Toten, author of The Hero of Room 13B, winner of the Governor General Award, and Beware That Girl
Author Notes
Tara Wilson Redd, a graduate of Reed College, grew up all over the United States, including in St. Louis, Seattle, and Central Oregon. An impenitent dilettante, she is interested in everything, but especially language, travel, and animals. When she is home from her adventures, she lives in Washington, DC, where she works in libraries. The Museum of Us is her first novel. Visit her online at tarawilsonredd.com.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-Sadie seems to have it all: loving parents, a supportive boyfriend, and a best friend. But she's only going through the motions. She's rarely present; instead she spends increasing periods of time in her hidden world of daydreams with her love and hero, George, who doesn't actually exist. After an accident, her adventures with George are threatened, and Sadie must make hard choices about how and with whom she wants to live her life while confronting trauma and memories from her past. The author deftly blends genres as readers delve in and out of Sadie's fanciful adventures with George. Redd's writing and character development is particularly strong for a debut author as she tackles a wide range of heavy topics, including mental health, ongoing trauma, and sexuality. While Sadie is always at the forefront, teens are often taken directly into Sadie's secret world, where the supporting characters are each richly developed and integral to the story. VERDICT This is an impressive debut novel and an author to watch. Readers will identify strongly with Sadie and her journey as she struggles to cope with trauma and let go of her secrets.-Amanda Foust, Douglas County Libraries, CO © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Sadie, 16, knows George is a figment of her imagination, but that doesn't stop her from being drawn to him over and over again. Together, they have explored the amazing Star Palace, danced a perfect waltz, and examined a beautiful museum filled with their shared memories. In this intriguing debut novel that draws a delicate line between imagination and insanity, Redd paints a stunning yet disturbing portrait of a teen whose escape into fantasy is beginning to affect her day-to-day life. During the past several months, it has become increasingly challenging for Sadie to keep George hidden from her parents, her best friend, and her devoted boyfriend. Then, after a car accident, Sadie is rushed to the emergency room and cries out George's name. Her secret is out, and she has some explaining to do. Dreamlike sequences of Sadie's escapades with George alternate with less romanticized scenes from Sadie's past and present, including her sessions with a hospital psychiatrist, and the suspense grows as George's origin, and his connection to a traumatic event from Sadie's childhood, comes to light. In a story of heartwrenching goodbyes and brave new beginnings, Redd offers a rare glimpse into the mind of a troubled teen as she begins the healing process. Ages 14-up. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Something bad happened to 16-year-old Sadie Black.Waking up in the hospital, she learns that she was calling out for George, her best friend and occasional Prince Charming. Her other best friend is Lucie Washington, a black girl from her cross-country team. Sadie's friendship circle is small, and there is something special about her relationship with George, something she fears others won't understand. Sadie, a white girl who has been running away from her problems, now finds herself dealing with the fallout from another incident five years ago. Readers enter the mind of a teenage girl who has mastered the art of keeping secrets and exploring imaginary worlds and stories, save for moments when it gets out of her control and she must fight to rein herself back in. With prose that pulls you into the story, debut novelist Redd leads readers through the worlds conjured by Sadie. The complicated but loving relationships between Sadie and those who orbit her world are shown in empathetic ways. The angst and anguish of Sadie's loss, grief, and confusion are evident. Still, the handling of the mental health themes leaves much to be desired: Some of Sadie's problematic views are not fully resolved or explained, and the therapist reads like a prop who does little to help her heal.A novel that will prompt readers to contemplate their own methods of escapism. (Fiction. 16-adult) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Sadie's life looks pretty wholesome from the outside, with devoted rocker boyfriend Henry, best friend and running companion Lucie, loving parents, and an increasing sense of confidence following her awkward childhood. But Sadie's got a secret: she has an invisible (to others) boyfriend George, with whom she travels on marvelous fantastical adventures. After a car accident, Sadie keeps calling out for George in her confused state: an action that lands her in a mental hospital. Here she must confront the interior world she's created. The text alternates between Sadie's hospital journal and flashbacks that reveal George's genesis and her family history. With iconoclastic, seemingly confident but confused protagonists and clever dialogue, many teens will see themselves or who they perceive themselves to be reflected here. Redd's debut novel strikes a tender, poignant, and ultimately positive chord in its depiction of a young woman with delusions, joining a welcome trend in books both normalizing open conversations about and promoting wider acceptance of mental illness.--Carton, Debbie Copyright 2018 Booklist
Excerpts
Excerpts
George's blue eyes captured her. They were dark as the deep blue sea and Sadie was adrift under a starless night. No going back now. Sadie turned the ignition key and revved her truck, Old Charlotte, to life. The air-conditioning raised goose bumps on her skin. It was one hundred degrees outside but she was cold. She checked her phone one last time: two texts--one from Lucie and one from Henry--and a voice mail from her parents. George rustled the maps in his lap and raised an eyebrow at her, so she tossed her phone into the glove compartment. George grabbed her wrist and kissed the palm of her hand, closing the glove box with the toe of his impeccably shined shoe. It had taken her three tries, private lessons, and eight months to get her license. Being behind the wheel was still strange and exciting and scary. She glanced at his maps. The whole pile was marked with red Sharpie. "Anyone with a true sense of adventure knows how to read a map. You have to imagine the world that goes with it," George had told her. "GPS is the death of imagination." So they'd spent last night lying side by side on the filthy basement rug dreaming up interesting destinations. They'd lost themselves in more exotic fantasies in Sadie's many purloined atlases--Rio, Morocco, and always, always Moscow--but they weren't going to be driving to Russia in a beat‑up Ford F100, no matter how beautifully her parents had restored their truck, dear Old Charlotte. The limits of reality turned dreams back into paper maps. Even with a car, you couldn't really escape. Mapped out, the landmarks of Sadie's life made such a small circle: her parents' repair shop, Henry's house, the library, school. She would be a senior in the fall, but that didn't expand her life into unknown territory. The colleges she hoped to visit in the fall were in-state. A tiny world. George had seen her disappointment. He'd tried to make it better. Even in St. Louis, with George there were adventures. "Let me give you one perfect day," he had begged, and he'd drawn their adventure right there on the map. He circled destination after destination, linking them with one red line. "A bright red line toward destiny," he had called it. And now they were on that red line. George slid on his Clubmasters, the dark lenses a villainous mask. He smiled and looked away, eighteen years of cultivated cool settling into a leather seat. His smile destroyed her. He didn't have to grow up to be someone; he already was someone. Sadie put on her Ray-Ban knockoffs. On the floor, her polka-dot backpack was filled with snacks and books and her still-shiny driver's license. The backpack sat between George's black shoes, his black briefcase nestled beside it, holding whatever mysteries he'd packed away with his imported cigarettes. Old Charlotte was rumbling in anticipation, but Sadie gripped the steering wheel with clammy hands, her foot on the brake, toeing the clutch. A night of maps had seemed so far away from this plan. George put his hand on the steering wheel over hers. "To seek and find?" His voice washed away all doubt. "To seek and find," she replied, putting the truck in gear with an audible creak. It was easy. Time slipped by them, unnoticed. The radio was broken, but it didn't matter. George told her stories. He sang Beatles songs--at least, the parts he could remember, making up the rest. She didn't care. Nothing could ruin this day. As the sun climbed the sky, they settled into the comfortable silence of the oldest of friends. They split a burger and milk shake. They stopped at the art museum, the history museum, the zoo. There was a whole world in Forest Park. Back in the truck, George fell asleep as Sadie drove home under a perfect sunset, his long legs buckled under him like a contortionist. He smelled like cigarettes and bourbon and looked so much like a little boy. I will never love anyone this much, thought Sadie, stealing glances at him as he slept. She retreated into that thought and fell into the memories of him, into their inseparable future together. She didn't even see the tree. Moments passed like snapshots being thrown into the trash: The summer light filtered through green oak leaves. The drip of a melted pink milk shake falling sideways. The crushed door papered with bloodied maps. The shimmer of blue broken glass diamonds. The bone sticking out of her leg. The empty seat beside her. Sadie was alone. The taste of blood faded and was replaced with the certainty that she was dying. She felt like she was seeing the world from the bottom of the ocean. She couldn't hear herself screaming, though she knew she was. All she could hear was the icy note of tragedy, like the dead sound people hear after a bomb. Then she wasn't alone. People, strangers, were all around her. Hands were on her face, and more hands tied her down. But she needed to sit up. She needed to find him. She closed her eyes tight and when she opened them, she was in a different place. Am I dreaming, or dead? she thought in a panic. Lights went by and blinded her. Everyone was talking. She could tell they were trying to talk to her, but she couldn't make out what they were saying. An emergency room, she realized. She tried to get up and run, but her legs wouldn't obey. She was trapped. "George," she said, over and over. "Where is George?" Excerpted from The Museum of Us by Tara Wilson Redd All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.