MY NAME IS AMERICA: NYC Newsie

Written by the same author as the overly sensationalized Down the Rabbit Hole and the squick-inducing Coal Miner's Bride, this book gets a lot of points from me for reading much more like a typical DA book and not something for adults.

Finn's a strong character and he paints a good picture of New York City in 1899 and what it was like for poorer families.

The book is a very quick read, but it's enjoyable from cover to cover.

DEAR AMERICA: Coal Miner's Bride

This is possibly the most problematic DA for me. It's not the controversial Ann Rinaldi book, because that one has the author clearly in the wrong. This one gives me the most mixed feelings.

I love the main character and her love interest. Their story throughout the book is great.

However, the love interest is not the same person as the guy she marries.

Anetka is 13 when she leaves Poland, after her father sold her hand in marriage to a fellow coal miner in exchange for 3 ship tickets.

Sold into marriage at THIRTEEN.

I mean, seriously, think about that. This book isn't set in the ancient world or Middle Ages or anything. This was 1896. And shit like this actually fucking happened. It disgusts me.

Because at 13, this poor girl lost her virginity to someone literally twice her age. He was a widower with 3 young daughters, who only wanted a body to take care of his kids and a slave to take care of his own physical needs. He's emotionally abusive to Anetka. He's an alcoholic. He berates her for not having everything the way he wants, even if she spent the day taking care of his three sick kids or helping her friend give birth. He attacks her for writing, saying what could possibly be in her head that's worth writing down. He's repeatedly abusing and arranged marriage raping a 13-year-old girl and this is a book for children. Thank the gods he died before she got knocked up!

And the extra sad thing is, Anetka just wants him to love her, like he clearly did his dead wife. He calls her by the dead wife's name a couple times. But no, he just continues to be a douche and dies before she hardens her heart against him, which I wish she'd done. I also wish she'd bitched out her father, who's another alcoholic idiot, but she never does. She yells at the two of them once, but that's not nearly enough to make up for what she's put through.

Thankfully though, douchebag husband is killed halfway through and then the book gets good again. Anetka is very enterprising for 13 and you root for her to succeed and for her and Leon to finally get together.

It's a good story that's briefly mired in a bunch of squicky things. It's hard to look past the horror this author chose to write about to find the good stuff, but it's worth the read as long as you can handle the yick.

I do think this author's on the fucked up side though. This is the same chick who wrote the overly dramatic book I ripped apart not long ago. Is she aware she's writing for children? Because I don't think she is.

DEAR AMERICA: Chicago Fire

I have a love/massively hate relationship with this book. I like the author's writing style and Pringle is an interesting character with a voice that's easy to like, but the drama level in this thing is off the charts.

SPOILER WARNING

Pringle's parents are killed in a carriage accident. She's brought home from her boarding school by her uncle, only to endure physical abuse from her aunt and have to watch her brother Gideon, who has Down's syndrome, get hit, too. One of her only respites is the time she spends with "Rabbit" (there's a lot of Alice in Wonderland in this thing), a young miner. Things come to a head in the house and she takes some money from her father's hiding place and runs away to Chicago with her brother. While on the journey, she befriends a young mother with three children, and then there's a train accident. She gets to Chicago only to learn that the friend of her mother's she was planning on staying with was committed to an asylum by her asshole father. She goes to the family she met on the train and becomes their nursemaid. Blah blah blah, the mother's brother is coming and it's all they can talk about. Who does it turn out to be but Pringle's "Rabbit?" Only her younger brother is terrified of him. Well, the huge twist to the book is that Rabbit was one of the miners who caused the carriage accident. Pringle flies at him, calling him a murderer, and of course, her loyal friend is suddenly not so loyal. Even though her brother committed a crime, she has zero sympathy for the girl she's taken in for all this time.

So Pringle runs off to look for her brother and hey, it's the great fire. He ends up being alive but the asshole family's house is destroyed. Yay. She never sees any of them again, so who knows if they lived or not? Apparently, we're not even supposed to care about the children.

The epilogue is minorly satisfying, because when she comes of age for her inheritance, she kicks the abusive aunt out of the house and the uncle's dead already.

Seriously though, this thing has enough drama to be a soap opera. It's a children's historical novel! Did we really need the mom's old friend to be in an asylum? Did we need the train accident? And what are the odds that this random woman she meets on the train is her weird crush's sister? Weird crush who's been, like, stalking the daughter of the people he killed and kissing her. That's so creepy. And I always get pissed that the bitch turns so quickly on Pringle to support her killer brother.

This book gives me a lot of angry feelings. I don't like nasty characters to not get a solid comeuppance. Some of these concepts are also way more adult than the target audience should be reading. Although now that I look at what else the author contributed, it's the one about the coal miner's bride, the teenage Polish girl who comes to America, and becomes the only Dear America diary writer to have sex. So I'm not really surprised.

I really don't recommend this one. The whole story is rushed. It's one flashback after another. It's one overly dramatic incident after another. It does suck you in, I'll give it that, but the ending is such a suckerpunch that it ruins any good the book created. It's also barely historical. It's just kind of a mess.

Except for Gideon. Gideon is an excellent character and I love him.