#12: Tumbleweeds by Leila Meacham

There are books that touch my heart, books that leave me thinking long after I have read the last page, and books that make me laugh and smile.  Then, there are books that leave me scratching my head, making we wonder what I missed along the way because something at the end doesn't add up.  Tumbleweeds has me scratching my head and wondering what I missed because something doesn't add up, even after re-reading parts of the book.  I tend to be very naive about what I read.  I take things at face value and am often surprised at the end by events and plot twists.  Not this time.  This time I am wondering how a boy gets a girl pregnant when they never really have sex and she just got off of the pill.  And I am really wondering how I am supposed to believe that a boy, a good boy, a really good boy, would have sex with his best friend when she was passed out.  I am wondering if the boy she was in a long sexual relationship who is believed to be sterile might not really have been.  And, because of all of these questions, I can't believe that the book ends the way it ends.  There is no happy ending in Tumbleweeds.  None.  Zero.  Zilch.  Oh wait...three people don't go to jail who might have.  Doesn't that make you want to read this book?

At the end of the book there's a Q&A with the author and she talks about the book and how it doesn't have a Hollywood ending.  No kidding. There's no happiness anywhere.  But the part that makes me the saddest is not that there's no happiness, but that all of the ridiculous plot twists and turns took a brilliantly created cast of characters, and they are rich and so fully-developed you can see them and hear them, and ground them into the dirt.  You recall nothing of them in the end.  Because you are too busy scratching your head and wondering what happened.  And how you missed it.  Or maybe that you didn't really miss it, but you didn't want to believe it, and there it is anyway.

This one is going into my donate pile.  But, I wonder how many of you are tempted to read it to see what I am really ranting about, huh?

Good luck to you if you decide to.  I finished this book in about 6 hours.  I couldn't read fast enough to see how it ended.  Now I am going to go clean out my attic.  It's a better use of my time and I know I won't find any stuffed bobcats up there.  Especially not any missing a leg. 

Happy Reading!
:) Dodie