Summary:
My Life with the Walter Boys centers on the prim, proper, and
always perfect Jackie Howard. When her world is turned upside down by tragedy,
Jackie must learn to cut loose and be part of a family again.
Jackie does not like surprises. Chaos is the enemy! The best way
to get her successful, busy parents to notice her is to be perfect. The perfect
look, the perfect grades-the perfect daughter. And then...
Surprise #1: Jackie's family dies in a freak car accident.
Surprise #2: Jackie has to move cross-country to live with the
Walters-her new guardians.
Surprise #3: The Walters have twelve sons. (Well, eleven, but
Parker acts like a boy anyway)
Now Jackie must trade in her Type A personality and New York
City apartment for a Colorado ranch and all the wild Walter boys who come with
it. Jackie is surrounded by the enemy-loud, dirty, annoying boys who have no
concept of personal space. Okay, several of the oldest guys are flat-out
gorgeous. But still annoying. She's not stuck-up or boring-no matter what they
say. But proving it is another matter. How can she fit in and move on when she
needs to keep her parents' memory alive by living up to the promise of perfect?
Review:
Ali Novak started My Life with the Walter Boys at the age S.E.
Hinton wrote The Outsiders. Now, by drawing these two books
together I’m not saying they are the same. I’m pointing out two very convincing
reasons to read both books. One: They tell a good, clean story about love and
loss. Two: They both convincingly mimic the teenage voice of their time
allowing positive inward reflection. The stories have teenagers that make poor
choices, but also rewarding ones. The choices of Jackie in My Life with the
Walter Boys were a bit more cliché, but so were the choices of Ponyboy and
Johnny in The Outsiders – with the exception of Johnny’s choice with the
church fire. That was unexpected given Johnny’s character up until that point.
My Life with the Walter Boys did not have
that kind of unexpected twist. A book that contains these predictable clichés
should not be cast aside for that reason alone. My Life with the Walter Boys is an excellent
book for teenagers. It bothers me that someone would rate this story poorly
based on the amount of clichés it contains. That is shallow and unacceptable.
Especially, when The Outsiders is loaded with quotes like:
“Kid, you scared the devil outa me the other day. I thought I
killed you.”
“If I ever did that my mom would die of shock.”
And my favorite…
Generally, it is not good to use clichés, often their
predictability makes reading them like a boring manual, and doesn’t give the
necessary details to the reader. My favorite example for detail is the ‘Jack of
all trades’ example, because it still begs the question of what Jack can do.
Again, Novak’s book is predictable, but it is also free of the
unnecessary sex and cursing you find in books like The Vampire Academy. I’m not saying
you can avoid the often real world of teenagers where the f-bomb is common, and
sex is on the page of many restless hormonal urges. But, with all this commonality, it is refreshing
to meet a girl like Jackie, Novak’s main teenager, a virgin who intends to stay
that way at least until she can figure out her own emotions. Bravo to Novak for
writing something I wouldn’t mind my own teenage daughter reading, a book that
says its okay to feel sexual but not to dive into the cesspool of it all. And
mostly, its okay to make mistakes, because they can make you stronger.
The second reason Novak’s clichés didn’t bother me was her
writing. Structurally, her sentences blended passive and active verbs moving
the reader effortlessly through the text. Sentence lengths varied. None of that
Melville ‘Call me Ahab’, followed my a lengthy sentence a paragraph long. And,
gosh, I’m not knocking Melville, Moby Dick is a classic, for obvious reasons
that explore deep philosophical reasons on our relationship to the world, to
God. There are other reasons, but that is the one that made me read it. With
that said, there is a reason folks put off reading it, if they do at all.
Sentence and active and passive verbs balance cater to the reader, and without
the reader why write.
A third reason Novak’s writing worked was showing not telling.
The main character, Jackie, has a one-million-dollar reason for staying in her
head, her family died. Novak could have wallowed in that. I mean, look at Bella
in Twilight, a story that was published because it was an interesting twist on Vampires. However, there was way too much time with Bella
wallowing over Edward, and not near enough reasons for examining the idea of
living forever. Even when Jackie was inside her own thoughts, she examined her own
faults, and virtues to make sense of her place in the world.
But as said, there was not a lot of wallowing in Novak’s story,
because showed, let her characters do, and moved the plot along. Novak did a
fine job of this without ever forgetting Jackie lost her family.
My final thoughts are this: let your teenage daughter read My
Life with the Walter Boys, not a new premise, but an old one done well, and
cleanly. It started on a site called Wattpad.
