Family Relationships | Hit or Miss Books

I’m starting to really enjoy reading books—oftentimes memoirs—written by journalists or reporters or magazine contributors. That’s probably because, not only are they well-written, but also because I, myself, have started writing for my university’s main magazine and am loving the experience. The process is hard—a lot of editing and researching to be done—but it makes me feel like I’m actually learning to write better and, of course, has made me develop more respect and admiration for professional writers.

Leslie Gray Streeter is such a writer. She writes a column, à la Carrie Bradshaw, fun and quirky, but not really since she is not having sex until marriage. She’s had a couple of bad relationships, so in the love department there is usually little meaningful development. That is, until she reunites with Scott, a former classmate whom she marries and who eventually dies from a heart attack. This is more than a story about grief, though that is, quite certainly, a main aspect. It’s also a love story, as James Patterson so rightly states in his blurb of the book. It’s also about building a modern family and struggling to keep said family. Grit. Determination. Support. Not many older women would want their mothers around, but Leslie knows when she needs help and she’s learning to ask for it and accept it.

Though I have never lost a husband or someone who I had an intimate relationship with, I related tremendously with Leslie’s motherhood experience. Not because I have a kid myself—not yet—but because my father passed away when I was a baby, as is the case for Brooks, Scott and Leslie’s baby. I was very touched by how worried Leslie was about Brooks—how he might grow up feeling a certain way about not having a father—and how she tried to do her best being strong for the both of them. I don’t know how Brooks will feel when he will be old enough to understand what loneliness is and wonder about what his life would have been like if he had had a father to care for him, but I think that with a mother like Leslie he will be just fine.

Beautiful.

Thank you Hachette Book Group Canada for a copy in exchange for a review.

If I had a daughter or son or non-binary child, I would immediately find a perfect warm moment to read this book with them. And I mean ‘‘with them.’’ I would totally make them read a couple of passages and I’d pause on all the images, which are quite heart-warming and beautifully done.

This is the kind of story that feels like a classic. You’ve never read it before, and it doesn’t feel like you have necessarily when you do, but it does feel right. Like this was a story that was meant to be written and told and that belongs in the world of children’s literature. Certainly some aspects have been explored before, and of course talking animals are quite popular in kids’ stories, but there is still a lot about it that is different and surprising. It made me think that trains should be more present in these books, as they can surprisingly be very enchanting.

This is the kind of writing style that is completely engaging. There’s actually something I really like about it and simultaneously dislike: It seems so casual, as though the narrator is telling a story that is coming to their mind, in a very natural way. On the other hand, it seems so natural that it doesn’t feel edited at times. Charlotte’s Web is, I think, one of the best edited children’s books of all times, and it still reads ‘‘natural’’ and works for its audience, engages it. So yes, at times I did wish it had felt less ‘‘casual’’ and more, well, professional. But the story is so interesting and the characters so memorable that, in most cases, it’s easy to overlook and just go with it.

I want to congratulate the author, who is best known for his adult bestselling books, for giving children literature a try, and doing a pretty fantastic job at it, too. I am already looking forward to the sequel, supposedly coming out in May 2022.

Thank you Hachette Book Group Canada for the title in exchange for a review.