Cristina Moracho "Althea and Oliver"
Viking Juvenile | English | October 9, 2014 | ISBN: 0670785393 | 384 pages | azw, epub, lrf, mobi | 3,2 mb
A debut offering, Althea & Oliver takes the coming of age theme and turns it on its ear. Moracho has penned a story with messy characters and a conclusion that feels somehow unsatisfying, but then you realize it couldn’t have ended any other way. Althea and Oliver have been friends for years, ten or more actually, and they are the epitome of opposites attract. Where Oliver is a fighter and tough, Althea is softer and quieter, more in touch with her feelings: and those feelings tell her that Oliver is her ‘choice’. For his part, Oliver is content with the friendship and wants nothing more. And then he starts to fall ill, succumbing to a sickness that causes him to sleep for long periods of time. He knows something is desperately wrong with him, and Althea doesn’t seem to understand that.
Althea is obsessed with Oliver: she wants more, as in a happily ever after, and her poor choices to achieve that end, with only Oliver and her obsession at the center of these decisions show her slow decline. Oliver’s path was always different from Althea’s: she just couldn’t or wouldn’t see it: he wanted adventure and to see the world, break free from their small town and leave childhood friendships in his rearview mirror.
Raw, emotionally challenging and often difficult, we see a series of bad choices made for the wrong reasons on Althea’s part, and her willingness to stumble forward repeating old mistakes until finally all of the effort shows itself as futile. Refreshing in that the story takes us on a path where the characters grow into what they NEED to be for themselves, not everyone gets what they believe they desire, and the revelations are so gradual for the characters yet evident to readers that you can’t help but sigh at the next bad choice.
Gritty, occasionally dark and certainly plain spoken, Althea and Oliver will appeal to teens that are familiar with (or are themselves) reaching that point in life where the forces that drive them may be pushing them away from those people and places that are most familiar.
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