Kidlit Book Club

For the month of April, I’m going to be reading and discussing the YA book This Is What I Want to Tell You by Heather Duffy Stone. It came out from Flux in March and deals with love, jealousy, friendship, disappointment and, finally, the bonds that endure through all of this.

My review: This Is What I Want to Tell You

An interview with the author is coming up!

Let’s get this party started with a Leading Question:

How do the dueling first person point of view (POV) perspectives here drive this story? What do we learn about each of the twins with this technique?

Kidlit Book Club Rules:

  1. Post about this book club in at least one place (on your blog, in a forum, etc.). Click here to copy and paste some code that will make it easier.
  2. Join the discussion below if you’ve read or are reading this month’s selection. Introduce yourself, answer the leading question or post one of your own.
  3. Have fun and tell your friends!
  1. Emma’s avatar

    Emma on April 13, 2009 at 7:43 am

    I loved this book,, I think the two point-of-views let us see the same event from two different sieds, like when Nadio and Keeley get together, we can see him falling in love from his own perspective and then Noelle’s reaction from hers and it almost makes you empathize with both. Even though, in that situatoin, Nadio is the more sympathetic character, since you see it from both perspectives, you can understand Noelle’s reaction just as well.

  2. Mary’s avatar

    Mary on April 13, 2009 at 7:46 am

    Thanks for joining the discussion! I totally agree. There’s a really interesting dynamic going on between how sympathetic and unsympathetic these two characters are. It really changes over the course of the book. Any other readers care to comment on how our perceptions of Noelle and Nadio change throughout? It’s safe to say that Noelle is the more unsympathetic, but Nadio has his moments, like when he’s wondering whether or not he should press the sex issue with Keeley, one of my favorite, most truthful moments in the book.

  3. Steve’s avatar

    Steve on April 15, 2009 at 8:43 am

    While I did like this book, and I felt that the two POVs and the absence of quote marks, which could have been pretty pretentious, worked really well, I would have very much liked a little bit of light now and then. Pretty much from the first word to the last, it felt like drowning in darkness, and a breather of some kind–even an occasional funny line from any character–would have been very welcome. Still, like I said, good book–very fast read, tough issues handled very honestly, and the OD scene from Noelle’s POV was especially vivid.