MG Review: Finding Esme

Finding Esme by Suzanne Crowley

Published: Okay, goodreads was wrong. This totally isn't out yet, and my thinking I was reviewing it late is actually early. So this will be released August 14th, 2018, by Greenwillow Books and I'm going to go change the goodreads page because this did not come out in May.
Genre: Contemporary MG with fantasy elements
Binding: E-arc
Page Count: Goodreads says 352
Part of a series? No, I don't believe so.
Got via: I requested it on Edelweiss.
Amazon / Book Depository / Indiebound

Summary (from goodreads): Twelve-year-old Esme’s life changes when she discovers dinosaur bones on her family’s peach farm in Texas.

After her grandfather died from a heart attack while driving his tractor, Esme has avoided returning to the spot where he lost his life. But when she follows her little brother, Bo, up the hill while chasing fireflies, she makes an incredible discovery—dinosaur bones peeking out from underneath the abandoned tractor.

Esme sees the bones as a message from her grandfather; a connection beyond the grave. But when word gets out that Peach Hollow Farm is hiding something valuable, reporters, researchers, and neighbors arrive in droves. Esme must find a way to understand who has her best interests at heart — especially as the memories of her grandfather begin to slip away.

Review: I liked this, but it wasn't my absolute favourite. The things I liked were the things that drew me in - I liked that it was a dinosaur book with a female main character. Weirdly, I actually have two dinosaur bones books on my kindle right now, with one coming out I think in October 2018. Is this a trend? I'm into it, if it is. I also thought that the storyline of Esme dealing with her grief of losing her grandfather was handled well. I appreciated that it was a middle grade book dealing with death and grief without the entire book being about that. It's not Newberry bait, you know?

Mostly I had two problems with this, one of which I'll go into a little bit later, but my big one was that - the language in this is pretty. Sometimes I felt it was too pretty. For parts of the book, it felt like the prose was doing too much. The prose can be a little overly done when it's supposed to be an almost thirteen year old girl's narration, and Esme gets a bit lost in it. It almost comes off stereotypical, and it's just a little much.

Plot Talk: The plot is described in the summary pretty well, but tying into that - the beginning is pretty slow. The first like two pages made me really nervous because they were just a lot of backstory and the main character describing herself, and I was afraid the rest of the book was going to be slow like that. Luckily it wasn't, but it took a while to pick up. It also takes quite some time to get to anything about the dinosaur bones. Once it picks up, it's good, and incorporates some subplots without losing sight of the main plot, but there is a wait to get there.

The other thing is my other big problem - why was this set in the 80s? It's not even clear when exactly it is set, at least not to me because, being born in 1992, I'm not always great at nailing down when things happened in the 80s. You all know I'm kind of fussy about that, and it's not that I don't think great books can't be set in the 80s. But what I have to ask is what does this add to the book, and in this case I don't really think it does a whole lot for the book. It's not really bad, but I don't think it's super necessary.

Characters: The characters are solid enough, but I wasn't especially drawn to any of them. They're fine, but nothing stood out in a way that I'll be looking back on this one and thinking about it in a few weeks or months. Like I said, Esme sometimes got lost in the narration and how the prose could be a bit much. Although I liked her, it sometimes felt hard to find her.

One thing I will give big kudos for was the handling of Esme's father's character. I really liked that the book managed not to completely villanize her father, who'd left when she was young, while not treating it like Esme was wrong to not trust him to stay or not want to get close to him again when he came back. When I was a kid, I hated that kind of "redeemed disappeared dad" story so much because that was so far from what I felt and experienced. I know my experience isn't universal either, but I would have appreciated this kind of story.

PG-13 stuff: Death of a grandparent, parents being ill (physically and mentally), there's a small subplot about some people in town making moonshine, and Esme and her grandmother are threatened at gunpoint by the moonshiners, and there's a violent death by an accidental gunshot.

Cons, complaints, bad stuff, etc.: The mental illness/non-neurotypical representation in this is not very good. Esme's mom has some nameless mental illness and I don't think the handling of that is amazing. It's kind of stereotypical. Esme's brother also probably has ADHD, and it's basically written off with, "Boys will be boys," by her grandmother. I dunno, with other ableist language in the book, it just rubbed me the wrong way.

There's also butt-all for diversity, really. And I know it's Texas in the 80s, but I'm pretty sure Texas in the 80s had people who weren't white, let alone other things like queer.

Cover comments: I quite like it. I sure would have been drawn to it as a kid. I like the art style, and how it has a peach on the cover, which is really relevant to the book. I kind of wish there was some indication of the dinosaur theme on the cover, but it's really good regardless.

Conclusion: This is just kind of average for me. It's certainly not bad at all, and I enjoyed it, but it's not one of my faves. I do think that kids who like dinosaurs will totally like this, and it'll have appeal to kids in general. Overall, just kind of three rose book, which is perfectly respectful, so. Three out of five roses.



Thanks for reading!

Peace and cookies,
Laina