The Waiting Sky by Lara Zielin

The Waiting Sky by Lara Zielin
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

2 Stars

I really hate giving this review, but it’s my honest opinion. I tried to like THE WAITING SKY, I really did. THE WAITING SKY in my opinion was the most annoying book to read, I didn’t like the main character Jane, I could not relate nor understand her reasoning. I thought the relationship between Jane and Max was VERY juvenile, they didn’t act like 17-year olds, but 12-year olds, some of the jokes they were trying to tell each other, were just awkward and it didn’t make the conversation flow.

Jane is 17 years old and has an alcoholic mother (main reason why I was intrigued with this book). After Jane’s mother almost kills Jane’s best friend, Jane was finally pushed to spend the summer with her brother, cashing tornados. The story should have been about Jane trying to move forward, but the whole book and I mean 99.9% of the book was Jane’s justification to why Jane needed to take care of her mother. I think I would have liked this book a lot more if Jane stayed with her Mom and Jane was trying to work out issues or Jane deciding to leave on her terms and trying to work out issues.

I’m trying to be sympathetic, drug and alcohol use are serious topics, so I was looking for something deeper, something dark and gut retching, but I didn’t feel it in this book. To mean, I was reading a book about a whinny mother, an annoying daughter and awesome side characters that for some reason put up with all of Jane’s drama. I loved Cat, Jane’s best friend and I was pretty much ticked off when I read Cat’s story and Jane just didn’t have any guilt, or if she had guilt, she justified why she did what she did.

I think the thing that really KILLED it for me was the ending, really Jane, are you really that dramatic? I just didn’t understand her reasoning. The ending was just over-all dramatic and unnecessary and it made me HATE Jane more and just sealed it for me on how stupid Jane’s actions were.

The only positive aspects in this book is Jane’s brother and Max pushing Jane to seek professional help, since alcoholism doesn’t just affect the alcoholics, it affects the people around the alcoholics as well. Also, the story centered on tornados, was different and interesting.

I wouldn’t recommend this book, unless you are into annoying, irrational characters that whine throughout book. It pains me to give a negative review because I love independent authors, but it’s my honest opinion.