Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

If you enjoy novels that are dark or disturbing--and a reader who appreciates what's often termed "new" or "fresh" approaches to literature--you'll probably want to skip this review. I in no way wish to offend the author, publisher, or the folks who've enjoyed "My Sunshine Away" by M.O. Walsh. In exchange for a free, pre-publication copy of the novel, I'm required to give an honest review based on my own opinions. Your mileage may vary. We're introduced to the narrator/main character as he's looking back upon his adolescence and, especially, the girl across the street and two doors down that he's had a crush on since elementary school. More accurately, it seems like a typical school boy crush. As his story unfolds, however, it becomes painfully clear that it's much more obsession... a creepy obsession at best, and a dangerous, disturbing one that can't have escaped the adults in his life. Lindy, his paramour, was brutally raped the summer he was 14, and although Walsh writes the narrator's thoughts and feelings as naive and mostly innocent, his near-total focus on both the girl and all things sexual didn't quite add up to me. I have two now-adult sons. I was well aware of their awkward, awakening sexuality in their early teens. It wasn't, however, a 24/7 focus. Had it been--had they not had other interests, hobbies, etc.--I would have been very concerned. Granted, there were other deep, painful issues going on in the narrator's life in his youth, as the story slowly exposes. Oddly, there are also a number of rabbit trails and seemingly disconnected thoughts or events that had me feeling lost while reading... as if I'd somehow turned the wrong page. Hurricane Katrina is mentioned, which happened long after the 1989-1991 time frame of most of the novel. Why was that there? I wasn't sure, and am still not. There's also a mystery throughout the chapters. Namely, who raped Lindy that summer? After hanging in there until the last chapters, I was truly let down by how that question is answered, and especially the way in which it was delivered. Pages and chapters of lead up for something that felt rushed and almost brushed off like crumbs on a tablecloth. I don't know. Other readers find "My Sunshine Away" to be a brilliant work of fiction. The novel is written in a currently popular style combining first person with shifts in time and/or focus, lots of sex or sexual subject matter thrown in for good measure, and a dismissal of old fashioned high school English grammar. Therefore, I might just be an old fuddy duddy. You might really like the novel. I hope you do! It's not one I'd personally recommend.