“This morning, my mother didn’t get out of bed.”
Rating: 5/5
Summary: Francesca is beginning her second term in year eleven at an all boy’s school that’s just started accepting girls. Her mother has had a breakdown and no longer gets out of bed and she misses her old friends.
But what Francesca doesn’t expect when she arrives at her new school, seriously not wanting to be there is that the new friends she makes grudgingly are fiercely loyal and that there’s more to them then it seems. She doesn't expect to fall in love or that she has the power to bring her family that is slowly falling apart in her mother’s absence back together.
Review: This story is phenomenal. Melina writes a magical book with raw and extraordinary real emotion.
With the terrible summary I have written and provided you all with you're probably thinking that this is an awful novel with not much going for it, maybe you're thinking: depression? What a sad topic, why on earth would I want to read such an unhappy tale? Please don't let any of that sort of stuff put you off.
Marchetta has the writing ability to make you seriously care about her characters. Her characters are easy to relate to, fun and different. In each novel Marchetta produces comes with it a fantastic set of new characters and as a reader and major fan of all of her novels the characters in Saving Francesca still stand to be my favourites.
There where so many points where I was touched by the characters who are so much deeper then they seem, and there were even more points where I was laughing out loud at what a character had said or done.
It's an all star cast in this novel and if you're looking for a novel with characters that are beyond the ordinary then you must pick this book up. There's Thomas and Jimmy who make you laugh, there's William who makes your fan girl hearts go insane, there's just so many wonderful characters I could be here all day babbling about them.
Francesca is a fantastic narrator, and what you see and feel thorough her eye’s is real and true. You feel her pain about her mother’s problem, you feel her anger toward the people who just don’t get it and you laugh with her whenever Thomas is a smart ass or when Jimmy invites himself around.
The plot is interesting and I felt driven to finish this novel because...of well everything, the characters – don't get my talking about them again. The plot, original and interesting and the writing, Marchetta's style is in one word blunt and in two: blunt and beautiful. She doesn't beat around the bush, she never drags things out for too long, she tells you all the truth she can and tells it beautifully and by her doing this she has become and probably will always stay my favourite author.
This novel, to be fully appreciated needs to be read by people who are mature, when I read this novel for the first time at age thirteen the mother's depression made me feel a little sick with sadness, but when I reread it a year later I loved this book so much that I am till this day constantly reaching for this novel for comfort when I have a bad day.
This novel gets five stars. Everything about it is wonderful and amazing. I hope that you're putting this novel on the top of a very long list of books to read or running off to buy it because Saving Francesca is not to be missed by YA readers because it is definitely amongst the finest in that category.
--Allie.
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Oh I so want to read this!! And I know what you mean about Melinda having the ability to make you care about her characters. I for one witnessed it when I was fortunate enough to read Jellicoe Road!! I LOVED that book. It was my first by Melinda and definitely won't be my last.
Loved the review!
Did you every read Looking for Alibrandi? Which one would you recommend to read first?
Great review!
Melina Marchetta is probably my all-time favourite author, for all the reasons that you mentioned lol. She is amazing in that her books only get better (Looking For Alibrandi was, in my opinion, her worst, but still good).
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