Stacia Tolman ¹ 9 Summary

Read Ë The Spaces Between Us 109 Serena begins to fixate on communism hoping to get a rise out of her blue collar factory town Her Western Civ teacher catches on and gives her an independent study of class and upward mobility what creates the spaces between us Meanwhile Grimshaw sets goals of her own to make it onto the cheerleading suad find a job and dis. So many cliches Dull plot unlikable narrator and nothing imaginative

Read Ë The Spaces Between Us 109 Mantle her family’s hopeless reputation But sometimes the biggest obstacles are the ones you don’t see coming; Grimshaw’s uest for success becomes a fight for survival and Serena’s independent study gets a little too real With the future of their friendship and their lives on the line the stakes have never been so hi. Serena and her best friend Grimshaw are just trying to make it through high school and out of their poor rundown town There is no future for either of them there They both come from less than perfect family situations Both have fathers who died when they were young Serena is little well off Her mom is the principal and she has a step dad and siblings Grimshaw s family is considered the trash of the town Both girls feel stuck Grimshaw the most She aspires to be a dancer and she uses her beauty to use guys to her advantage When she starts dating an older guy named Mike Serena can tell only bad things are coming As Grimshaw decides to leave town with Mike and start her career Serena tries to do everything in the power to save her friendThere is no easy way to explain The Spaces Between Us A lot happens in this story It encompasses about a year in the life of Serena starting with her failing a class at the end of her junior year going to Maine for the summer and then coming home to find Grimshaw has made new friends This is only maybe the first few chapters From there the story jumps around at times with no warning There are several times when we are in one scene and the next line will suddenly take place weeks later Serena is definitely a different kind of YA narrator She is whip smart and mature She deserves than what she is dealt and that includes a friend like Grimshaw We see Serena do literally everything to help Grimshaw but we never get a sense of Grimshaw being worthy of Serena s loyalty She isn t a good friend to Serena and is often times trying to ditch her I liked Serena a lot and her story is interesting with a realistic setting But there are a lot of parts of the story that didn t fit together or left uestions than answers to what is going onI still appreciate the originality of the story and the setting I received an e ARC from Netgalley

Summary ↠ E-book, or Kindle E-pub ¹ Stacia Tolman

Read Ë The Spaces Between Us 109 Two outcast best friends are desperate to survive senior year and break away from their rural factory townSerena Velasco and her best friend Melody Grimshaw are dying to get out of their shrinking factory town Until now they’ve been coasting eluding the bleakness of home and the banality of high school In a rebellious turn. Grimshaw and I are a pair of pariahs like a virus in a lipid envelope She s poor and I m smart so between the two of us we re practically an un American activity 5Hmm Not entirely sure what to make of this one I enjoyed the book just fine but am left with the feeling that there was something of a bait and switch going on however unintentionallySerena lives in a struggling factory town and she wants out She s not doing anything to facilitate that mind she s an overachiever only when it comes to underachieving She has a passive interest in communism which is what drew me to the book in the first place I wondered whether the book was contemporary or whether I hoped it was set during the Cold War It s contemporary as it happens though that s not always obvious Rare mentions of cell phones laptops and going viral make the era clear but I m sort of sorry for it I suppose that putting this during McCarthyism would make it socially dangerous for Serena to be overtly interested in communism but I just wanted communism I guess That is not communism exactly I wanted of what the description suggested which is to say a close look at class and upward mobility and what those mean in the contexts of communism and democracy I find that adults are very jaded these days No combination of hair color clothes body piercing or tattoos can shock them About the only thing that can still guarantee a reaction in this factory town is communism So I wear a Red Army cap each day with the red star I probably overdo it with the communist thing but otherwise I m not sure anyone would know I exist 15Insteadthere s a bit of lip service to communism which it s almost immediately clear that Serena is only interested in as something to annoy the adults around her and then the book takes a left turn to cheerleading and a much standard YA high school story Fortunately it veers off onto an access road that takes Serena and Grimshaw on a hitchhiking road trip across the States butthen there s a metaphoric metaphoric I m seeing how far I can stretch this car accident and things get somehow darker but less complicated I d have preferred just you know complicatedSo it has its moments but gosh this has made me want a complicated gritty Cold War setting in a book exploring why yes class and politics