A GROWN-UP KIND OF PRETTY (JOSHILYN JACKSON)

 

 

Story Description:

Grand Central Publishing|September 25, 2012|Trade Paperback|ISBN: 978-0-58236-0 

 

A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty is a powerful saga of three generations of women, plagued by hardships and torn by a devastating secret, yet inextricably joined by the bonds of family.  Fifteen-year-old Mosey Slocumb – spirited, sassy, and on the cusp of womanhood – is shaken when a small grave is unearthed in the backyard, and determined to figure out why it’s there.  Liza, her stroke-ravaged mother, is haunted by choices she made as a teenager.  But it is Ginny, Mosey’s strong and big-hearted grandmother, whose maternal love brands together the strands of the women’s shared past – and who will stop at nothing to defend their future. 

 

My Review: 

 

This is my first Joshilyn Jackson novel and I wasn’t disappointed.  Her writing is simply magical and she has a way with words that make you feel even more endeared to the story. 

 

In A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty, trouble visits itself every fifteen years upon three generations of Slocumb women.  The matriarch of the family, Ginny, is forty-five –years-old and gave birth to her daughter, Liza, at age fifteen.  Liza, at age fifteen begat her daughter, Mosey, and now that Mosey is at that mysterious, trouble-ridden number of “fifteen” years of age, Ginny knows problems are arising.  After all “something” bad happens every fifteen years and it won’t be good. 

 

The personalities of the three Slocumb women are diverse and shaped through years of desperate lives and very hard times.  Liza had a stroke at age thirty and at age forty-five is still struggling to fight her way back to some sort of normalcy. 

 

Now that, Mosey, has turned fifteen, Ginny, is very worried that she will repeat the mistakes in her life that both she and her mother did.  On the other hand, Mosey, is determined and committed to NOT repeat those same mistakes. 

 

The story is told in all three voices through alternating chapters.  You’re so glued to each woman’s story that it makes you wish you had a whole book on each of their lives.  I was so enamoured with these three women that I wished I could befriend them all!  A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty is definitely the next book you should be reading.  Well-done Ms. Jackson, I’ll be ordering the rest of your novels!!