Book Jacket:
When Travis returns home from a stint in Afghanistan, his parents are splitting up, his brother’s stolen his girlfriend and his car, and he’s haunted by nightmares of his best friend’s death. It’s not until Travis runs into Harper, a girl he’s had a rocky relationship with since middle school, that life actually starts looking up. And as he and Harper see more of each other, he begins to pick his way through the minefield of family problems and post-traumatic stress to the possibility of a life that might resemble normal again. Travis’s dry sense of humor, and incredible sense of honor, make him an irresistible and eminently lovable hero.
You can read an excerpt here.
Review:
If I hadn’t heard a Bloomsbury publicist rave about this book, would I have picked it up? Honestly, the answer is probably no – the cover is unremarkable, the blurb makes it sound like a fairly boilerplate contemporary romance, and the Afghanistan angle is something I feel like I’ve read at least three times before. But I am so very glad that I did hear that publicist rave, because Something Like Normal is fully rave-worthy. This story just quietly ambushed me with its power, and I really, really loved what it had to say.
It’s always wonderful to read a contemporary YA – and a contemporary YA with a strong romantic bent, no less – that’s narrated from a guy’s POV, but Travis’s voice is particularly wonderful. He is just so very much an authentic, regular, nineteen year old guy – he definitely thinks about sex and girls like a guy (i.e. a lot) and he definitely screws up, and doesn’t always know why he’s doing what he’s doing, but he’s also just a really good guy. Travis is also very much a soldier, for all that he’s only nineteen – and this book really brought home for me the fact that a lot of the boys we’ve been sending over to Iraq and Afghanistan are just that – teenage boys, fresh out of high school. Travis’ sense of dislocation, being both a professional soldier and a nineteen year old dumped back into his old teenage life for a week, was for me a revelation, because it was the first time I really felt like I got it – for the first time, I was on the inside of a story about a soldier’s sense of wrongness in coming home. This book was also the first time I really connected with a story about PTSD – and I really, really loved the subtle but pervasive way Dollar handled it. Travis is not having an easy time, and yet he’s also just a normal teenage guy dealing with his shit, as we all do. I just really, really got him – and absolutely fell in love with his voice.
I also loved how Travis’ personal life was so authentically messy. He comes home from the war to find a quieter war taking place on the home front – and the family baggage just lands in his lap with a thud, even as he’s supposed to be recovering from the toll of carrying a very different type of baggage. It was all so wonderfully REAL – the tense family dinners, the weird sense of being out of place when he hangs out with old high school friends, the importance of his new family in the Marines, the promiscuous ex-girlfriend – and it was all so brilliantly rich. Dollar makes everyone in Travis’ life come alive – they were so true they felt almost familiar, yet they were still entirely themselves. I loved how Travis’ relationships tangled and snarled, how some he straightened out, some be broke off, and some he saw truly for the first time. There is just so much meat on this bone, and all of it delicious.
And of course, last but not least is the heart of this story – the romance. And wow, did I love it. This book is the antithesis of insta-love – it had attraction I could believe in, personality, awkwardness, self-sabotaging, and two people stumbling all over the place as they try to figure out if they’re going to do this thing. I loved how insecure they both were at times, how many mistakes Travis made, how Harper was not simple or easy, and how they both had to wonder if the other person could possibly love them, despite the mess. And man oh man did they have chemistry! Finally, finally a romance I could and did fall in love with.
Oh, this is just such a good book. There is so much depth to this story – and yet, at the same time, this literally is a story about a guy who goes home for a week, and who by and large just hangs out around town. But it’s also a story about moving on, growing up, seeing things in a new way and figuring your shit out, and I simply and truly loved it. Seriously guys, this is one book you don’t want to miss.
Byrt Grade: A
As Levar Burton used to say – you don’t have to take my word for it…
An affecting look at the experience of one teen soldier’s experience on leave from Afghanistan…At its heart, this too-timely novel is purely honest.
Despite the overall set up being something I in no way have experienced, I related to Travis so instinctively, and was able to see things the way he does without any issue. Absolutely a book I will reread, and one that I will think back on plenty, Something Like Normal is a stunning and poignant debut from a majorly talented author.
Clear Eyes, Full Shelves says:
Trish Doller’s remarkable debut, Something Like Normal, is one of those rare books that I recommend to nearly everyone. It’s an important, timely novel – one that’s lingered with me in the months since I read it.
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