Patricia Stoltey

Author

  • Home
  • About
  • Books
  • Contact

Book Review: Mosquitoland, a YA novel by David Arnold

May 25, 2015 By: Patricia

Arnold_MosquitolandAccording to David Arnold’s bio and author photo, he’s a relatively young guy with a wife and a young son. I’m not sure why he decided to write a YA novel from a teen girl’s point of view, but I’m sure glad he did. The story of Mim (Mary Iris Malone) in Mosquitoland is a combination of charming, stressful, exciting, and deeply satisfying.

Mim’s father thinks she might be showing signs of the mental illness that Mim’s aunt Isabel experienced before committing suicide, so Mim has been to a psychiatrist and is currently on medication she doesn’t really want to take. Add that to her parents’ divorce, her father’s rather hurried remarriage, the new family moving away from the mother’s city, and then the discovery Mim is soon to have a baby sister, and there’s good reason for Mim to feel too much is happening too fast. She buys a Greyhound bus ticket and heads back to Ohio to find her mother.

What happens to Mim along the way and the people she meets make up most of the story. There’s a bit of craziness, a little serendipity, and a lot of edgy behavior to stretch what might have been reality into more of a fantasy….but I’ve taken some of those Greyhound bus trips and I didn’t find one bit of Mim’s trip unbelievable.

It’s difficult enough in adult novels to deal with topics of mental illness, learning disabilities, creepy guys who prey on young girls, and fear. Tackling the topics in a YA novel and still maintaining an element of humor and joy strikes me as a very difficult task. Arnold pulls it off beautifully, in my opinion, but that’s from an older reader’s point of view.

I took a look at the reviews on Goodreads and Amazon.com and found most other readers liked the novel. It also appears I’m not the only adult reader choosing YA novels these days, but that’s a potential topic for another day.

Meanwhile, if you like to read YA novels, please add Mosquitoland to your TBR list. If you’ve already read it, I’d love to know what you think.

More from my site

  • Review:  Chasing Justice by Kathleen DonnellyReview: Chasing Justice by Kathleen Donnelly
  • Book(s) Review: The Judas FilesBook(s) Review: The Judas Files
  • Book Review: The Storm Crows by Jenny SundstedtBook Review: The Storm Crows by Jenny Sundstedt
  • Featured Book: Not Guilty by C. Lee McKenzieFeatured Book: Not Guilty by C. Lee McKenzie
  • A House of Men by Sumner Wilson is More Than a WesternA House of Men by Sumner Wilson is More Than a Western
  • Book Suggestions for YA and MG ReadersBook Suggestions for YA and MG Readers

Category: Books and Authors Tag: book review, David Arnold, Mosquitoland

Comments

  1. Margot Kinberg says

    May 25, 2015 at 1:39 pm

    This is a really interesting premise for a story, Pat. And it sounds as though the characters are as important to the novel as the actual events of the story are. I’m glad you enjoyed it. Interesting how some of the really well-written books out there these days are YA.

    • Patricia says

      May 25, 2015 at 1:52 pm

      And the authors of these YA books are all ages and all levels of education — it’s clear to me they wouldn’t be getting published if there wasn’t a huge market for them, but I sometimes wonder who all the readers are? Is there really a huge generation of young readers….or is it their parents and grandparents who are the buyers and the readers? Someone should do a study on this.

  2. Jacqueline Seewald says

    May 25, 2015 at 12:32 pm

    Hi, Pat,

    A very complete book review! Definitely sounds like a good read. As a writer of both YA and adult fiction, I am always interested in current YA novels.

    • Patricia says

      May 25, 2015 at 1:48 pm

      Hi Jacqueline! I’m finding YA novels so well written that I pay close attention to a couple of the YA writers I follow who do reviews on their blogs. I think I saw this book mentioned, however, in USA Today.

  3. Alex J. Cavanaugh says

    May 25, 2015 at 6:38 am

    Interesting mix of elements. I’ve never been on a bus, but a friend took one across country and related the horror and wild side trips to me.

    • Patricia says

      May 25, 2015 at 9:01 am

      It’s not a mode of travel I’d recommend, Alex, although frankly I don’t recommend any mode of travel anymore except car. I’m pretty much over mass transport in the U.S.

Meet Patricia

I read, I write, I blog, and sometimes I do the laundry and cook. My 2014 novel, Dead Wrong, was a finalist in the thriller category of the 2015 Colorado Book Awards. Wishing Caswell Dead (Five Star/Cengage, December 20, 2017) is a historical mystery set in 1830s Illinois in the fictitious Village of Sangamon. The novel was a finalist for the 2018 Colorado Book Awards for General Fiction. My most recent release, In Defense of Delia (Five Star/Cengage, November 2022), is available in hardcover and will soon be available in ebook and trade paperback. Read More…

Search

Categories

In Defense of Delia

In Defense of Delia

Wishing Caswell Dead

Dead Wrong

Copyright © 2023 · Customized with by: Upperdale Designs