Deb Caletti

“Heroes and villains are so comforting so thrilling even, but they're just not real. They're pen, and ink, or pixels. They're distorted and illogically placed objects, a wrong blending between foreground and background that no brilliant solution can fix. Heroes are lies. But man, I'll tell you, there are a lot of children that are very, very real who sure could use one. ”

-5 stars-

Tropes:
- Fake Identity
- Miscommunication
- Girl power
- So Messy!
- Summer job!

Spice:
1/5

Yes! Yes! Yes!
I show more literally love this book sooo much!
Honestly, this book made me quite sad. The fact that Brandy (Eleanors mom) and Rosalind (her sister) payed her so little attention broke my heart into two.
I loved everything about this book! There was fun bits of humor (like the inside out bikini at the pool), there was times that I cringed so badly (like the inside out bikini at the pool), and there were a lot of times that made my heart warm. I loved the relationship that grew between Aurora and Eleanor throughout the book!
I love how Eleanor despised Aurora at the start of the book, and thought of her as the villain until she started babysitting for Arlo and, she and Aurora almost had big sister little sister vibe going on. It was so sweet.
Please don't even get me started on her and Arlo! It warmed my heart so much and made me wish I had a younger sibling (Haha!)
Eleanor was super relatable! I mean we could've been twins! I loved how she was part of a book club (The Soggy Pages Book Club) and the way she was obsessed with obscure words like me!
The premise of the book was so fun and also thought provoking! I loved it!
The writing style is just up my alley, I couldn't get enough of the book, with it's witty humor and heartwarming moments.
I love Deb's books because she always writes her books in a way that makes me think about how I would handle the situation if faced.
Overall an amazing read and the twist of romance just made the book that much better!

“The thing is-you can memorize every rule in an instructions book, but you won't actually know a think about the game until you're playing.” show less

But the one thing my illness did make me realize is how necessary it is to ignore the dangers of living in order to live. And how much trouble you can get into if you can't. We all have to get up every morning and go outside and pretend we aren't going to die... We concentrate on having little thoughts so we don't have BIG THOUGHTS. It's like those days when you've got a really bad pimple but you still have to go to school. You've got to convince yourself it's not so bad just so you can show more leave the house and actually talk to people face to face. You've got to ignore the one big truth -- life is fatal.

Jade DeLuna never knows when she's going to have a panic attack. She's always on guard for for that tightening feeling in her chest that signifies that she might be about to lose control and humiliate herself. Jade's figured out a few ways to ward off the panic - lighting patron saint candles, picturing herself in a calm, barren desert, sucking on a cough drop, and watching the live webcam of the elephants in the zoo down the street. The routine of watching the elephants do what comes naturally soothes Jade's stresses away. Sometimes she can see the visitors to the elephants on the webcam, too, but none ever draw her attention until the day the young guy in a red jacket carrying a baby on his back catches her eye. Just seeing him on the webcam, Jade has an unmistakable sense that this stranger and the kid she assumes is his will somehow become a part of her life.

After a half-hearted attempt or two to "accidentally" meet him, Jade pushes thoughts of him to the back of her head to focus on her new volunteer job taking care of the elephants. Getting to know the elephants and their keeper is a welcome break from the troubles that are riddling Jade's parents marriage, unwelcome additions to her group of friends, and her rapidly upcoming decision about what college to attend. Between all the chaos in her life and her new found relationship with the elephants, the guy in the red jacket is all but a memory until the day he shows up again. Just as she'd supposed, soon Sebastian and his son Bo are becoming the best things in her life, and she feels more at home with the pair and Sebastian's grandmother than she could ever hope to feel at home with her real family. Unfortunately, there's more to Sebastian's story than first meets the eye, leaving Jade to make some decisions she'd never imagined.

Caletti has a great knack for voicing quirky first person narrators that are easy to relate to for girls both young and old. Jade has a compelling conversational voice that makes you feel like you've got a friend telling you a story. She makes it easy to see how the every day business of living can be downright terrifying if you think about it too much.

Jade and Sebastian's love story is sweetly told starting with believable awkwardness and insecurity and evolving until they start to feel like home for each other. Caletti goes out of her way to emphasize the quirks and ordinarily mundane qualities that can make one person love another much more than words or looks. The portrayal of a teen dad who is in love with his young son and desperately wants to care for him no matter the sacrifice is refreshing. It seems the most natural thing in the world that when Jade begins to forget to worry about every little thing as she falls deeper in love with Sebastian and his family.

What's especially interesting about Caletti's books is that, despite the fact that she writes beautiful, romantic, realistic love stories, she never leaves her main characters to be defined by their relationship. The love story opens doors, teaches lessons, and ends uncertainly, but the change in Jade never stops being the focus. Caletti leaves us all with the correct impression that girls are stronger than they know and more resilient in the face of hardship than even they would expect, and that's a lesson that's a pleasure to learn from The Nature of Jade. show less

First of all – and I’ve been meaning to say this for a while – I want to tell Christian: this love you claim you feel towards Clara? It’s not love – it’s not even obsession – it’s flat out possession. Loving a person means that you trust that person, and trusting means that you don’t check their phone, scroll through their emails or even accuse them of making cow eyes at people they didn’t even look at. One more thing: if you really loved Clara? You would have let her go, show more done anything to make sure she was happy – even if it meant being away from you, forever.

Well, having gotten that out of my system, I have to say that this book was beautifully written. I loved the way it jumped back from past to present chapter by chapter so that the reader could know what was happening in her present life as well as her relationship with Christian. Everything started clicking after you read the Christian-related chapters – her fear of him (because, really, who wouldn’t be afraid of an ex-boyfriend/stalker who professes to love you with all his heart?), her relationship with her father – everything.

I didn’t like how Clara was so weak when it came to Christian in the story, though. I suppose that it was necessary – that they both really depended on each other – but I would’ve thought that she would stop deluding herself after realizing at seeing Christian for the last time would not provide the happy, final meeting she had hoped her – even she herself realized she was being incredibly naïve.

On the whole, this was a really good book that made sense. You didn’t see Clara running back to Christian time after time – you saw her paranoia, her fear that Christian would find her even though she knew rationally that that was not possible. You didn’t see her crying over him – you saw her anger, her fear, and her guilt. That’s what really worked for me, that everything made sense – it’s something that you rarely see nowadays in most YA novels. show less

Maybe love too is beautiful because it has a wildness that cannot be tamed. I don’t know... All I know is that passion can take you up like a house of cards in a tornado leaving destruction in its wake. Or, it can let you alone because you have built a stone wall against it... set out the armed guards to keep it from touching you. The real trick is to let it in, but to hold on. To understand that the heart is as vast and as wide as the universe. But that we come to know it from here. This show more place of gravity and stability.

I feel like I’ve just gotten off the Ghost Rider equivalent roll-a-coaster of emotions. You know that feeling, when you get off of that wild ride at the amusement park, and that first moment your feet touch the ground, you sway a bit, look around to grab your bearings, and have that small moment of indecision wondering what possessed you to go on it, elated that you made it through, and wondering if you should take the ride again. All very intense and emotionally gripping to say the least as this book crash collides themes around genius passion, madness, love and self destruction.

I will warn you upfront, this book has highly mixed reviews, but after a string of no hits between me and the author Deb Caletti, I can say with conviction that Wild Roses really moved me and stood out as a book that will hold top rank in my YA shelf.

Cassie Morgan is one of the best narrators I’ve come across in YA in quite a while. She’s honest, snarky, emotional, yet strong and extremely grounded. She lives with her mother and step father, Dino Cavalli, and periodically stays with her dad and grandma, all according to the divorce decree. Life with her mom and Dino is anything but perfect. As a matter of fact, Dino is like a b0mb about to detonate. He is this genius violin player and composer who to the public eye is a grand perfection of brilliance, but behind closed doors is making Cassie’s life a living nightmare. He’s a mentally disturbed, paranoid, depressed, arrogant, self-serving, bully that is on the verge of self destruction. Then, along comes Ian Waters who becomes Dino’s student and Cassie’s love interest and things begin to unravel fast and not in a good way.

This book really took me for a crazy ride. I have so many raw emotions for just about every character in this story. I’m angry at some, sad for others and resolved for the remaining few.

My heart went out to Cassie. She’s extremely loyal to her mom and will stand by her no matter what. I loved her moments of honest revelations, especially when she’d recite a hidden fantasy, mainly about how she’d like to see Dino take a hike. I was so angry with her mother through most of the novel. I felt her primary responsibility was to her daughter and nothing else. For her to stand back and let that arseholian Dino talk to Cassie the way he did was unforgiveable in my eyes. I couldn’t come to forgive the mom or Dino for the hurt they put Cassie through. Man I disliked them both!!

Cassie’s father wasn’t much better IMO either. He knew Dino was a big phat fraud and he did nothing about it but continued to obsess over finding contradicting facts about Dino. I wanted to shake him and yell “Do something you big dummy! She’s your daughter! You have every right to pull her from that home and protect her! Dumb arse!” Oh and don’t even get me started when Cassie’s mom said the dad had no right intervening. Ummm hell to the yeah he did! Both parents should have realized that their daughter was their main priority, above a step-father, above whatever the divorce decree states, above it all!! I was so mad. GRRR!

Not sure I felt much compassion for Ian, and I don’t know why. Maybe his moments in the book were too brief for me to develop any real emotional stance for the guy. I am glad though that he was there for Cassie as much as he could be and their final moments were a real tear jerker.

I’m still perplexed about this whole Itallian village and their willingness to stand behind one man’s lies to such a fervent level that they actually come to believe the lies. Does that really happen? Crazy! Just crazy!

Overall, despite the rocky relationship I’ve had with Deb Caletti’s books, I’m glad I’ve finally found one that hit a home run and moved me. All very well done and highly emotional as it touches on weighty subjects such as divorce, depression, paranoia, insanity, love and loss. Loved it!

Favorite quotes
If your life truths have to be protected like some people keep their couches in plastic then ciao… have a nice life... if we bump into each other at Target, I’m the one buying the sour gummy worms and that’s all you need to know about me.

We don't want you convicted for condiment theft. You go to that prison, you'll meet big-time operators. Maple syrup stealers.

Love seems to be something to approach with caution, as if you'd come across a wrapped box in the middle of the street and have no idea what it contains.

Supposedly there's an actual, researched link between extreme creativity and mental illness, and I believe it because I've seen it with my own eyes.

Song choice: Cassie and Ian
Playlist song: Best is Yet to Come – Red show less