The Year Without Michael

Bad things aren’t supposed to happen to good people. But somewhere between home and the softball field, 16-year-old Jody Chapman’s younger brother disappeared, and now the family is falling apart. Her parents hardly speak to each other, her younger sister is angry and bitter, and Jody’s friends, always so important to her, are slowly slipping away. It seems that all anyone can do is wait. Wait—for Michael to walk in the door. Wait—to stop missing him. Wait—to stop waiting. When a private detective can’t uncover a single clue about Michael’s disappearance, Jody’s urgent need to find him drives her to make a last desperate attempt to hold her family together.

The Year Without Michael is the heartbreaking story of a family's struggle to accept their new lives in the year after a child goes missing. As expected, there are a lot of heavy emotions involved in their attempt to see through a tragedy together, and one which they may or may not ever get the answers to. For such a quick read, I was surprised at the amount of story to be told. It's not extravagant or detailed by any degree, it jumps around quite a bit, but it's a very easy read.

As I grew to learn more about the characters, some seemed very over the top for drama's sake and the situations quite unlikely. I feel like they would succeed in remaining a functional family through a massive hardship if they were nicer to each other and not show more so quick to make comments that are completely out of left field and entirely unnecessary. These aren't realistic arguments, they're cruelty where it doesn't make any sense to exist in a narrative. There can be quiet tension without explosions to show off the dysfunction. Unfortunately, character interactions fail in subtlety.

Kay, a twelve year old girl, was equal parts given the lines of an ignorant child while also being as well-spoken as the adults. Linda was completely off her rocker and her behaviour wasn't at all warranted. The characters were pretty much the same except for how individually drastic they each were for the sake of being incredibly difficult to compromise with. Characters have such a hard time expressing themselves that they each frequently "declare" statements, a recurring word in the description of their dialogue through the entirety of the book.

Though highly unlikely, the story is fine, and it's a quick read which, other than a welcome spark of humour in the middle, leaves you with the sense of dread that you're meant to feel when getting involved in a story about this subject. It kept me entertained for a couple of hours which was pretty much what I was looking for to pick it up on a whim just based on its short length. I enjoyed the overall plot points of this one, if the characterization was severely lacking. Overall, not too bad. show less

A very tough emotionally laden book about the disappearance of a child from a family, emphasizing problems that were already there within the family. I listened to the audio version and truly felt the descriptions of the reactions of different family members---just horrific as they tried to deal with the "missingness" and all of the not knowing. It was completely believable and therefore very painful to listen to.

The remaining members of the Chapman family try to cope with the disappearance of 14-year-old Michael