Meanwhile, Layla’s little sister, Verna, is suffering through her first year of high school. She’s become a prime target for her cruel classmates, and not just because of her strange name and her fundamentalist parents. Layla’s bad-girl rep casts a shadow too heavy for Verna to bear alone, so she falls in with her sister’s tribe of outcasts. But their world is far darker than she ever imagined…
Unless Patrick, Layla, Caro, and Verna can forge their own twisted paths to peace—with themselves, with each other—then they’re stuck on a dangerous collision course where the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Save Yourself had a very strong beginning. The story clipped along and the characters were believable. I was enjoying the book a lot…until I wasn’t. All of a sudden a new batch of characters showed up that I found to be shallow cliches. They stank of pure plot device.
The last part of this novel read like an entirely different book than the beginning. It went from a disturbing tale about two families about to collide into an unbelievable weird-fest featuring kids who were too evil to be believe.
While I didn’t personally enjoy the ending of Save Yourself, Kelly Braffet definitely has my attention. She knows how to craft an eccentric story. I believe we’ll be seeing better offerings from her in the future. I, for one, will be waiting to see what she comes up with next.
To see a differing opinion about Save Yourself please read Rory’s wonderful review at Fourth Street Review.
Kelly Braffet is the author of Josie and Jack and Last Seen Leaving. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University, where she receieved her MFA. Kelly lives in upstate New York with her husband, the writer Owen King. Visit her on Twitter or on Facebook.
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The Relentless Reader 