So I picked up The Last True Love Story by Brendan Kiely from Powell’s in Portland (this is the last book from that trip, so I promise I’ll stop talking about it). If you want just the picture and text, scroll down. 

I also thought I’d try something new with the Sticky Note Reviews, and add a thing we in the world of English teaching call Somebody wanted / But / So / (Then). We use it to scaffold students’ writing of summaries. Also, I feel liek a little more context than a Six Word Summary is necessary to really engage with a review. So here we go. Oh, and for the record:

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via GIPHY

Somebody wanted / But / So / (Then)

In The Last True Love Story by Brendan Kiely, Teddy wanted to take his grandfather, who was more of a parent to him than his Dead Dad and absent mom, from California to New York so that, even though he’s fighting Alzhiemer’s, he could remember home. Corrina, a guitar player from Teddy’s school, wanted to leave California and try to make it as a singer/songwriter. But traveling across the United States with a man with Alzheimer’s and a girl who is running from her parents proves to me a more challenging endeavor than Teddy anticipated. So Teddy has to give up his desire to take his grandfather to Ithaca, NY> Corrina, however, does not go back to California, and continues on to New York.

The Sticky Note Review (from Instagram)

Just One More Thing…

The one thing that I didn’t have space for in my review that I wanted to include dealt with the characterization of Corrina, who is the love interest of the protagonist, Teddy. In the beginning, she felt like a manic pixie dream girl, but I loved that even though she was the threshold guardian for Teddy’s hero journey, she had a journey of her own to go on, and she didn’t let her budding relationship with Teddy get in the way of her dream to go to New York and make something of herself as a singer/songwriter. And I loved that Teddy didn’t get in the way of that.