ELK's Library

I received an excerpt of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The excerpt was six chapters long and my review is based off of those six chapters.

Cedar has lost both her younger brother Ben and father after a tragic accident. Still grieving, Cedar’s mother buys a summer house in the town of Iron Creek so she can be close to her family. So the excerpt on NetGalley was labeled as both YA and Middle Grade; based off the writing style I would place this work in the Middle Grade category -- the writing is way too simplistic to be considered YA and even Middle Grade is a stretch. Looking at both Booklikes and Amazon, they seem to agree with me, Goodreads has it labeled as YA. Despite the simplistic writing style the author does a fair job of getting across the grief that our protagonist feels at the loss of both her brother and father. So she gets credit for how she was able to convey the grief of Cedar, but at the same time, I think even younger children would be insulted at the simplistic writing.

I could have lived with the writing style if only the story was interesting enough to draw me in, but it really wasn't. The excerpt was six chapters, but they were short and nothing really exciting happened. Cedar sees a boy ride by on a bike in funny clothes and then decides to follow him, that’s it. There’s little hints as to the fate of her brother and father, but it really wasn't anything that appealed to me. I gave this excerpt two stars.