In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Judy Blume digs deeps into her past, citing the horrible 1950s aviation tragedies that struck Elizabeth, NJ, one after another. Blume takes us into the hearts and minds of several residents of Elizabeth, including children who were impacted by seeing the crashes and wreckage, as well as stories of several victims themselves.
If you are familiar with her other adult novels, such as Summer Sisters and Smart Women, you will find the style familiar. As always, her ability to capture the thoughts and emotions of pre-teen and teen girls is second-to-none.
The reason I didn’t give this book five stars is that there were simply too many characters to keep track of. Like Smart Women, each chapter changes the point of view of the characters, but there were nearly 20 characters to track (some of whom perished in the aircraft crashes during the story) and I was constantly flipping back and forth to remind myself who was who, and who was related to whom?
I don’t know what I was thinking by reading the last third of this book on a flight between Denver and Baltimore, but that’s exactly what I did. Despite the numerous characters to track, the story will grip you and you won’t want to put the book down.
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