Brothers & Sisters - Coldplay

Notes from the Blender

Authors: Trish Cook & Brendan Halpin
Pages: 228
ARC Acquired from: Egmont @ ALA 2011

Brief Summary:
Declan just got a huge surprise. After seven years as a widower, his father is remarrying and having a child with another woman, a woman who just happens to be the mother of Neilly Foster, his biggest crush. He isn't ready for his father to replace his mother and himself. Neilly gets this news in the time right before her father's own remarriage to his business and life partner Roger. She just can't deal with any more changes to her life. Needless to say, this blending of family's is not going to come together without any drama.

Review:
Notes from the Blender is one of the books my dear, lovely friend Jordan brought back from ALA for me. When I read the blurb on the back, I was hugely skeptical about how this was going to go. It sounded like a manga plot, because they love the step-sibling thing (and the sibling thing, which we do now too apparently, as there's a new YA book about that which I both do and really do not want to try) and I just didn't know if it was going to be my jam, as they say.

Actually, I really liked it! Don't you just love when first impressions are wrong for the better? (Presuming, of course, of course that I did not make a huge fuss about not liking the person/thing/place first, in which case I mostly just feel like a fool. This happened recently with Modern Family. Even paragons of perfection like myself (ha!) make mistakes now and then. Anyway, this book is super cute and successfully rocks the alternating stories written by two different parties. Both characters had real voices and were likable (and not occasionally). Folks who enjoy the collaborations between Levithan and Cohn should definitely give this one a chance!

This story managed to hit on soooo many key issues in teenage life: death metal, veganism, violence, dating, sex, pregnancy, drugs, alcohol and homosexuality. The attitudes conveyed therein are pretty awesome, although I would also list this as the only real weakness, since, on some topics, it got a bit preachy. Pretty much every single character (except for the jerks and, in an isolated incident) express their absolute disdain and disgust with anyone who drinks ever. This makes sense with Dec's mother (whose father was an alcoholic) and Dec (whose mother was killed by a drunk driver), but seems a bit more unlikely for Neilly (she drank too much once and doesn't want to drink again, which is fine, but why does she abhor it so?).

Anyway, this was just really fun, quick and cute, so I highly recommend it!

"Brothers and sisters unite
It's the time of your lives
It's the time of your lives
Break down, break down
Gotta spread love around
Gotta spread it around"