The Stellow Project by Shari Becker
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Publisher: June 23, 2015
Publication Date: Skyscrape
Pages: 305
Source: publisher in exchange for honest review
Buy It: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository
When a killer storm unexpectedly hits Manhattan, seventeen-year-old Lilah Stellow’s dad insists that she and her younger sister, Flori, take refuge at their cabin in the mountains. But instead of joining them with the experimental drug that keeps Lilah alive, he disappears just as news reports name him as a prime suspect in an act of ecoterrorism.
As days pass without her medicine, Lilah finds herself teetering on the edge, caring for her sister, and growing increasingly certain they’re being watched. In her search for answers, Lilah is thrown into the center of a mystery involving an off-the-grid research facility and finds herself drawn in by Daniel, an intriguing boy who is the son of the lead scientist. As she dares to seek answers, Lilah slowly realizes that even the best intentions can go horribly wrong. --Goodreads
If you read the synopsis on the
back cover, the above paragraph leads right into the story you would
expect. The science fiction – dystopian
type novel starts out really on the good side.
The writing is done well, the back story is not just dumped on the reader
all at once, but fed little by little so the full extent of the horror of what
the Stellow girls have endured sinks in and becomes unavoidable. The details drag the reader in and they are
moved along swiftly with the current of events while Lilah tries to determine
what is the truth, does the end justify the means when the lines between good
and evil become blurred, and…???
If you are reading the sci
fi–dystopian novel, the paragraph above is what you get. There is not an ending to that novel and that
burns the reader because it was going along so well. However, if you read the The Stellow Project
as a psychological expose’ on relationships told within a science fiction –
dystopian landscape, then you may find the closure needed while you pine away
awaiting a sequel to the sci fi-dystopia novel which you currently cannot be sure
is coming. The question with the
psychological turn on the novel then becomes - what is the truth and does it
make a difference whose truth you find?
Without spoilers, that is as
much as I dare say!!!
Do you want more……then read on,
but BEWARE…SPOILERS ahead.
Medical Issues, People &
Connections, Twists & Turns, Surprise! and No Ending!!!
Lilah’s condition is really
very vague. You are told she cannot
drive because of her medical condition where she has trouble breathing but
seems to control the issue with an inhaler and some pills received through the
mail presumably prescribed by her scientist father. Yet when she runs out of the pills, Lilah’s
condition slowly deteriorates over a period of days (not hours, days). When she finally collapses in the presence of
the local teenaged boy at her family cabin, she is whisked off to the nearby
secretive research facility that just happens to be led by the local teenaged
boy’s mother. Coincidence you say? There are no such things as coincidences, so
I am told. It was like reading the Big
Bang Theory of human evolution on Earth…a lot of coincidences that seem too
abundant to be true. When Lilah wakes up
at this facility (brought about by treating her for drug withdrawal – sounds
like a dangerous way to go for lack of a prescribed medication for a chronic
illness), she can’t even explain what her condition is or the name of the
medicine she is taking, where it is mailed from or who prescribed it. She doesn’t even bother to share that there
is a new full bottle of the medicine at her home in Manhattan
The characters in this novel
were well written, diverse and yet complex in their inter-connections with
other characters in the novel. Maggie
was an angel and even though they didn’t expound on the virtues of Tilly, I got
the impression that they were much alike.
I wish there had been more about the Stellow father, but I guess giving
too much of him away could conflict with the struggle of Lilah’s feelings of
love, betrayal and acceptance in regards to her father and his actions. The Stellow mother info left me thirsting for
more in the beginning because it was so sparse, but by the end I felt the
weight of thought that Lilah would be facing in the coming days about her
mother. The oddest connection I think I
felt between characters is when the security guard and his friend were going to
cut off their search for the Stellow girls and go to the one guys mother’s
house for her delicious buns which seemed to give rise to Lilah thinking that
also was the best place to go for safety.
I think that was a pretty complex thought process yet totally feasible
within the confines of this tale. The
salty lady by lake was a great reminder that people are always suspect no
matter what they say. The final
character I would like to mention (with chagrin!) – who is Grenier? I don’t remember getting any satisfaction or
answers wondering who his character is or what he wants with the Stellow girls.
There are twists and turns in
this novel and as I don’t want to spoil all of your surprises, I will not
expound too much on these.
The last one I thought of I
will not share because it will give too much away, but what a surprise and
pivotal point for the whole story.
Flori’s take on the whole adventure sheds such a different light on the entire
tale that the reader will want to go back and reread everything. It would be a great idea for a sequel to
finish the novel in Flori’s (the younger Stellow girl) point of view. I do believe a sequel is necessary, a story
shouldn’t end in the middle and there are so many things left to find out in
this riveting tale. I appreciate the
closure provided by the understanding of multiple ways to view an event, but
tell me the end please!
1 comments
I purchased this book for my high school library, read it, but as the pages dwindled I knew that it could not possibly be finished in the amount of pages left. I immediately went in search of the next installment, because there has to be more, disappointed to find no mention anywhere that there may be a next book to answer all the questions left at the end of this story.
ReplyDelete