On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

Title: On the Jellicoe Road
Author: Melina Marchetta
Publisher: Penguin Australia
Date Published: August 26, 2006
Buy: Amazon

Goodreads Summary

Abandoned by her mother on Jellicoe Road when she was eleven, Taylor Markham 17, finally confronts her past. Hannah, the closest adult she has to family, disappears. Jonah Griggs, moody stares and all, is back in town. If Taylor can put together the pieces of her past, she might just be able to change her future.

(this is going to more about my feelings about the book than anything else)

“What do you want from me?” he asks.
What I want from every person in my life, I want to tell him.
More.

Okay umm so. It’s impossible to write a review for this book without wanting to cry. No, I didn’t in fact cry after reading this book because it didn’t have a sad ending; however it was a sad book. When I say sad book I am talking about the fact that there is so much going on in this book, so many characters who lose hope and need to find it again, so many reasons to not go on in the lives of the characters. If that doesn’t make you feel depressed I don’t know what will. Do you ever have those days where you just want to drop down and not care about anything? Where you don’t know what the purpose of your life is and you feel so miserable you have no idea what to do? Imagine having to read about characters going through that, if you can relate to it, it’s somehow worse because when we read a book we want AWAY from reality, we don’t want to have to face the reality of our own situation.

In the end though, I believe this book is about never giving up that little bit of hope you will always have stored inside you because once you lose it, you are done for.

The stories of each individual character is so amazing, there are no flat characters here. It’s so hard to find a book where each and every character has some sort of meaning to them or are connected to the overall plot somehow instead of tid bids here and there. Marchetta though, fits everything together perfectly, like a puzzle; you wouldn’t even know you were reading something that could be of some importance until you read it. Then you would just be surprised because you’d see what a genius Melina Marchetta was.

I was a bit vary going into this book, I mean I’d read Finnikin of the Rock and it didn’t necessarily live up to the hype. Plus this book was a sad one. I don’t usually do sad books because they hold this kind of power over me that multiplies all the emotions in the book, so if the book is sad, I am going to be depressed, but after reading this, I gave that rule up. I mean I haven’t gone on a “read depressing books” spree but I don’t avoid them anymore.

Although the thing about this book is, I would read it again a hundred times despite how sad it made me because it was also one of the best things that ever happened to me. You see, seeing I am not the hugest fan of contemporary/realistic, to love a book of that genre this much is pretty amazing, but the thing about this one is that it also has that magical aura to it. Like a dream. It’s so beautiful yet heartbreaking. I think I should probably kill myself for not reading it earlier.

It’s not a book for everyone, but the ones lucky enough to love it, they will walk away with one of the most beautiful experiences.