Review: I'll Be There, by Holly Goldberg Sloan

I'll Be There
By Holly Goldberg Sloan
Publication Date: May 3rd, 2011 (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Hardcover, 392 pages
Genre: Adventure; Coming of Age; Contemporary; Romance; YA
Source: Library

DESCRIPTION:

Sam Border wishes he could escape. Raised by an unstable father, he's spent his life moving form place to place. But he could never abandon his little brother, Riddle.

Riddle Border doesn't talk much. Instead, he draws pictures of the insides of things and waits for the day when the outsides of things will make sense. He worships his older brother. But how can they leave when there's nowhere to go? Then everything changes. Because Sam meets Emily.

Emily Bell believes in destiny. She sings for her church choir, though she doesn't have a particularly good voice. Nothing, she feels, is more coincidence. And she's singing at the moment she first sees Sam.

Everyone whose path you cross in life has the power to change you—sometimes in small ways, and sometimes in greater ways than you could have ever known. Beautifully written and emotionally profound, Holly Goldberg Sloan's debut novel deftly explores the idea of human connection.

—from goodreads.com
 

REVEIW:

OhmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshOHMYGOSH!

I'LL BE THERE WAS FLIPPIN' AMAZING! WHERE HAS THIS BOOK BEEN MY WHOLE LIFE? You'll be asking the same thing once you read it. :)

Sam Border, a kindhearted musical-protege, and his highly introverted brother, Riddle Border, live a nomadic life with their violence-prone, schizophrenic father, Clarence Border. Life with Clarence Border consists of Clarence driving his truck and kids (which are the last thought in his life) to a medium-sized town. Here, Clarence commits petty crimes, such as stealing, breaking-and-entering, and vandalism. When people start getting suspicious, Clarence packs the truck up and leaves, taking Sam and Riddle with him.

Because Clarence is a criminal, Sam and Riddle have to be invisible, leading into the fact that seventeen-year-old Sam hasn't been to school since second grade, and twelve-year-old Riddle has never been to school.

However, one day, Sam "randomly" picks a church service to go to not to be preached to, but to hear the music. At the service a girl named Emily Bell sings "I'll Be There" and Sam falls in love with her—convinced not by her awful singing voice, but by the fact that she seems to be singing to him, singing the powerful words sincerely—completely changing his life and his brother's life.

Until they have to pack up and leave again with their father, leaving the life and love they established behind...

Sam Border, Riddle Border, and Emily Bell, were characterized much, but it worked for the style of the book. There were at least eleven secondary characters who were essential to the plot as a whole. At the beginning, all of their plot lines seemed random, and I had no idea how things would play out, but in the end, the strands came together to resolve the story beautifully.

I'll Be There is written in third-person omniscient point-of-view, making the reader feel like a spectator, watching events unfold. If I remember correctly, Sam, Riddle, Emily, all eleven (if not more) secondary characters, and a bear (yes, a bear) were all highlighted at some point by the omniscient narrator.

Because the characters (even the main characters) weren't characterized into 3D existence, because the book is written in third-person omniscient, and because the writing style of the book is straightforward, each portion of the book that follows a different character feels like a snapshot of what (or who) the character really is.

In that way, I'll Be There, by Holly Goldberg Sloan, is very much like a delightful movie (and it should be made into a movie), and reads exactly what a movie would read like, offering the movie-goer a glimpse into many different lives, lives of both horrific shock and of unmistakable beauty.

RATING: