Melissa’s Review: Keep Her by Leora Krygier

Keep Her
written by Leora Krygier
published by She Writes Press, 2016

find it here: (affiliate links) Barnes & Noble, Amazon, iBooks, Book Depository, Goodreads

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Did I enjoy this book: Listen, I know this is a YA novel and I’m decidedly NOT a YA (what with the mortgage and the children and all), but I’m having trouble with Krygier’s name choices. In my brain, people named Maddie and Aiden ought to be writing reports on their favorite presidents and dreaming about getting their own cell phones, not balancing their father’s books and fathering children. It’s my own fault–my brain won’t process the fact that someone named Maddie could possibly be any older than eleven, or that someone named Aiden could be doing anything other than playing with Thomas trains. I also have no idea how my daughter managed to turn one without me noticing . . . I swear we just brought her home last week (And holy cow, when did my son learn how to button his own buttons?). But I digress.

Names notwithstanding, I enjoyed this book when I didn’t think I was going to. I needed something to read at the beach, and the bit about whales in the blurb seemed appropriate, so I went for it. I was expecting a light read, and I happily ended up with a lovely, real bit of depth. I’m pleased about the ending–don’t worry, I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s refreshing to read a book that ends much the way things end in the real world.

 

Would I recommend it: Listen, if you can picture someone named Maddie as a young adult, go for it. It’s a sweet little book.

 

About the book – from Goodreads: Destiny doesn’t factor into seventeen-year-old adoptee Maddie s rational world, where numbers and scientific probability have always proven to be the only things she can count on as safe and reliable. Still, Maddie is also an artist who draws on instinct and intuition to create the collages she makes from photographs and the castoff scraps she saves. But when her brother falls in with a Los Angeles street gang, Maddie loses her ability to create art. Then fate deals Maddie a card she can t ignore: Aiden, a young filmmaker she meets when a water main bursts inside a camera store. Aiden is haunted by the death of his younger brother, and a life-changing decision he must now make whether or not to keep his baby daughter. Caught in a whirlpool of love and loss, Maddie and Aiden find that art and numbers, a mission to save endangered whales, and a worn-out copy of Moby Dick all collide to heal and save them both.”