We Are the Goldens by Dana Reinhardt
My Rating: 4/5 Stars
You might find this story exhilarating and entertaining, like an old friend whispering over your right shoulder, or then again you might not. You might find it moving and breathtaking, and it might caress you like the wind whispering against your face. You might remember the combination to your old high school locker and attempt to visit it in a moment of nostalgia, before the local authorities come to arrest you, and take you up to the big house on the hill—the one overlooking the water through a set of bars that will keep you contained for the next twenty-four hours. Or then again, you might remain unmoved and curse the heavens at this story of sisters who were seventeen months apart. The closeness these sisters shared, and the bond that held them together might as well have been superglue, even if it ended up a bit chipped around the edges.
I’d say it’s nearly impossible not to feel some sort of emotion upon the completion of WE ARE THE GOLDENS, but that would be mere conjecture and projection, and I want you to live your own life. Make your own mistakes, and dream the impossible dream…even if it blows up in your face faster than an M-80 and leaves you scarred from the nose down. For these chances and mistakes lead to opportunities and promises and hopes that might fill your body to its breaking point with desire and adrenaline, or then again, maybe you’d prefer to remain anonymous and stand behind the curtain, and let someone else make all the mistakes.
What I can tell you, though, is this tale moved me. I was inserted and transported to the heart of this story, and I found the little voice whispering behind my right ear and talking to me like an old friend who had just plopped down beside me on the sofa. And as I hugged my Kindle against my chest and read page after page, I couldn’t stop the movement as it rumbled through my body and poured out of my pores, and astonished me at its sheer bravado when all I had asked was to be entertained for a few short hours of my life.
Second tense never sounded so intense and mature, even if Nell was only fifteen years old. And her sister Layla with her golden locks and skimpy frocks made all the heads of the high school boys turn. Her fair share of golden hair made me smile with pleasure and glee, and at seventeen years she was the perfect one, or so it would initially seem. But this tale has more depth and despair than its adolescence would lead you to believe.
But you’ll have to find out yourself if this is a story you want to read, because all I can say is that it moved yesterday and made me particularly happy to have discovered it. With a gleam in my eye, and my eyes pointed to the sky, I reached the end of this piece. But the ending of this youthful lass, as it came to pass, left me with more questions than answers. So it can be said with the slightest hint of dread that I would have liked a slightly more definitive conclusion than the slightly open-ended one I was offered, even as I know when I have met life’s strife I often have more questions than answers.
I received this book for free through NetGalley.