{Review} Mosquitoland by David Arnold

Mosquitoland

"I am a collection of oddities, a circus of neurons and electrons: my heart is the ringmaster, my soul is the trapeze artist, and the world is my audience. It sounds strange because it is, and it is, because I am strange."

After the sudden collapse of her family, Mim Malone is dragged from her home in northern Ohio to the "wastelands" of Mississippi, where she lives in a medicated milieu with her dad and new stepmom. Before the dust has a chance to settle, she learns her mother is sick back in Cleveland.

So she ditches her new life and hops aboard a northbound Greyhound bus to her real home and her real mother, meeting a quirky cast of fellow travelers along the way. But when her thousand-mile journey takes a few turns she could never see coming, Mim must confront her own demons, redefining her notions of love, loyalty, and what it means to be sane.

Told in an unforgettable, kaleidoscopic voice, Mosquitoland is a modern American odyssey, as hilarious as it is heartbreaking.

Consider my mind blown. I honestly have no idea what I’m going to say in this review. I have no words, guys. I don’t! So this’ll be a review in which I babble some incoherent things that can be summed up in this gif:

Mosquitoland is about Mim. After her parents got divorced and her dad remarried, he moved from Ohio to Mississippi and took Mim with him, leaving her mother behind. After she learns her mom is sick, Mim ditches everything and hops aboard the Greyhound bus with her stepmother’s money. Along the way she meets a bunch of interesting people and she learns to face her own demons.

I swear, so far 2015 is the year of contemporary. I have not read a single one that disappointed me. These authors just keep knocking them out of the park and I’m not complaining. Mosquitoland is a very important story to read. It may be boring for some because nothing really all that exciting happens, but I for one was never bored and I was glued to the pages. This is about Mim and her journey to her mom. This is told in two different ways, there are the normal chapters that tell us what’s happening now and there are these letters to a person named Isabelle that tell us what happened in the past. Because of this I just wanted to know more the whole time. I was so invested in Mim’s story! The writing was excellent too, it really was.

I am Mary Iris Malone and I am not okay.

The most important part of this book is the characters. I loved them so much! I adored Walt and Beck and Arlene. They were all so wonderful. I also liked Kathy, Mim’s stepmom. But I loved Mim the most. She’s such a unique character, so strong, witty and wonderfully weird! I loved her voice. But that ending guys. My god. When I turned the last page, I just sat here, speechless. I needed a while for my mind to compute all the feels.

Sometimes a thing’s not a thing until you say it out loud.

Mosquitoland is a strange, sweet, touching and kind of heartbreaking story. I highly recommend this to fans of contemporary and everyone else in the world. This is a must-read, for sure.

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Bee

Bee (born as Bieke) is 27 years old and from Belgium. (No she won't send waffles.) She's a strange, nerdy and anxious creature floating around somewhere on the ace spectrum. Oh, and she also writes books as Nelly B. Jones. Or tries to anyway. You can also find her on Novel Ink.

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