Cardigans, Coffee and Bookmarks: Review (Becky): The Sledding Hill

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Review (Becky): The Sledding Hill

Title: The Sledding Hill Author: Chris Crutcher Pages: 256 Audience: Young Adult Genre: Fantasy (afterlife) Rating: 3 I'd read this book's wall posts on Facebook, but I'd be disappointed in them.

Goodreads Summary

First his father dies. Then his best friend Billy accidentally kicks a stack of Sheetrock over on himself, breaking his neck and effectively hitting tilt on his Earthgame. Eddie and Billy were inseparable. Still are. Billy isn't going to let a little thing like death stop him from hanging in there with his friend. And when Eddie faces an epic struggle with the powers that be, Billy will remain right there beside him.

Eli's father built the Compound to keep them safe. But are they safe—or sorry?

My Thoughts Oh this book. For about 100 pages I feared it would end up being a "Christian Tale", meaning overtly pushing the Christian agenda. while Crutcher's book does have an underlying spirituality, but it is a far cry from the extremely conservative view I so fear. While I liked the topic of this book, the morals, and the characters...I found it boring, melodramatic, and overly simplistic. I can, however, see why it has a lot of appeal to certain readers. If you are of the liberal persuasion, this book is very self-affirming. For me, though, it didn't really look at both sides with any kind of balance. It smacked of bias, and even though I agree with the ideas it was biased towards, I'm not really into that. I think this could easily have been told without the use of ghost-Billy as a narrator. I often forgot he was there anyway. I also found Crutcher's use of himself in the story annoying and self-congratulatory. On the plus side, the story tackles issues such as glbt rights, the dangers of censure, dealing with death, ADHD, and Christianity. I can't help but feel it might have been stronger if it focused on fewer of those issues in more depth, though.