Review Detail

Jessi Kirby’s third novel is certainly deserving of the massive amounts of praise it’s been getting. Golden is a strong novel with important messages and an engaging story. It’s enjoyable and breezy, and all in all is my absolute favorite kind of YA contemporary.

If I were to describe the skeleton of Golden’s plot, it would sound silly and overdone, very much like the Nicholas Sparks books that the protagonist is so much in love with. In some respects, I do think the story Kirby tells is far-fetched and straight out of Hollywood. This book is neither dark nor heavy, but though it lands on the “lighter” side of the Seriousness Scale, it’s not pure fluff. Because of the way the story was approached, it felt authentic even while the story was almost like a fairytale. I’m not sure if this is making sense, but suffice it to say, Jessi Kirby does a good job telling the story in a way that’s not off-putting.

Parker Frost, her best friend Kat, and longtime crush Trevor are all great characters. I appreciated how they were people instead of names that filled roles in the story. Trevor, especially, was a welcome presence in Golden. I loved how he was just a typical boy with faults and goals, rather than being a love interest who fits into a certain stereotype (awkward nerd, cocky bad boy, etc.). Parker’s internal struggles felt real to me, and I definitely saw bits of myself in her. Sometimes authors like to make their protagonist a stuffy academic type who’s ugly and shy and longs for a different life and achieves it with the help of some Hot Guy. Here, Parker was able to get what she wanted on her own terms, and not in a drastic or unbelievable way. She wasn’t “prudish overachiever girl” one day and then “strung-out slut” the next. In most aspects, Golden is very subtle in going about what it wants to do, which I really enjoyed.

One big piece of this novel is the presence of Robert Frost’s poetry. It’s a constant theme in the text, not only appearing in epigraphs but also as a tool to make Kirby’s messages more defined. Now, personally, I don’t care for Robert Frost, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t appreciate the way his words were woven into the story. I do think I would have preferred that element being left out, simply because I don’t care for literary allusions in my YA, but I do recognize that Golden could not be what it is without those poems and discussions. So there is that.

Other than the poetry, I wasn’t completely sold on the story, simple because it is sort of Nicholas Sparks-esque. I was happy that Kirby was able to recognize the fantastic qualities to her plot, but I still had a hard time imagining that most of what happened in this book would happen in real life. I still really enjoyed this book, but it’s not exactly my style.

In any case, Golden is a very good book. It was engaging from start to finish, I thought the story was well-done and that Kirby did an excellent job weaving the various threads. I would certainly be interested in picking up another book of hers, should I get a chance. And in the end, I’m very satisfied with this book.