Review Detail

Written in a series of letters to a criminal on death row this book gave me mixed feelings. I don’t think the letters were ever sent but the fact that 15 year old ‘Zoe’ felt that she could only confide her devastating secret to a murderer is unsettling. While ‘Zoe’s’ parents are suffering their own secret guilt in regards to her baby sister’s deafness and her other sibling is seeking attention by faking being bullied, Zoe develops feelings towards two boys that she discovers are brothers. ‘Zoe’ glosses over incidents that make her appear sexually available with one brother but oblivious to the affects this is having on the other brother. I picked up this book because I was moved by My Sister lives on the mantelpiece. Where one book offered closure for the characters there is none for ‘Zoe’ in Ketchup clouds. Ketchup clouds won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Young Adult novel 2014.