Review Detail

Lacey just wants to be a normal teenager. She wants to have friends, come home a bit late without fear, volunteer at her local library, and live outside the constant shadow of her long-dead granddaddy. But Lacey's mother is plagued by such heart-breaking mental illness that Lacey must be the woman of the house, facing horrors most of us can only imagine.

When summer break comes, however, things seem to be turning around for Lacey. It's her first day working at the library, and she even convinced her mother to take a job at the Winn-Dixie. The entire novel revolves around that one fateful day and the events that end up changing Lacey's life forever.

Like her previous novel, The Chosen One, Williams steps artfully inside the shoes of a guilt-ridden teenager who feels trapped and suffocated by her home life. Though Miles from Ordinary wasn't as heart-wrenching as The Chosen One for me personally, it deals with a topic that most of us tend to ignore, unless we're faced with it firsthand.

I felt the novel started off a bit slow, and I found Williams' choppy writing style got in the way of the story. She writes in so many fragmented sentences that it took the entire first half of the novel for me to acclimate myself to it. (I don't tend to read too many books with this kind of style.) After that, I was finally able to care about Lacey.

And care I did. I felt how alone and frightened Lacey was, and how claustrophobic her life must be. It was hard for her to determine what "normal" social behavior was, and I'm sure it's like that with most children who grow up in mentally unstable households. You see Lacey's perceptions change and grow throughout the book, and you really feel for her and hope there's a real life in store for her future.

Miles from Ordinary is a quick read -- one you aren't likely to forget anytime soon.