WHITE BIRD IN A BLIZZARD by Laura Kasischke was such a fun book to read because I read it with my co-blogger Justine, and lately with how much work we’ve been putting into the Appraising Pages Shop we hardly ever get to read, let alone read the same book together! Justine saw the trailer for the movie, loved it, saw it was based on a novel and just from the chapter preview on her Kindle said we both HAD to read it. She was right. Here’s the paragraph that had us hooked from the very start:
And here’s the synopsis from its Goodreads page:
When Katrina Connors’ mother walks out on her family, Kat is surprised but not shocked; the whole year she has been “becoming sixteen” – falling in love with the boy next door, shedding her babyfat, discovering sex – her mother has been slowly withdrawing. As Kat and her impassive father pick up the pieces of their daily lives, she finds herself curiously unaffected by her mother’s absence. But in dreams that become too real to ignore, she’s haunted by her mother’s cries for help. Finally, she must act on her instinct that something violent and evil has occurred – a realization that brings Kat to a chilling discovery
As for the book, I absolutely LOVED it. If I’ve read a book that’s written so beautifully that the prose feels more like poetry, it’s been a long time. This book had something for everyone: suspense, romance, humor, chilling moments, and even a little eroticism. The book didn’t necessarily keep you guessing until the very ending, you could see it coming, but it was set up so vaguely and poetically that I didn’t mind. I do not hesitate to give this book 5 out of 5 stars and her other books quickly went onto my Want To Read list.
As for its movie counterpart, I was really pleased with how they decided to cast it. Shailene Woodley is such a powerful actress and for the colorful character of her mother I thought Eva Green was a great choice. The movie hit some points I thought were very important and missed some others. As for the good points, I was really glad they included some ethereal shots of Shailene Woodley in the blizzard because that reoccuring dream is such an important piece of the novel. They shot it so beautifully I took as many pictures off of Google Images I could find and included them:
They kept some of the poetic language from Katrina’s inner dialog which I thought worked really well within the movie as it did with the novel. What totally threw me off was the ending. THEY CHANGED IT SO MUCH. And I guess I get what they were trying to do with it but I thought it actually made the actions of some of the characters make less sense than if it had the book’s ending. And what totally sucks about writing this review is that it’s making it really hard to describe what I didn’t like about the film because I’m so anti-spoiler. BUT I’d still definitely suggest reading the book and still would suggest the movie if you enjoyed the book as much as I did.
Did you read WHITE BIRD IN A BLIZZARD or see the movie? What did you think?
