First Quarter Outside Reading Book

First Quarter Outside Reading Book
The Fortunes of Indigo Skye by Deb Caletti. Simon & Schuster, 2008
Genre: Realistic Fiction

The book I read for my outside reading book this term was The Fortunes of Indigo Skye. She was a waitress in a small diner called Carrera’s in Seattle. On her shift a new guy came in that she named the “Vespa Guy”. This “Vespa Guy” gave her 2.5 million dollars. She was extremely shocked and let the money go to her head. In getting this money it all went downhill for her. She lost her job, got into a fight with her boyfriend, and ended up running away from her problems. At the end of the book she finally realizes how having the money has changed her, so she decides to give all the money away to other family and friends who need it.

A review by Little Willow “If you couldn’t already tell, I really enjoyed this book. There’s more whimsy here than some of Caletti’s previous novels, but never to an unrealistic degree. This isn’t yet another rags-to-riches tale nor a simple story of “money can’t buy happiness.” This book is about a girl on the cusp of adulthood who actually likes her life and doesn’t want it to change that much. She would rather be poor and happy than wealthy and miserable. Indigo has a great set of values and a great sense of self. Those are her true fortunes.”

The writhing style of the author is different than anything else that I’ve read. She does a lot of comparing and contrasting in the book. If there an event in the book she will compare it with another thing that would remind the main character about it. In the quote further down she compares being ready to a boy dancing. She had written the book in first person, the main character is telling the story.

“Ready is the reluctant guy on the dance floor. You ask him and he says no; you ask him again, drag him by his wrists, and when he’s finally there, after a few steps, the music fills him and he’s cutting loose like there’s no tomorrow.”

I really didn’t like this book at all. I really liked the authors writing style though, but everything thing else I wasn’t really happy with. One reason I disliked the book was because it reminded me of The Pearl. The book reminding me of The Pearl is a bad thing because I didn’t like The Pearl and it might not have been that bad but we just had read it. Another reason I disliked this book was because it was way too predictable. I knew almost everything that was going to happen to Indigo before it happened and to me that takes the fun out of reading the book.