Well well well, I felt adventurous and knocked out another book today. So let’s talk about “Black-eyed Suzie” by Susan Shaw.
This book is about a twelve year old girl named Suzie who is stuck in a psychological box. The jacket describes that Suzie cannot eat, sleep, speak or walk anymore while in her box, though she doesn’t seem to realize how dangerous this is. Her Mother insists that she’s just “going through a phase” while her Father is rarely ever home. It’s only one day when her Uncle stops by that she’s taken to see someone. This is how she ends up in St. Dorothy’s mental hospital. There she befriends her therapist Stella and a boy named Joshua who’s happy despite his own on-going tragedy. Slowly she must try and piece together bits and pieces of broken memories that will change Suzie’s life forever.
Let me just start the actual review of this by stating one thing: This book genuinely gets sad on page 2. You open the book, read the little first page where Suzie describes her box and then you turn the page and BAM. Sad. Now from the very beginning of this book it’s quite obvious as to what the psychological damage was caused by, well who at least. The book remains pretty sad as you start to piece things together but it does start to get happier and the ending is a very happy one as well.
Despite it being a small book it was really good and I’d definitely recommend it if you want something short and eventually cute.
I definitely like how Suzy’s emotions are displayed through the book and while my own emotions are clearly not so bad, they’re still similar in a small way. I also enjoyed the character development of the little devil Karen, trust me, it’s good. I also really liked the peacock feathers thing (which is not too spoilery so I think its okay to mention them c; )
The only thing negative I have to say about this book is that there are some times where the wording gets a bit confusing? And sometimes you can’t quite figure out who exactly is speaking. And of course I sort of wish the book was a little bit longer but its actually the perfect size for the story so that’s just a personal preference.
Overall, the book has earned a 4/5 stars.
strdxst 