April Showers have brought the May flowers! 🙂
With the summer coming up, I thought it would be a great time to read a road-trip adventure, and this book was without a doubt the #1 choice. When I met the author (David Arnold) at a book even back in September, I had been DYING to read his book. I didn’t know too much going into this book other than what the cover showed, but I will say it is written in a way that I enjoyed!
Mosquitoland by David Arnold is a young adult stand-alone novel about a girl on an adventure across the country to find her mom.
Synopsis:
“I am a collection of oddities, a circus of neurons and electrons: my heart is the ringmaster, my soul is the trapeze artist, and the world is my audience. It sounds strange because it is, and it is, because I am strange.”
After the sudden collapse of her family, Mim Malone is dragged from her home in northern Ohio to the “wastelands” of Mississippi, where she lives in a medicated milieu with her dad and new stepmom. Before the dust has a chance to settle, she learns her mother is sick back in Cleveland.
So she ditches her new life and hops aboard a northbound Greyhound bus to her real home and her real mother, meeting a quirky cast of fellow travelers along the way. But when her thousand-mile journey takes a few turns she could never see coming, Mim must confront her own demons, redefining her notions of love, loyalty, and what it means to be sane.
Told in an unforgettable, kaleidoscopic voice, “Mosquitoland” is a modern American odyssey, as hilarious as it is heartbreaking.”
My Review:
One of the first things I noticed within the first chapter was the writing style. I will say that I haven’t read very many books with such a strong sense of sarcasm (but not to the point where it was annoying). I loved it! I felt like this writing style was perfect for the character and the story. It felt more natural-sounding then most grammar-correct stories that I read. The writing is also comical. I really loved getting in the head of the main character, Mim. I think without this type of writing, the story may have been more of a snooze for me.
Another small aspect that I like about this book is that in the hardcover edition, I don’t 
know if this is true in the paperback, the endpapers feature a map of sorts that follows Mim’s adventures. I didn’t realize this until about halfway through the book, but when I did, it was fun to visualize the landmarks/events that she ventures by. In a few spots, there are also drawn doodles that add more comedic aspects to the plot.
The psychological part of the story also intrigued me. We get to meet a diverse set of characters. Like with what I said earlier, this book engulfs a lot of realism to me. I give this book a solid 4 out of 5 stars. I loved reading a story set in the American Midwest/South areas which is where I’m mostly used to in my own life. It was fun to relate the places in the stories to my own experiences in some of the cities mentioned. I think this is the perfect book if you’re going on a road-trip or want to read a story with realistic tones.
More Book Information:
Published: 3 March 2016
Publisher: Viking Children’s
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
Pages: 336
I hope y’all enjoy this book as much as I did! Subscribe below for more bookish posts straight to your inbox 🙂 With summer on the next turn, you’ll find a ton of new content very soon!
Feel free to leave your own comments below!
Happy Reading,
Treestand Book Reviews 