Me & Emma by Elizabeth Flock – 296 pages
Book Blurb:
The title characters in Me & Emma are very nearly photographic opposites–8-year-old Carrie, the raven-haired narrator, is timid and introverted, while her little sister Emma is a tow-headed powerhouse with no sense of fear. The girls live in a terrible situation: they depend on an unstable mother that has never recovered from her husband’s murder, their stepfather beats them regularly, and they must forage on their own for food.
Stop here and you have a story told many times before, as fiction and nonfiction in tales like Ellen Foster, or I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings–stories in which a young girl reveals the horrors of her childhood. Me & Emma differentiates itself with a spectacular finish, shocking the reader and turning the entire story on its head. Through several twists and turns the reader learns that things are not quite the way our narrator led us to believe and everything crescendos in a way that (like all good thrillers) immediately makes you want to go back and read the whole book again from the start.
Stop here and you have a story told many times before, as fiction and nonfiction in tales like Ellen Foster, or I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings–stories in which a young girl reveals the horrors of her childhood. Me & Emma differentiates itself with a spectacular finish, shocking the reader and turning the entire story on its head. Through several twists and turns the reader learns that things are not quite the way our narrator led us to believe and everything crescendos in a way that (like all good thrillers) immediately makes you want to go back and read the whole book again from the start.
My Review: 4.5 stars
Me & Emma is at its core a story about sisters yet so much more is packed into this little book. A casual remark from a book club friend about this book led me to pick it up at the library. No wait lists for this one as it’s an oldie from 2005. Devouring this sad, dark story in a few days was a surprise but it read fluidly as I was championing for Carrie and her sister Emma. The abuse was certainly a difficult subject matter, but this book offered so much more: courage, loyalty, family, sisters, hate and love. This book has an interesting twist that trumps all other books in this genre. There is a “sequel” of sorts that I just got today and can’t wait to dig into tonight.
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