Review: The Truth of Right Now by Kara Lee Corthron
SYNOPSIS:
If you could take back one thing you’ve done in your life, do you know what it would be?
Lily is returning to her privileged Manhattan high school after a harrowing end to her sophomore year and it’s not pretty. She hates chemistry and her spiteful lab partner, her friends are either not speaking to her or suffocating her with concerned glances, and nothing seems to give her joy anymore. Worst of all, she can’t escape her own thoughts about what drove her away from everyone in the first place.
Enter Dari (short for Dariomauritius), the artistic and mysterious transfer student, adept at cutting class. Not that he’d rather be at home with his domineering Trinidadian father. Dari is everything that Lily needs: bright, creative, honest, and unpredictable. And in a school where no one really stands out, Dari finds Lily’s sensitivity and openness magnetic. Their attraction ignites immediately, and for the first time in what feels like forever, Lily and Dari find happiness in each other.
In twenty-first-century New York City, the fact that Lily is white and Dari is black shouldn’t matter that much, but nothing’s as simple as it seems. When tragedy becomes reality, can friendship survive even if romance cannot?
REVIEW:
*Book Received in Exchange for Honest Opinion/Review*
*This Review Contains Spoilers*
This book was a misleading hot mess, I feel that the synopsis is extremely disconnected from the actual story I read. I went into this book expecting a moving, poignant tale that tackles misconceptions and racism in a modern light. What I actually got was a discombobulated mess of every troupe under the sun sprinkled in with unrealistic, irrational parents. Honestly, I was just happy to finish the book because now I can finally move on a read something different so let me tell you about the troupe vomit that happens.
First off, our main character Lily, needs to be in in-patient therapy because the girl is a train wreck. Affair with a teacher, suicide attempt, depression, insta-love, you name it and Lily has done it. She is reckless and her mom needs to be in in-patient therapy with her for her inability to actually parent her child. Both of these characters are drowning and you can’t really get a grasp on either as their emotional capacity is as fickle as the weather. They are constantly bobbing around with no sense of self-worth, self-value, or pride. They just throw themselves at the first thing that gives me attention…enters Dari.
Dari’s story line is just as complex as Lily’s which creates a jumble mess as these two struggle for the spotlight in their own story. Dari’s dad is abusive, he feels abandonment by everyone, as soon as someone loves him-he bails, he is really horny and constantly wanting sex for a high school male, and he just doesn’t seem to give a f*ck about anything.
Now as if this isn’t messy enough, Lily and Dari are going to hook up but wait, that’s not the worst of it because he kisses/maybe hooked up with Lily’s mom?! Yeah it goes into a vague/use your imagination mode there but WHAT THE F*CK?! NO, JUST NO. This is not okay. And while you have all the troupes and this new drama listed about happening, there are hints of racism. Dari getting stopped and patted down by a cop while walking the street, an old, white man giving them the stink eye as Dari holds Lily’s hand on the subway, and then the ending which is just full blown, blind-sided racism.
There was just too much vying for my attention and in the end I was over it. I wish the author would have focused on one of the characters and their struggles instead of throwing everything in the pot and then letting it loose. Also the ending was very misleading, there was some serious betrayal and then Lily was kissing Dari’s *ss wanting forgiveness and friendship. Just back away slowly from this book and save yourself the mess.
LINKS:
Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes and Noble
