The Thing with Feathers Review

The Thing with Feathers

by McCall Hoyle

Pub Date 05 Sep 2017

I received a free copy from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

The Thing with Feathers is Emilie’s introduction to the world.  Emilie is a teenage girl that has lived a majority of her life confined in her home on the coast of North Carolina.  Emilie is a special girl because she has been homeschooled since her elementary days.  This is not Emilie’s choice but the only option available since she suffers from grand mal epileptic seizures.  These seizure come without warning and are very scary for Emilie and everyone that is around at the time of the seizure.  Emilie sees a doctor that tries to normalize her life by helping her deal with her seizures through medicine and counseling.  Emilie is fortunate to have a seizure dog, Hitch, her best friend.  Hitch is a golden retriever that is trained to help Emilie realize when she is going to seize and to keep her safe during the seizure. If the isolation and epilepsy aren’t bad enough, Emilie’s father passes away and now she is having a difficult time getting along and understanding her mom.  Her mother is sending her very mixed signals.  Mom is overprotective, but in the same breath, wants her to start attending school. They decide on a 90-day trial period.  Emilie’s plan is to cruise under the radar for the 90 days and leave public schools forever.  Her plan starts to fail when she meets Chatham York, only the cutest and nicest kid in school. Should she just come clean and tell she has epileptic seizures or should she just live on the edge and hope she doesn’t seize at school?  What a choice!  

The Thing with Feathers is sure to be a favorite of middle school and high school students.  It has everything that draws in YA readers: conflict, diversity, and young love.  It is a very believable story because the issues the characters face are realistic.  It is also realistic and believable because the characters are so real.  McCall Hoyle does an excellent job of drawing the reader into the characters’ minds and emotions.  As I read, I was instantly drawn into the drama of Emilie’s life: her eplicicy, her dad’s death, her relationships with her mother and the kids she meets at school.  I liked how Hoyle lets the characters fall out of the stereotyping that most forms of media lock students:  jock, geek, art freak, band geek, athlete; and allows them to develop into complex people.  Each character faces his own drama and tough life decisions. The choices of the characters were not always as I would have expected, which I found thrilling.  The high school students are not as shallow as you would think. In a lot of ways The Thing with Feathers reminds me of Holding up the Universe by Jennifer Niven and  Everything Everything by Nicola Yoon, which are both about young people finding their place in the world.

The Thing with Feathers is an amazing YA book that will be published September 5, 2017.  You might as well mark it on your calendar because you will really love this book. The Thing with Feathers is the debut novel by McCall Holye.  Bravo, McCall!!!!! I already know several of my middle school students that are anxiously waiting to read this book.