The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls

I took this book with me on a trip to the gorgeous Tennessee mountains. Looking at the cover, doesn't it look like it would be a perfect pick for such an environment? First of all, I LOVE the idea of summer camp. I feel that not enough books about summer camp exist for adults. From the cover and the description, I was expecting an exciting and lively adventure at camp with vibrant characters and a lush, green setting. I was so ready to dive right into this world, where young girls are walking arm-in-arm and growing up together for a summer, having new experiences and becoming friends for life. You don't get any of that with this book, by any stretch of the imagination. Instead, you get a lackluster setting that has no excuse to be lackluster (THE SETTING SHOULD BE GORGEOUS. THERE IS NO EXCUSE. IT SHOULD BE DESCRIBED OUT THE ASS BUT IT'S NOT. IT'S BORING AND WASHED-OUT, LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE IN THIS BOOK), supporting characters you can't bring yourself to care about one way or the other, a plot that just meanders and doesn't even try to get exciting beyond icky sexual encounters, and the basest, most selfish, most unfeeling and out-for-herself main character I've read about in a long time. Thea freaking Atwell, I am talking about you. Run and hide, girlfriend, because more than once I envisioned smacking you on the head with the very book you're in.

So, it doesn't take a genius to figure out right off the bat that there's tenseness in the Atwell family, probably having to do with Thea, primarily. I'm not going to tell you what happens, but I am going to say that THEA RUINS HER ENTIRE FAMILY 4 LYFE. Her parents and her twin brother, Sam, are never the same after what goes down; thus the whole sending her to camp deal. Because Goodreads lumps this book in the “coming-of-age” category, I was hoping some kind of coming-of-age would happen. Maybe Thea would grow as a person and return to her parents a shining model citizen? Yeah, no. She's the same nasty, horny brat that she was in the beginning. She doesn't come to terms with what she did wrong. She doesn't say she's sorry. She doesn't reflect on her part in what happened, or what she could have done differently. SHE DOESN'T EVEN SEEM TO THINK SHE DID ANYTHING WRONG. Being sent to camp should have been the first clue that she did something bad (actually, she should have known that what she did was wrong as she was doing it, yet here we are). That's why I can't stand her character. From start to finish, she is completely out for herself, pouty, and unwilling to even act human! Yet for some reason, she makes all these friends at camp? Are you kidding? SISSY, RUN AWAY. THEA IS A TERRIBLE PERSON. (I wish one of her horses had sat on her head and put us all out of our misery).

Thea is the biggest problem I have with this book. But there are other pieces of poop smeared all over this book that need mentioning. The only characters that even semi-intrigued me were Leona and Sissy (really, that's only because I imagined Leona as Daenerys Targaryen). Everyone else was bland, bland, bland. None of the characters acted like someone would in real life. NONE. I also found that the author would spring new characters on me without introducing them? I had to backpedal a couple times to see if they were introduced earlier, but nope. We're just supposed to know who they are, I guess.
Honestly, the more I think about this book, the more I hate it. I gave it 2 stars at first, because I did like the writing style for the most part. That's too generous. 1 star, bitch. Nobody should read this book. It was terrible. Icky sex, god-awful characters, and a bland setting. Really, the only good thing I can say about this book is that it had an ominous tone to start, before we discover the reason Thea is at camp. I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel here to find a tiny sliver of goodness. So glad this was from the library.

Thea Atwell, 15, has been sent from her family home in Florida to attend a girls boarding school for the southern elite, one at which she will learn to become an accomplished horsewoman. Over the course of her stay, she learns to navigate this world filled with young women, much different from the isolated life she led at home with her parents and twin brother, while she recovers from a mysterious tragedy in which she has played a central role.

I had high hopes for YONAHLOSSEE after all of the rave reviews it received. It was described as spellbinding, lush, provocative, and smart. It even made Oprah's Summer Reading List.

Initially, I found the book a page turner. I was drawn into the vivid world DiSclafani described - first the hushed, sheltered world that Thea grew up in, and then the majestic wild of the mountains in which the camp is nestled. The social structure of the camp, with it's regional cliques and finishing school schedule (yes, French was a part of the curicculum) created a picture of life for wealthy young women on the verge of the Great Depression.

My problem with this novel, however, is simply how unlikable Thea is. When the reader is first introduced to Thea, she is a quiet girl, reluctant to leave her father's side. She is timid and shy but has a deep love for horses, and we are treated to hints about a family scandal that ruined her family's life back home in Floriday. As Thea becomes more acclimated to her life at the camp, she has to make choices about her relationships with the other girls, as well as with the adults in her life. She does not simply make bad choices of the kind you would attribute to a girl her age, but dangerous and disturbing choices that made me question the author's purpose for this character. Thea was also an extremely selfish character, which is to be expected at her age, but without a transformation into a young woman more cognizant of her situation in life, the novel's ending was weak, rushed, and ultimately disappointing.

In addition, the other characters were not well developed and felt like shallow stereotypes. Her brother was described as an animal lover with no other apparent characteristics. Sissy, Thea's friend at the camp, was a sweet girl that everyone liked but was sheltered and foolish. The adults are even worse - her parents are portrayed as having created a “progressive childhood,” but it is never explained why they kept their children so sheltered and separate, or if they had desires and hopes of their own.

In the end, this was a book I truly wanted to like, but just couldn't find much about it to enjoy.

(I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)