Where the Forest Meets the Stars
By: Glendy Vanderah / Narrated By: Lauren Ezzo
Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
When even Lauren Ezzo can’t Save The Day…
Here’s the thing about sisters, especially close ones: Sometimes, believe it or not, despite weird-patoot twinning on a multitude of things…? We’re different people. I KNOW! It always shocks the holy beeswax outta me as well! What I’m saying is, Big Sis listened to this, and she liked it quite well. Me? Ah jeez, I haaaated it. And to be quite honest, I think she’s getting me back for HIGHLY Recommending Waiting for Eden, an audiobook I LOVED, sobbed over, babbled endlessly about. Nope, she haaaaated it, and that was quite the animated discussion we had.
She’s got it out for me, and thus did I begin this story. Why?
I’d picked up Where the Forest Meets the Stars cheap cuz it was my Kindle First Reads choice for that month; ya can always get the audiobook for cheap, and for this one, I’m deeeearly hoping it was one of those $1.99 pairs, rather than the $7.49 price tag that sometimes follows. Still cheaper than using a credit, but…
Cuz you see, I was swayed by Lauren Ezzo as the narrator as I’ve liked her in the past. Plus, I’m kinda a sucker for that Oh Soooo DONE trope wherein a child drops into lives of pain and suffering, and through all sorts of: From Mouths Of Babes stuff, and Innocent Questions That Lead To Epiphanies stuff, spiritual/emotional growth is to be had. Pain addressed, pondered, released with love so that the other characters find themselves with a new sense of family they chose, and with a profound gratitude that all rolled out as the precocious tyke inspired it to unfold.
What we have: Newly motherless cancer survivor Jo has withdrawn to a sparsely inhabited forest area to work on monitoring Indigo Buntings whilst she continues to lick her wounds. ImMEDiately, author Glendy Vanderah writes in little 9-year old Ursa who’s in bad shape. Ragged and dirty, clad in only pajamas, covered in bruises (Some shaped like fingerprints) and bare of foot, she triggers some kinda instinct in Jo whereby Jo takes her in. For a bit of an iota, Jo considers helping out by calling the Sheriff’s office, but when she hears a rather maudlin tale about the Foster Care System, well, uhm, that’s it. Vanderah has it to where all that Trying To Do The Right Thing simply means not doing anything but keeping Ursa around and under wraps.
No Child Protective Services, no social workers, no talking to the Sheriff when obviously she received unprofessional advice.
So Suspend Disbelief, like, forEVER cuz there are almost 10-hours of audiobook of People Struggling, Doing Dumb Things.
Plus, they do it for a toad of a child (No offense to toads!) who screeches and whines and cajoles (And not in a cute way) and demands. What do Jo and Gabe do (Oh yeh, he’s our Hero and he suffers from mental illness, lives his life within a verrrry small circle, of COURSE)? They do Every. Single. Thing Ursa squawks about. Ursa keeps them walking on eggshells cuz, oh NO! she might bolt into the forest, and hey! they’re incapable of calling 911 for searches. MUST do as Ursa demands. There’s a scene where, during a black and fierce storm, Ursa doesn’t stay with them but ditzes around and gets a head wound. She’s unconscious for a bit (Which, apPARently Jo and Gabe know, but…), and she’s bleeding like crazy.
Oy, my Disbelief because as the pair of complete and utter ditzes ponder the hospital, Ursa shrieking and threatening to bolt has them caving and hoping for the Best. They’re entirely incapable of DOING anything, but gosh can they Hope Like Crazy.
So let’s get onto Vanderah’s dismal character-crafting. Jo is a wishy-washy dolt from the get-go, total limp noodle… Until!… she SAVES Gabe from his mental illness, and the pain he carries from his childhood, from his family. There are secrets he’s carried, and having a beard keeps him from looking into the mirror and seeing just how much he resembles a man he loathed his entire life. What does Jo do? She draaaags him and castigates him about feeling pain, and shaves it all off. DepLORable! But of course—Suddenly Gabe feels like a new man. Gee, thanks Jo for saving me from a huuuuuuge betrayal that I just happened to feel hurt by. And oh thank GOD for you, Ursa, because your light and youthful exuberance inspires courage and strength. Nothing about what an obnoxious dip she is…
The manner in which this was written very much strikes me as Wanting To Change The World With Positivity but Going About It In An AWFUL Way. So many many MANY episodes of agony! betrayal! wounds carried physically and within the psyche, the soul! And they’re aaaaallll wrapped up into nice little packages and tied up with big ol’ pink ribbons.
Lauren Ezzo? She was pretty good here, but I didn’t feel her as much as I did with her extraordinary performance in The Last to See Me where she handled such strong characters to go with haunting action galore. Here? All she has to work with is a milquetoast dude, an increasingly histrionic chick (Ouches all over the place as Vanderah writes us to an emotional finale that was pure hysterics!), and an unlikable tot who ends the story as just the same howling git she ever was. What does that mean? Gabe: Snooooze; Jo: The urge to jam an ice pick into my ear; and Ursa? Oh my, the overwhelming desire to hurl listening device at wall. Ezzo made the most outta what she had, and aside from some odd tones for Gabe, she did well enough. I bear her no ill will.
I’d just listened to The Only Plane in the Sky, and I was desperate for jeez! something that’d get me to stop crying and staring at the wall. Thought: Oh, Magical Realism. But as is often the case for stories tagged with Magical Realism, I’m left wondering where’s the Magic (Uhm… no seriously, I canNOT think of one instance of the fantastical), and where is the Realism (Well, one would HOPE the average person would know about Child Protective Services).
10-hours, and I can’t think of a single hour I’d want to keep; no I want them aaaallll back.
Big Sis got me good!
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