The Milk of Birds

The Milk of Birds

(image from its goodreads page)

Sylvia Whitman

Nawra, a refugee displaced by the Janjaweed's destruction, lives in Darfur, Sudan. K.C., an American teenager with a hatred of reading and writing, lives in Richmond, Virginia. Surely sisterhood can't reach over such a divide. But after K.C. is signed up for a nonprofit called Save the Girls, she is put in contact with Nawra. Through letters they bond, and over time they form a friendship no distance can conquer.

Okay, I just wrote possibly the cheesiest sounding summary ever. Okay.

The book was less cheesy. Its writing style was beautiful, littered with the letters between the two. The two points of views were distinct and both very nice. Actually, scrapping the word 'nice'. The views, the characters, the story was amazing.

K.C. is the kind of character I want to see more of. Instead of severe 'not like the other girls' syndrome and a thing for tea, her grades are subpar and her relationship with others in her school is realistic. Wooooooooooooo! I mean, I like tea and all, but it's nice to get away from the sniffy Manic Pixie Dream Girls every once and a while.

Nawra was a great character, but with one flaw. It's that whole no-contractions-poetic-speech thing again. However, she was still a fab PoV character. Love her.

The plot itself was kind of unclear. I'm not sure if there was a goal that was supposed to be reached or what. There was, however, a good amount of character development, so I'll assume it was a SOL (Snippet of Life). Okay, K.C. got a good amount of character development. I'm not certain how much of that attention should have been focused on Nawra.

Okay, I feel bad, because all of my grievances seem to be focused on Nawra, but I had one more thing behind the spoiler brackets. [Just ignore the rest of this (sarcastic after the first sentence) paragraph] Why is it that I have found two books in a very recent span of time that portray the teen character having a baby as super positive? Like, WOW, a BABY. HOW COULD YOUR LIFE GET BETTER than a BABY. BABYS ARE THE BEST. BABYS FIX EVERYTHING. Step aside, future, we've got a BABY. [*heavy, spoilerific breathing over*] Yeah, no, I don't like that. Stop.

Ignoring that, I liked the details that were in the story. The sayings, the details on food and culture. Am I the only one who really likes scenes with characters eating? It just brings me this sense that they're real people. I could be the only one who thinks that, though.

*Long sigh* Okay, I have exactly one more complaint. Just one. IT'LL BE IT, I SWEAR. It's the kind of white savior complex going on. Like the idea that K.C. is rescuing Nawra by being from America and having money. I didn't word it right, but it makes sense in context of the book, trust me.

The descriptions were fan. Not purple, for one, which I almost expected from Nawra's voice. Not beige from K.C.'s end. Very nice, very nice. *Golf clapping*

Also, subplots! I love subplots. And these were perfect, not distracting from the main plot (if there was one), but also not too minor to catch. Well-written subplots make stories feel so much better.

Last, romance. WOOOOOOOO IT WASN'T OVERLY DISTRACTING AND ANNOYING. WOOOOOO MY EXPECTATIONS ARE SO LOW THAT A DECENT ROMANCE IS SOMEHOW LIKE THE FOURTH OF JULY. Still, great!

(Oh my God I missed the second queue use noooooo.)

(There's a reference to my next review in here.)

~Corinne

(This failed to launch for some reason- here, I have to post it MANUALLY. UGH.)