Would You

Starred review from June 2, 2008
The opening chapters give little hint of the intensity of Jocelyn's (How It Happened in Peach Hill
) exquisitely honed novel. Soon-to-be-high school junior Natalie and her friends like to play “Would you...”—a game exemplified by the book's first lines: “Would you rather know what's going to happen? Or not know?” Abruptly everything changes: Natalie's older sister, Claire, is struck by a car and rendered comatose. Jocelyn maintains a measured pace as the next few days unfold: Natalie watches her mother numb herself with tranquilizers, her father grow angry and look for someone to blame. Although the plot line sounds like that of a standard weeper, the author resists the urge to magnify emotions. Natalie reacts honestly, neither beautifully nor nobly—she is initially repulsed when a nurse asks her to massage Claire's grossly swollen feet; she lashes out at a boy who already (and needlessly) feels guilty. The light touch with which Jocelyn handles her difficult material is best seen when Claire is declared brain-dead and taken off life support: the humanity in the author's treatment affords the reader a sense both of grief and of peace. Ages 14–up.

July 1, 2008
Gr 8-11-Natalie and Claire are more than sisters; they're also friends. Only two years apart, they've always shared secrets, clothes, and a bedroom, and Natalie can't imagine what it's going to be like in the fall when Claire goes away to college. Only Claire doesn't go away. At the beginning of the summer, she's struck by a car and suffers massive head trauma. The next time Natalie sees her is at the hospital. There are tubes snaking in and out of her swollen body and there's a crisscrossing of stitches on her shaved head. This is not Claire's story, but Natalie's. It takes place over the course of 12 days of grief and coping, and continuing to live when the unimaginable happens. Natalie, her friends, and her family are well delineated, but as the story is told from Natalie's point of view, hers is the most complete portrayal. Jocelyn captures a teen's thoughts and reactions in a time of incredible anguish without making her overly dramatic. Readers will fly through the pages of this book, crying, laughing, and crying some more."Heather E. Miller, Homewood Public Library, AL"

Copyright 2008 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 1, 2008
Would you rather lose all your hair or all your teeth? Those are the kinds of questions Natalie and her friends ask each other when they sit around their hangout, the Ding-Dong. Would you rather die or have everyone else die? That becomes more than a question when Natalies beloved sister, Claire, is hit by a car. In short chapters that are wrenching, honest, even funny at times, Jocelyn takes readers on Natalies journey from Before to After. Natalie is coming home from a night out with friends when she gets the phone call. As she learns later, Claire was breaking up with her boyfriend, and when the exchange became emotional, she ran into the street without looking. Now, she lies in her hospital room, tethered to machines, body swollen, head shaved, in a coma. In the few days that pass from books beginning to end, Natalie and her family go through the familiar stages of grief. Friends rally, tempers flare, there are even the painfully realistic moments as when a secret crush kisses Natalie, and she is guiltily glad she is alive. The books brevity makes the sadness bearable, but this will stay with readers for a long time.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2009
Natalie's older sister Claire is hit by a car and lies in a coma, kept alive by a ventilator. Divided into a series of brief, subtitled scenes, the narrative eloquently conveys how quickly "normal" life can change into something surreal. Readers will acutely feel Natalie's pain in this deeply affecting novel.

(Copyright 2009 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

Starred review from July 1, 2008
The title of this deeply affecting novel comes from a question-and-answer game that narrator Natalie, a high school junior, plays with her friends. "Would you rather eat a rat with the fur still on or eat sewage straight from the pipe? Would you rather lose all your hair or all your teeth?" The game's objective, as Natalie's friend Carson explains, "is to have options that are not options." This description also fits the no-win situation Natalie and her parents are thrust into when Natalie's older sister Claire is hit by a car and lies in a coma, kept alive by a ventilator. Divided into a series of brief, subtitled scenes, the narrative eloquently conveys how quickly "normal" life can change into something surreal; how Natalie's relationship with Claire can go from affectionate banter while prepping for a night out to the one-way conversations Natalie holds with her sister's motionless body in the hospital room. The easygoing rapport Jocelyn establishes amongst Natalie's group of friends further heightens this contrast. After the accident, their typical activities of after-dark pool hopping and verbal dueling at the local diner morph into awkward discussions of whether, in Claire's situation, it's better to live or die. Readers will acutely feel Natalie's ache that Claire can't contribute her opinion.

(Copyright 2008 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)