Reviewed by Carissa

TITLE:  Get Your Shine On

AUTHOR:  Nick Wilgus

PUBLISHER:  Dreamspinner Press

LENGTH:  350 pages

BLURB:  

When his mother goes out to party one Saturday night and doesn’t come back, seven-year-old Ishmael Hood is taken in by his estranged uncle Henry and Henry’s live-in boyfriend, Sam. As this unlikely trio begins to build a new life together, they encounter both support and hostility in the small Mississippi town where they live. Seems like just about everybody has an opinion on the matter—and they’re not shy about expressing it.

While this blossoming little family finds its feet, outside forces—and ghosts from the past—threaten to tear it apart. Henry, still trying to deal with the tragic death of his parents, finds himself hard-pressed to open his heart to this needy child.

Just as a little shine begins to come back into their lives, Ishmael’s mother returns, and their world is thrown into chaos.

REVIEW:  

Henry never expected he’d be able to raise a kid. Sure, he and Sam talked about it, but in the way you talk about ‘someday…’ things. His town isn’t exactly at the forefront of the equality movement, and to be frank, Henry is still a bit of a mess from his mother and father’s death. So, no child-rearing in Henry’s future, that’s for sure.

Then his druggy sister, Sarah, takes herself off for a weekend of partying and decides to leave her seven-year-old son alone at home. And come Tuesday, she is still not back and Henry gets a call from Sarah’s neighbor demanding he come deal with the child. So now Henry and Sam have to look after Ishy, deal with a community that is rapidly showing its not-so-hidden colors, and hope that they can handle the fallout from some old, terrible secrets coming to light. For something that was never really supposed to happen, Henry sure does have a lot of work ahead of him.

I was going for an eloquent review full of fancy words and phrases that only get pulled out once in a blue moon…and well, an hour, and god only knows how many attempts, later, I give up. There is no eloquence to be found in me on a Sunday morning. So you are just going to have to suffer thru my usual nonsensical bouts of squee and glee.

Because hot damn was this a good book. Like it totally blew me away. I haven’t read anything by Nick Wilgus before, and at this point I’m thinking of going out and buying everything he has written (if, you know, I wasn’t completely and absolutely broke).

The characters here were so well written. Even the ones I (loved to) hate were well done. Or maybe I loved them so much because they were written in such a way that it felt real. These are not caricatures, but characters who came pretty damn close to resembling a fair few of my former acquaintances. They have some big damn issues (homophobia, bigotry, willful ignorance of the world outside their own little town), but they are not evil. They, like everyone, have good sides and bad sides. It is just too bad that their bad sides are the ones getting all the sun.

The part of me that ran fast away from organized religion wants to paint these characters as ‘your typical Christians.’ Heaven knows I have my issues with large portions of the community. But in this book we are also reminded that there is the other side of the coin. Sister Ascension is a perfect example of this.

Her Coke-bottle glasses and stern face made her seem somewhat forbidding, like a giant grasshopper.

But she is anything but your stereotypical nun–all stern and closed off. She is, in fact, rather kick-ass. And I loved that she continually showed love and genuine warmth towards everyone. Even the Evil Church Lady (Miss Stella), who I wanted to spork on several (dozen) occasions during this book.

And the religious aspect was hardly even a fraction of why I loved this book. If you really want to get down to it, I loved this book for the reality of life on both sides of the good/bad field. Characters are motivated by past events/prejudices, but they grow, change, react like anyone else would in life. Actions have consequences (even if unfair ones), and the life in this little town is a revolving ball of political, social, and personal struggles.

The truths we learn are sometimes hard to handle. The choices forced upon Henry are sometimes cruel. The first scene at the courthouse brought me to tears.

There is so much wrapped up in this story. It is not simply the story of a man who is thrust into taking care of a child. Or about a man who must come ‘out’ into the open about his relationship with his boyfriend (even though it is pretty much an open secret to everyone in town). At times it feels like the universe sat down and decided that Henry’s life was not quite interesting enough, so it threw the book, the bookshelf, and half the library at Henry to liven it up.

It was just a really great book. I don’t know how else to say it. It was real and painful and beautiful. It was also amusing–though gods only know how worse I would have been at parenting. *shudders*

RATING:  

BUY LINKS:

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