Reviewed by Donna

TITLE: Throwing Stones

AUTHOR: Robin Reardon

PUBLISHER: IAM Books

LENGTH: 327 Pages

RELEASE DATE: November 13, 2015

BLURB:

What if you fell in love with a Pagan?

And what if you were both gay? What would happen next?

In this paranormal romance, something is drawing seventeen-year-old Jesse Bryce toward the community of Pagans who live in “the village,” just outside his rural Oklahoma town. Maybe it’s that he has a crush on Griffin Holyoke, a tall, dark-haired boy with a tree tattooed all up his back. Or maybe it’s that the Pagans accept Jesse for who he is, unlike his family–or his church, where he hears that being gay is a sin.

• After a man from the village is murdered while trying to prevent an assault on a girl from the town, Jesse’s confusion at the town’s unsympathetic reaction inspires him to set a mission for himself: to build a bridge of acceptance between the town and the village.
• As Jesse defies his parents and continues to visit the village, he witnesses mysterious rituals that haunt him with their beauty and intensity. And he falls in love with one enigmatic, mercurial Pagan who opens his eyes to a whole new world.

This first-person story explores what can happen when we make conclusions about others based on too little information, or on the wrong information. Whether we’re misunderstanding each others’ religions or each others’ sexual orientation, everyone benefits from learning the truth. And everyone benefits from forgiveness.

REVIEW:

I know that some readers avoid religious themed books like the plague but call me crazy; I actually tend to enjoy them. I’m not an atheist, yet I’ve never pointed to one religion and said – yep, that’s the right one. I believe there is a “creator” but I also believe that “he” isn’t a judgmental asshole. If someone has lived their life as a good person, he isn’t going to see them eternally punished because shit, they’re Catholic and Jewish was the correct answer. God, or whatever each religion wants to call the figure they worship, is love and acceptance in my opinion. So it always fascinates me that religion is the cause of so much violence and hate. Paganism isn’t something I know much about, so I was interested in this story as soon as I read the blurb. Although I’ve never read any other book by this author, the Goodreads reviews for Throwing Stones all say something along the lines of – of course it’s good, it was written by Robin Reardon – so I was expecting great things from this story. And I can thankfully report, that the author delivered on that expectation.

The story is told from the first person perspective of gay, closeted, seventeen-year-old Jesse Bryce. Jesse is just beginning to nudge at that closet door, and because of this he is ultra sensitive of the behavior and opinions of people around him. The author has created Jesse with a perfect combination of both youth and maturity. He is more mature than most other teens his age, as one often sees in kids who don’t feel secure or safe. And while Jesse isn’t scared that his family will physically hurt him should they learn his secret, he is terrified that they’ll reject him in disgust. But at the same time, his point of view still has a distinctly youthful feel to it.

The romance between Jesse and Ronan was almost incidental to the plot, although it did provide the author more opportunity to develop the characters and show the reader another side of these teens. And let’s be honest, who doesn’t love a good romance. But the core foundation of this book wasn’t the love story, instead the need for acceptance came across as the principal theme.

Throwing Stones is one of those stories that make you stop and contemplate your own thoughts and opinions alongside the reflection going on amongst the characters. Watching Jesse’s family struggle to accept his sexuality would normally have made me angry. But the author put such care and consideration into how these conflicts were presented that as they struggled to understand him, I was made to struggle through understanding them.

This book is a little longer than average for this genre, but not once did I get bored by what was happening on the pages. You have to appreciate the quality of this story. You can feel the attention paid to the little details, which is clearly a reflection of this author’s skills. It’s all well and good to throw out the saying – one person can make a difference – but what Robin Reardon has accomplished here, is to show us what that looks like, and in a completely credible way.

Throwing Stones is a memorable book, a book that makes you feel hope and acceptance and forgiveness and love, and teaches us that we hurt ourselves when we hate or fear what we don’t understand.

I would only hesitate to recommend this to a reader who is adamant that young adult novels are not to their liking. To all others, this is one of my must-read picks for 2016. It will surely find itself a place on my favourite books of the year list come December.

RATING: 

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