Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer

My second audio book of the year came from Lydia Netzer entitled "Shine Shine Shine"  and was the first book that I couldn't wait to get back to whenever I had to be away from it.  This is the first thing I have read by this author but it will not be the last by any means! Her characters are all just so....real.  I adored Sunny throughout this novel, I loved how she tried so incredibly hard to be the perfect wife and mother and homemaker and party planner and everything to everybody.  I loved that her husband, Maxon was a socially awkward, Aspergers genius who always tried but never really "got" what Sunny needed from him.  I loved their son Bubbers and his struggles in contrast to what was happening with his parents.  And I adored all of the tiny imperfections underneath the story and every single character in it - right down to the ancillary characters - that fit it all together brilliantly and the flashback scenes that explained how everyone became who they are.

So my rating on this novel is 4 star but I really wanted it to be 4.5.  The only places where I thought the book lost its way was near the end in a surreal scene with Bubbers and Maxon.  While I understand the point that the author was trying to make with the symbolic hallucinations, it just fell flat against the brilliance of the rest of the novel.  The other spot that rubbed me the wrong way was the journey into Skip Weather's house also near the end of the book.  Again, though, I thought the reveal of what was behind the door was lovely, it was the other circumstances surrounding the discovery that made everything seem incredibly unreal and I didn't love it.

Bonus: There was an interview with Lydia Netzer at the end of this book that detailed her process in writing it.  In it, she reveals that she really isn't much of a contemporary reader which makes sense in the fact that this book had such a unique voice that was unlike anything else on the bookshelves today.  It was a sweet little surprise there.

I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone looking to get a fresh perspective on how "perfection" really should be accomplished.

Goodreads rating: 4.5 stars.

Read Date: January 8, 2015