A review by joyousreads132
Guitar Highway Rose by Brigid Lowry

3.0

Rose is waiting for life to happen; to break free from her mum’s suffocating way of caring. She wanted her dad to do something about his suffering marriage to her mum.

Asher wanted nothing to do with Perth. He’d rather be back to his old hunting ground where everything was normal and familiar.

This is a story of two kids who found themselves on the run from a petty crime Asher was accused of. But mostly, they wanted freedom. Along their adventure, while their parents were going insane with worry, they took a journey of self-realization and discovery through the people they meet.

This book is a short read. And while I appreciate the uniqueness of the way this was written, I couldn’t be enthused about the story. The multiple P.O.Vs didn’t deter me as much as the lack of punctuations in Asher’s point of view. I did say I wasn’t going to get technical on my reviews but the lack of beginning and ending on a sentence loses some of the element of good storytelling. I can honestly say that I was tempted to put slashes and turn his POV into nice, tidy verses.

INSIDE HIS HEAD

”maybe i shouldn’t have said that about thinking she was a try-hard i hope she isn’t mad at me you never can tell with girl creatures but she seemed to understand hey cat i nearly flattened you she’s fun making up those names was cool i want to see her again…”

And he goes on.

What I liked, however was the way the author was very descriptive about a character’s quirks. There was something poetic about the way she enumerated the objects in a person’s room or the complete account of what Asher was wearing for the day. To some this may seem like fillers or something that was irrelevant, but for me, I took it as the author’s way of introducing a character. Kind of like the old adage, tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are.

I have kids but they’re not teenagers. If this is what teenage angst is all about, then I’m in for a headache the size of Mt. Olympus. While I don’t want to brag about how much of a good girl I was when I was sixteen, I got a good look of how it was when your world is like a jail cell and every word that came out of your mother’s mouth was no. So I get where Rose was coming from. But. And this is a big BUT. I’m not a fan of teenage drinking and doping. I want to believe that this is something my kids will not discover. I’m going to drill it to their heads that curiosity is overrated and peer pressure is just a lame excuse for weaklings. Am I being naïve? Perhaps. But I’d like to keep the hopes alive.

To sum it up, Guitar Highway Rose is a quick, heartfelt and funny read. And though, the writing takes a bit of getting used to, this lyrically infused book will at least whet your reading appetite with idiosyncratic characters and peculiarly pretty prose.