Please Ignore Vera Dietz: Review

Title: Please Ignore Vera Dietz

Author: A. S. King

Release Date: October 2010

Published By: Knopf

Pages: 336

Goodreads Rating: 4.10 stars

Review: When Charlie was alive, Vera was in love with him and protected his secrets, even as he betrayed her and destroyed everything. Now he's dead, and she hates him. He's died in shadowy circumstances, and she's the only one who knows that he was innocent - only she can clear his name. But will she? More importantly, does she even want to?

There are some books that have a voice so strong that the entire book could be about paint drying and you wouldn't be able to put it down. PLEASE IGNORE VERA DIETZ is one of those books. Vera presents herself from the very start as an engaging, quirky character with a unique voice that could pull in any reader. She was hilarious and made me laugh; she was wrenching and made me cry.

In short, Vera - and the rest of the book - was powerful. I said that the plot could be boring and I would still love this book, but that doesn't mean the plot wasn't good, because it was beautiful in the grittiest of ways. It's the kind of story where you try to pace yourself because you love it so much that you can't bear for it to end and the increasingly smaller and smaller number of pages left is depressing.

PLEASE IGNORE VERA DIETZ is gorgeous and lovely and funny and sad and wrenching and beautiful and quirky and really just awesome. I'm not sure what else I have to say to make you read this, if you haven't already, but you should. It got the 2011 Printz medal, and that's for a reason. This book is definitely going on my Best of 2011 post at the end of the year.