Review: Jellicoe Road

Jellicoe Road
By Melina Marchetta
Published August 28th, 2006 by Penguin Australia

"Abandoned by her mother on Jellicoe Road when she was eleven, Taylor Markham, now seventeen, is finally being confronted with her past. But as the reluctant leader of her boarding school dorm, there isn't a lot of time for introspection. And while Hannah, the closest adult Taylor has to family, has disappeared, Jonah Griggs is back in town, moody stares and all.

In this absorbing story by Melina Marchetta, nothing is as it seems and every clue leads to more questions as Taylor tries to work out the connection between her mother dumping her, Hannah finding her then and her sudden departure now, a mysterious stranger who once whispered something in her ear, a boy in her dreams, five kids who lived on Jellicoe Road eighteen years ago, and the maddening and magnetic Jonah Griggs, who knows her better than she thinks he does. If Taylor can put together the pieces of her past, she might just be able to change her future."
                                                                            ~blurb from goodreads.com 

     I decided to give myself a day after finishing this book before writing my review. I'd hoped that after almost 24 hours, I would be able to find the right words that would be able to convey my feelings towards this book. It didn't help.

Words really can't even begin to describe how much I LOVED this book. It was a deviation from my normal chick-lit/romance picks, although there was romance too. This book was, to put it simply, a love story. In all senses of the phrase. That might or might not make sense to you, but trust me, once you read it, you'll understand.

     This book had so much emotion, raw and powerful, that I actually started crying while I was reading this. Trust me, I do not cry easily while reading books. The writing was so beautiful and the story took me on an emotional roller coaster that I will never forget. I completely fell in love with the all characters in this book, no matter how minor their roles were, and their relationships with each other. Melina Marchetta does an indescribably fantastic job at creating characters that have depth and are real. It's so hard to review this book because I feel like you need to experience all this for yourself—read it firsthand without any prior information/spoilers. You might be tempted to give up reading this at the very beginning, because I admit, it was a little confusing, but trust me, YOU WILL NOT REGRET READING THIS BOOK.

     I finished this library book at 2 a.m. and the very next day (well, technically it was the same day) I went out and bought my own copy because this is one of those few novels that you can re-read over and over again and it will still be able to make the same impact it did the first time. And trust me, I will be re-reading this. Right now, I'm actually a teeny tiny bit peeved at Marchetta for making me very hesitant to start a new book, even if it is one of my beloved chick-lits. I know, I just know, that no matter what my next book it is, it can't measure up to Jellicoe Road. Not by a long shot.

     If you haven't read this book yet, please, please, please (x infinity) go and read it. I promise you won't regret it!

5 stars (but it deserves so much more!)

Here are some of my favorite quotes (because if I were to type up all of them, I might as well just type up the entire book):

"It's funny how you can forget everything except people loving you. Maybe that's why humans find it so hard getting over love affairs. It's not the pain they're getting over, it's the love."

“What do you want from me?" he asks.
What I want from every person in my life, I want to tell him.
More.”

See, I remember love. That's what people don't understand. 

Someone asked us later, "Didn't you wonder why no one came across you sooner?"
Did I wonder?
When you see your parents zipped up in black body bags on the Jellicoe Road like they're some kind of garbage, don't you know?
Wonder dies.”

“If something happened to me, whose face will be on the front page of the paper begging for me? Is a person worth more because they have someone to grieve for them?”