girlinthepages
Written on Apr 11, 2018
I loved loved loved Sarah Nicole Lemon's debut Done Dirt Cheap, which I picked up on a whim, knowing not much about but loving the girl power vibe of the cover and unorthodox name. I loved her ability to write resilient, strong female characters and went into her sophomore novel, Valley Girls, with similar expectations. What I encountered was a story that was much, much different than her debut, and that unfortunately failed to compel me the way Done Dirt Cheap did. While Valley Girls has a stunning setting and is no doubt a book that was dearly and thoroughly researched, it unfortunately missed the mark for me.
Valley Girls focuses on Rilla, who's been sent to live with her sister, a summer park ranger of sorts, in Yosemite Valley. She's left behind a troubled and tainted past in West Virginia and this summer in Yosemite is a bit of a last chance situation for her. Rilla unfortunately was the main issue for me in this book. As the protagonist, readers spend all of their time in her head, and she's quite frankly irritating and self absorbed and honestly doesn't start showing much growth until the very end of the book. She constantly and consistently makes poor decisions and holds herself back with them, and is insecure beyond belief. Now I know insecurities are a huge part of the teenage experience, but she would lament over the tiniest of mistakes she'd made in social situations for pages upon pages, which was such a change from Lemon's previous protagonists. While the novel is obviously focused on the tale of her growth, I wish I could have seen more progress than I did.
While an unlikable protagonist doesn't completely make or break a novel (sometimes the best novels can have the worst protagonists), I failed to connect with Rilla at all, as I feel I never really got a clear vision of her backstory. There's a lot of really heavy, formative experiences and issues that are hinted at (parents who are polyamorous and in and out of jail, excessive partying, domestic abuse, etc.) which are huge themes but only ever get mentioned in passing. I really wish I had a chance to get to know exactly WHAT happened to get Rilla sent to Yosemite, as then I feel like I could have connected more with her on her journey (I know this is obviously a tale of the protagonist leaving her past behind but I felt let down by the mention of these huge issues that were never addressed fully).
The other element that had me struggling through the book was the rock climbing. Now, this is completely just my personal taste, but I am not an athletic minded person at all, so as soon as a book starts getting too technical for me I tend to get bored. I found this book was super technical and descriptive about the rock climbing process (which is a great thing if you're interested in it! It's evident a lot of care and research went into writing those scenes and I definitely know way more about rock climbing than I ever thought I would- including some of the wild stuff like how climbers literally sleep suspended in midair off of a mountain on a port-a-ledge). However, I did find myself eventually skimming many of the climbing portions.
While many of the main focuses of the book didn't work for me, there were a lot of secondary elements that I liked that I wish had been featured more. I really liked Rilla's sister Thea who had completely turned her life around from her West Virginia upbringing. There were a ton of female rock climber characters who all had their strengths and flaws but who were all incredibly independent, from Caroline, a sponsored, Instagram famous climber to Adeena, a climber from Pakistan who scaled Everest when she was even younger than Rilla, and who used climbing as a way to help finance her education. I wish I had gotten to know these women's backstories even better as well, and I wish their presence had been more motivating to Rilla rather than discouraging.
Overall: Valley Girls is an book that's obviously written with incredible research and care regarding rock climbing, and has a very vivid portrayal of life in Yosemite Valley. However, Rilla's behavior and lack of growth coupled with my disinterest in the technical rock climbing scenes made this one a miss for me.This review was originally posted on Girl in the Pages