2014 Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults
Once upon a time, in the small town of Never Better, there lived a boy named Jeremy Johnson Johnson who could hear ghosts, specifically one ghost, the ghost of Jacob Grimm. While that's not exactly how Far Far Away starts, it could just as easily have, as the story could have been included in the Brothers Grimm's Children's and Household Tales. Jacob has been a near constant presence in Jeremy's life since the death of his grandfather, pushing him to focus on school so that he can go to college and maybe leave Never Better for good. But when sort-of wild child Ginger Boultinghouse invites him out first for Prince Cakes and then later to pull a prank on the baker, he sparks a chain of events that leads them both into a very fairy-tale-like predicament. Except in fairy tales, those killed wrongly manage to come back to life…
This book had me riveted. Jacob's voice, since he's the one narrating, takes a little getting used to, but once you get past it, it's not hard to get pulled into Never Better and into Jeremy's life. I figured out the twist fairly early on, but that didn't stop me from enjoying it - case in point, I hit a moment in the book at about 12:45 am one night when I needed to go to bed but I couldn't stop. I had to reach the next slow moment, no matter how late it was or how early I needed to get up because I literally could not put it down at that moment without knowing what would happen next. While the trend lately is to take fairy tales and put a new spin on it, whether it's modernizing it like Fables or putting well-loved and -known characters into different genres like Cinder, it's great to read a story that takes many of the hallmarks of fairy tales and spins them into something new.
(Read as part of YALSA's Hub Reading Challenge.)
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