Review: Things to See in Arizona

Things to See in Arizona by Mary Vensel White
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

2.3 stars 

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review 

Growing up also means feeling a little reckless and ready to be seen. 

Tuesday has graduated highschool and wants to leave Scottsdale for Flagstaff to go to college, but even that is too far for her nervous mother. She only has ten days before the deadline to commit to Northern Arizona University but with her dad suddenly leaving a, somewhat, cryptic letter saying he needs a break and time to himself in Albuquerque, she finds herself with a whole new set of worries. Tuesday's trying to find not only her dad on this last second road trip but explore a possible relationship with her bestfriend's brother, understand her family more, but also find herself as she encounters adulthood. 

I need to find out where he is and get him back home as soon as possible. 

Things to See in Arizona is tagged a young adult story and with an eighteen year old character telling the story all from her point-of-view, I can see the argument for it but the tone read more contemporary adult looking back/nostalgia fiction, with some literary vibes. The writing style had a tendency to meander off into overly descriptive literary fiction with Tuesday adding flowy and colorful adjectives to such things as relatives clothing as she reminisced in flashbacks. I thought the main plot was going to be her looking for her father but the story was more about Tuesday being upset that her family, friends, and especially mother worried about and only thought of her in terms of a condition she was recently diagnosed with, Retinitis Pigmentosa. Tuesday thinks about how it isn't curable but might not even progress to blindness while also trying to work through how it feels like a looming guillotine above her. 

“[...] As you get older, Tuesday; you'll find that much of life is wasted in the space where we don't say what we're feeling.” 

A little romance arc gets thrown in when her bestfriend's brother ends up going on the road trip with her to look for her dad in Albuquerque. They end up going to locations off a Weird Places in Arizona and New Mexico map and another little small arc about how her grandmother saw auroras and how Tuesday has “sightings” where she can see flashes of how a person looked in their past and future, with some feelings of pain they might be having or had. It's small enough that I wouldn't give this a supernatural tag, which is how a lot of this story felt, a few small enough additions that never quite felt filled out enough and mashed together in kind of an unfitting collage. The dad storyline ended up feeling disappointing to me as he was found very easily and then we only spent about three pages with him. The story then veered to Tuesday's romance, bestfriend's romance with a band member, and them going to a concert. 

Family dramas and history, growing up learning how to fit in your family, and beginning to find yourself, with a light romance arc, this felt more like literary adult fiction about a YA character and a handful of little additive threads that never quite flowed together right for me.

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