Reviews by the Wicked Reads Review Team

Sarah – ☆☆☆☆
3.5 stars

Lorraine Tyler’s voice is wonderfully original. She is fierce, sarcastic, and trapped in a small town life that she just can’t make herself fit into. I loved her passion, her intelligence, and her frustration.

Lorraine’s existence in Bend feels incredibly dated – or maybe time just stands still in small towns. And Bend is a small town horror show. The only scholarship out has a morality clause. The town’s evangelical preacher has a terrifying grip on the women in Lorraine’s family and marriage to a pig farmer at 17 is a teenage girl’s dream come true. As a lesbian, Lorraine is an outsider, desperate to leave, and increasingly trapped by poverty and complicated circumstances.

As the story unravels, it soon becomes clear that Lorraine is probably the most straightforward character in her town. This story moves slowly and characters are revealed in pieces. From family members to neighbours to husbands, everyone in Bend has a complicated history and when Lorraine’s family starts to fall apart, suspicion and blame fall on everyone.

I loved Lorraine, I enjoyed the setting and the wonderful details of rural life, and I appreciated the atmospheric tension that runs through this book. However, I struggled with the many confusing plot strands in the story. By the end of the book, there is just too much going on. Some of the character development feels really inconsistent. I found Lorraine’s mother’s story difficult to accept and Becky and Charity’s story didn’t always ring true.

I enjoyed this book I loved the small town feel, and the small town characters.I liked Lorraine ,I felt sorry for her and was on her side as well.There was more going on than I expected and it was a good read I don't want to spoil it for other readers but I would recommend this book the way that Lorraine looked at the world was both funny and poignant and it was a good story.thanks to Netgalley and the Publishers for an ARC in return for an honest review.

This book was like a breath of fresh air to me. Perhaps - as an adult - I should read more YA novels...

I liked the characters in Bend, they were real to me, everyone living according to her or his own rules on things of significance.
Lorraine, a spunky 17-year-old, being clear that she is queer. She doesn't doubt herself, which made me like her even more.

Whimsical, with a heavy subject matter in a sort of not heavy way is how I describe this read. Lorraine Tyler is an interesting character due to her home town, place of residence, family dynamics and her strong desire to get out of town. In addition, the question of is she or is she not the black sheep of the family. Charity is a world wind yet fresh air for Lorraine. She has some family dynamic issues too, yet she was able to get out of town but has to return due to some issues at college. When the two meet, it is lust and desire from Lorraine and I may be interested from Charity. If you like interesting, intriguing and possibly usual family happenings then this is the read for you.

As a young gay woman living in a deeply conservative and religious community, Lorraine’s main goal in life is to graduate from school and go to college. And the further from Bend, Minnesota the better. Then Charity arrives in town. She’s the daughter of Bend’s most conservative preacher and like Lorraine, gay.

But along with Charity comes family upheaval. A long hidden secret and a family crisis threaten to destroy more than just Lorraine’s dreams of college.

I love this book. It’s whimsical, innocent, perhaps even a fairy tale but it also tackles some very dark issues. It’s the very best that Young Adult fiction can be.

Bend is a novel about a family in small town Minnesota whose relationships and beliefs are tested as they face the truth of each other and a big event threatens to rip them apart. The book is narrated by Lorraine, who dreams of escaping her small hometown of Bend to go to college and become a vet, but faces prejudice from her family and religious hometown due to her attraction to girls. Though the novel starts off seeming like a ‘girl escapes conservative small town for a bright future after battling adversity’ type narrative, it becomes something different, a story also focused on Lorraine’s twin sister Becky’s troubles and their mother’s secrets from the past. Ultimately, it is about family and the importance of bonds under pressure.

The novel is slow to start off with and seems predictable, but becomes more engaging as the complexities of the Tyler family come to the forefront. Lorraine’s love of animals and desperate attempts to help her family make her an interesting and rounded narrator. Her battles with her mother over her sexuality and her life feel honest and form a barrier that must be overcome as their family faces up to some difficult problems. The book’s style is simple and I expect that its depiction of small town American life is believable and relatable to those who’ve grown up there, though as a British reader it felt slightly alien at times. Hedin tackles issues of religion, sexuality, and religion within a small community well, highlighting issues without giving absolute judgement, though it would’ve been interesting to look into some elements further.

Bend is an enjoyable read and clearly highlights important aspects of small town America whilst creating an interesting narrative. Its characters are varied and there is a real sense of a small community and how problems might be faced within that environment. Adversity and loss are dealt with and the narrative has an uplifting ending that helps show the potential for new futures for those in small towns, whatever their age.

I really dislike writing negative reviews but this felt more like a rough first draft and it made me want to jump into the text and rewrite it instead of simply being carried through the story...

I couldn't get into this at all, even after reading a third of the book. The language felt kind of simple but non-descriptive, and the dialogue felt quite unnatural. I did like the characters though! That's why it feels extra sad that I couldn't finish this because there was so much potential?