Member Review
Review by
Roshni D, Reviewer
In a Nutshell: A lyrical and imaginative teen fiction about a girl looking for answers and finding none. Charming in its tone and subtly impactful in its themes. Aimed at middle-graders, but I feel this book will work better for older readers as several points are only hinted at without outright explanations.
Plot Preview:
Ten-year-old Gilly loves to write her deepest feelings and fears in her diary, which she hopes to publish someday. In its pages, she reveals her longing for her dad, who has left her mom to live on the other side of the forest. Gilly mainly has her mom and her best friend Oggy for company. But she also loves Orti, her beloved tangerine tree, under whose shade she has spent many a happy hour. Gilly wants to go and find her dad with the help of Oggy. But is it easy to traverse a forest you have never ventured across before?
The story comes to us in Gilly’s first-person perspective through her diary entries.
Bookish Yays:
🍊 Gilly – a lovely lead character and convincing as a child, with her wacky and wild imagination and optimistic personality even in the face of sadness. I love her love for nature and writing.
🍊 Oggy, Gilly’s best friend who is somewhat contrary to her in personality. Their friendship has its ups and downs, but their bond is always visible.
🍊 The ode to nature and its beauty throughout the writing, especially in the content connected to the tangerine tree and the special animal that only Gilly can see: the yanaka.
🍊 The titular tangerines, used literally as well as symbolically in the plot. Loved the metaphors connected to the fruit.
🍊 The diary reads just like an actual personal diary would, being full of Gilly’s thoughts, introspections, hopes, fears, wishes, prayers and even descriptions of things around her. I love it when content matches its declared format.
🍊 So many beautiful thoughts and lines! Quite thought-provoking, though they might be appreciated by adult readers better, Sample this: "Dreams are a bit like dandelion seeds--they float around and sometimes land where they are not meant to. And instead of getting your own dream, you might get someone else's."
🍊 The acknowledgments section, which comes from Gilly and not the author. Excellent, quirky, and heartfelt.
🍊 The cover art – very pretty, and not AI-generated as I had initially assumed.
Bookish Mixed Bags:
🍓 Quite a few serious and relevant themes, touching upon tougher topics such as feelings of parental abandonment and mental health issues. However, as we hear only from Gilly’s first-person POV, our knowledge is limited. We only know what she thinks and imagines, not the actual facts. As an adult, I could read some things between the lines, but I am not sure if children will be able to understand what’s actually happening.
🍓 The luscious writing is a treat for prose lovers, but plot lovers might feel a bit frustrated. The storyline is minimal, with more focus on Gilly’s ramblings than on taking the story ahead.
🍓 The randomness of the narrative might not work for everyone. Gilly jumps from topic to topic just like typical kids do, making her diary entries feel almost like stream-of-consciousness writing. In her own words, "My thoughts don't go straight. They hop around, stop, and fly off again, like birds on Orti." Processing her meanderings takes effort, especially as her reveals aren’t linear. It helps that her thoughts are quite interesting.
Bookish Nays:
🍄 Personal preference: Some of the content was a bit red-flag for me, especially considering the target age. Like, talking about eating mushrooms from the forest and the resultant "dreaming" – a risky idea to put across in a MG book. Further, Gilly often mentions her future wedding plans with Oggy. I am never a fan of middle-grade books that keep talking of “romance”, though there are kids who might think similarly and might be open to such content.
🍄 The adults in this book are really frustrating. There’s plenty of miscommunication, all in the name of protecting the child. As an adult myself, I found all of them irritating and their reasons, ridiculous.
🍄 The ending left too many things unanswered. The main objective of the book – Gilly’s wish to reunite with her dad – is also not handled satisfactorily. This would have been a great ending for adult literary fiction, but in a children’s book, I expect better closure.
All in all, this indie novel is for those who enjoy the journey without bothering about the destination. It has lovely prose, but with the abundance of random musings, the lack of focus on the actual journey across the forest, and the unexplained plot points, I'm not sure if it would work well for children.
The protagonist Gilly is ten, hence a middle-grader. Amazon pegs this book for ages 13-18. NetGalley tags it for middle-graders and teens. However, the writing style and the plot structure make this a slightly unusual option for younger kids. I think it would be a much better book for older YAs and adult readers who wouldn’t mind reading stories written from a ten-year-old child’s perspective.
Recommended to readers who enjoy poetic writing and care more about the route than the terminus.
3.25 stars. (I would have rated this higher – say about 4 stars – if I looked at the content from an adult reader’s perspective. But I genuinely don’t know if this type of writing works well for children. I hope it does.)
My thanks to Brave Fawn Books for providing the DRC and ALC of “Tangerines” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.
The digital version of this book is currently available on Kindle Unlimited.
Plot Preview:
Ten-year-old Gilly loves to write her deepest feelings and fears in her diary, which she hopes to publish someday. In its pages, she reveals her longing for her dad, who has left her mom to live on the other side of the forest. Gilly mainly has her mom and her best friend Oggy for company. But she also loves Orti, her beloved tangerine tree, under whose shade she has spent many a happy hour. Gilly wants to go and find her dad with the help of Oggy. But is it easy to traverse a forest you have never ventured across before?
The story comes to us in Gilly’s first-person perspective through her diary entries.
Bookish Yays:
🍊 Gilly – a lovely lead character and convincing as a child, with her wacky and wild imagination and optimistic personality even in the face of sadness. I love her love for nature and writing.
🍊 Oggy, Gilly’s best friend who is somewhat contrary to her in personality. Their friendship has its ups and downs, but their bond is always visible.
🍊 The ode to nature and its beauty throughout the writing, especially in the content connected to the tangerine tree and the special animal that only Gilly can see: the yanaka.
🍊 The titular tangerines, used literally as well as symbolically in the plot. Loved the metaphors connected to the fruit.
🍊 The diary reads just like an actual personal diary would, being full of Gilly’s thoughts, introspections, hopes, fears, wishes, prayers and even descriptions of things around her. I love it when content matches its declared format.
🍊 So many beautiful thoughts and lines! Quite thought-provoking, though they might be appreciated by adult readers better, Sample this: "Dreams are a bit like dandelion seeds--they float around and sometimes land where they are not meant to. And instead of getting your own dream, you might get someone else's."
🍊 The acknowledgments section, which comes from Gilly and not the author. Excellent, quirky, and heartfelt.
🍊 The cover art – very pretty, and not AI-generated as I had initially assumed.
Bookish Mixed Bags:
🍓 Quite a few serious and relevant themes, touching upon tougher topics such as feelings of parental abandonment and mental health issues. However, as we hear only from Gilly’s first-person POV, our knowledge is limited. We only know what she thinks and imagines, not the actual facts. As an adult, I could read some things between the lines, but I am not sure if children will be able to understand what’s actually happening.
🍓 The luscious writing is a treat for prose lovers, but plot lovers might feel a bit frustrated. The storyline is minimal, with more focus on Gilly’s ramblings than on taking the story ahead.
🍓 The randomness of the narrative might not work for everyone. Gilly jumps from topic to topic just like typical kids do, making her diary entries feel almost like stream-of-consciousness writing. In her own words, "My thoughts don't go straight. They hop around, stop, and fly off again, like birds on Orti." Processing her meanderings takes effort, especially as her reveals aren’t linear. It helps that her thoughts are quite interesting.
Bookish Nays:
🍄 Personal preference: Some of the content was a bit red-flag for me, especially considering the target age. Like, talking about eating mushrooms from the forest and the resultant "dreaming" – a risky idea to put across in a MG book. Further, Gilly often mentions her future wedding plans with Oggy. I am never a fan of middle-grade books that keep talking of “romance”, though there are kids who might think similarly and might be open to such content.
🍄 The adults in this book are really frustrating. There’s plenty of miscommunication, all in the name of protecting the child. As an adult myself, I found all of them irritating and their reasons, ridiculous.
🍄 The ending left too many things unanswered. The main objective of the book – Gilly’s wish to reunite with her dad – is also not handled satisfactorily. This would have been a great ending for adult literary fiction, but in a children’s book, I expect better closure.
All in all, this indie novel is for those who enjoy the journey without bothering about the destination. It has lovely prose, but with the abundance of random musings, the lack of focus on the actual journey across the forest, and the unexplained plot points, I'm not sure if it would work well for children.
The protagonist Gilly is ten, hence a middle-grader. Amazon pegs this book for ages 13-18. NetGalley tags it for middle-graders and teens. However, the writing style and the plot structure make this a slightly unusual option for younger kids. I think it would be a much better book for older YAs and adult readers who wouldn’t mind reading stories written from a ten-year-old child’s perspective.
Recommended to readers who enjoy poetic writing and care more about the route than the terminus.
3.25 stars. (I would have rated this higher – say about 4 stars – if I looked at the content from an adult reader’s perspective. But I genuinely don’t know if this type of writing works well for children. I hope it does.)
My thanks to Brave Fawn Books for providing the DRC and ALC of “Tangerines” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.
The digital version of this book is currently available on Kindle Unlimited.
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