But Wavy’s mom Val is his wife, what time she isn’t lying in filth or stoned out of her mind. She tells Wavy her thoughts on men and food. And passes on her fear of germs. (They will get in you) This is emotionally draining and disturbing. I'm sorry. DNF. I think the audio made it feel all that more real. The writing is good. I almost feel like this book is going to put me into a slump. It truly freaked me out. The relationship between Wavy and Kellen is wrong. I don't care how good of a guy he is. I don't care how screwed up her mother is. Does that mean that I was in a thing with an older guy? Nope, it means I get where this character is coming from. Real life is not the rich guy sweeping in with his red room. This story is more real life. It’s dark. It’s dirty. Life ain’t always pretty. This story is not pretty. The truth is that it is not for everyone. It is the story of Wavy and Kellan, two people with difficult homes and child abuse. Yes, it is a love story, but not in the beginning. Bryn Greenwood: I mostly avoid them. After all, it’s too late to revise the book to please anyone else. Plus, I remind myself that not every book is for everybody. People who don’t like my book, it’s not for them.

The controversy with readers is the relationship. I get that the relationship Wavy chooses seems wrong, but just look at her life: her parents, exposure, and experiences are not what most would consider "normal" and she's not able to enjoy her childhood as it is. Instead, she's having to live like an adult and she experiences adult situations at a very young age. Because she doesn’t have anybody— a nonexistent family and no support from anyone —Kellen becomes her family and they fall in love. There is a whole lot of ugly going on in this novel. It made me feel uncomfortable and squirmy as I read it. But.... An emotionally resonant novel with an unlikely cast of characters you won’t soon forget. Bryn Greenwood’s unique voice and her understanding of human nature offer an amazing tale of family, loss, and love that’s as unpredictable and inspiring as love itself. The author writes what she knows. Her father was a drug dealer who ends up in prison, and as a young girl, she says she dated much older men, starting at age 13. She says she was made to feel ashamed and isolated because of it. She has openly questioned the rights of society to impose a legal age of consent onto children. Is this book her way of dealing with her experiences and framing it as legitimate? I don't know, but if so, she failed with this reader.To sum it all up it was well written, interesting, fast-paced, somewhat disturbing read, with a very satisfying ending. Would highly recommend!! I liked learning things. How numbers worked together to explain the stars. How molecules made the world. All the ugly and wonderful things people had done in the last two thousand years.

Wavy was almost as small as she'd been at thirteen. She was all long legs and narrow in the hips. Her tits were perfect, but not even big enough to fill my mouth, let alone my hands. She hadn't hardly grown at all. Did it make me a pervert that I still thought she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen? Did it make me less of a pervert that twenty and thirteen looked the same on her? This story takes a bold and honest look at forbidden love in its most controversial form: a grown man in his twenties falling for a child. Mr. Arsenikos said if you knew the constellations you would never get lost. You could always find your way home."LOVE......( unfortunately/fortunately) Inappropriate situations. It's the way it is....and the it isn't. There were so many POV’s that shaped this story. We don’t just get Wavy and Kellen, we get many side characters. Normally, I don’t love that in a story but it really worked for the way this was told. Wavy forms an unnatural crush on Kellen. I mean that is bound to happen right? Things just take all kinds of twists and turns from there and I am so glad, so so glad, that after so many years things turn out right. But it was a hard road to get there for many people and some, just didn't make it at all. As she grows up Kellan stays by her side. He is the person she goes to when she can’t get registered for school because neither of her parents can get their act together to make sure she is going. He stands in when she needs someone. He is the one that protects her.

Bryn Greenwood has handed readers a strange - but strangely grabbing - tale." —Harry Levins, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Best of 2016 As a book that seems intent on legitimizing the relationship between Wavy and Kellen and calling it a love story, it gets zero stars. The author missed the opportunity to take this book in an entirely different direction in the end, but did not. She missed an opportunity to advocate for abused children but instead chose to legitimize a sexual relationship between a child and an adult. This book destroyed me. I have never read anything like it. If you know the basic premise - that this is a so-called "love story" between an adult man and a female child - you might be thinking Lolita! But nah, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things is a completely different beast. Okay, then,” Mom cooed. “Do you have some clothes in your bag there, Wavonna? Let’s get you into something dry, okay?” It’s a guarantee, not everyone will be able to get over the things that feel wrong and dirty. At the end of the day, is it really okay that a little girl fell in love with a grown man and absolutely no one did anything to stop it? No way. Never. Not in a million years. I was utterly disgusted, repulsed and even angry about it.Kellen and Wavy’s love from a distance would seem perfect—one we’d all strive to obtain. It’s a deep love; a respectful love; a faithfully sound love; a genuine love that’s complete and equally reciprocated. Problem is that pesky illegal and highly immoral age gap. Good question and good responses. Both were childlike but also acted as adults. They complimented and supported each other helping to heal the abused parts of their lives. - cm28015 Things might have gotten better after that, if it hadn’t been for the other secret between Wavy and me. She liked to sneak out of the house at night, and I went with her. Breezing down the stairs on bare feet, we eased open the kitchen door and walked around the neighborhood. After that, I had to tell everything. About the late night wandering. Not the stars. That was still my secret. Mom screamed and Dad yelled. I learned all this from eavesdropping on Mom's Tuesday night book club. Sometimes they talked about books, but mostly they gossiped. That was where Mom first started polishing The Tragic and Edifying Story of Wavonna Quinn.