Red Ink

November 16, 2015
Belief in “The Story” is all that 15-year-old Melon Fouraki has left after her mother is killed by a London bus. Melon’s best (and only) friend avoids her, she’s miserable at school, and she has no close relatives, so her mother’s boyfriend—whom she barely knows—comes to stay with her. Melon writes down, and irrationally clings to, the story she has often heard about her mother’s past, but through revealing chapters that flash forward and backward from the day of the accident, debut author Mayhew skillfully hints at the truths Melon can’t yet accept. Melon’s anger, guilt, and denial about her mother’s death and their relationship while she was alive cause Melon to take her feelings out on everyone around her. She is a prickly and fairly unreliable narrator, but Mayhew provides sufficient backstory to sympathetically illuminate Melon’s anguish. The dramatic and painful final events on a trip to her mother’s homeland of Crete emphasize the significant mourning and healing Melon still has to do. Mayhew’s poetic language and careful handling of a sensitive subject highlight a promising knack for storytelling. Ages 14–up.

January 1, 2016

Gr 10 Up-A tale of loss-of a parent, an identity, and innocence. At 15, Melon Fouraki must come to terms with a reality more bizarre than her name. Melon knows "the story" that she has been told about her mother's immigration to London from a small town in Greece, but she doesn't know the truth. When her mother is killed in a freak bus accident, Melon must cope not only with her grief but with the precariousness of her living situation. The ever-changing sequence of events that seems incongruous with the current family relationships is an elegant way of examining the way humans craft their pasts for themselves and their progeny. Mayhew's decision to tell the story from Melon's perspective, while sharing the girl's mother's tale from the point of view of a very articulate narrator, creates an element of complexity, adds an aura of magic, and provides readers with a foreshadowing of the harsher reality that is to come. As Melon unravels the truth of her story, she also begins to examine some of her own self-destructive decisions that, in the clarity of hindsight, make her far more like her mother than she expected. VERDICT This is a multilayered novel that will require readers to invest heavily in a character who is sympathetic but not always very likable. Fans of Kate Christensen's Blue Plate Special (Doubleday, 2013) and Amy Kathleen Ryan's Zen and Xander Undone (HMH, 2010) will appreciate this title for mature teens.-Jodeana Kruse, R.A. Long High School, Longview, WA

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2015
In her debut novel, Mayhew deftly explores the ways the sudden death of 15-year-old Melon's mother affects their family's oral history. The book's nonlinear structure makes each section a moment in time that reveals a different piece of the puzzle. The chapter titles orient readers by indicating when the scene takes place in relation to Maria's death. Interspersed between the chapters is "The Story"--Melon's written account of the family history her mother told her again and again. The simple prose exposes the difficult realities of many teenagers in modern-day London. Melon is an explosive character. The social workers, her friends, and even the bullies at school tiptoe around her grief, which exacerbates her abrasive personality. Melon grapples with anger and guilt as she tries to understand her late mother. Her explicit and unfiltered language reflects both her frank temperament and the sensitive subjects in the narrative. The sexual objectification of the mother's black boyfriend is an unfortunate throughline that mars the book. Despite writing Paul as a full and nuanced character, the author does not adequately address the racist underpinnings of the repeated discussions of his body. A taut portrayal of grief, pain, and the ties that bind families, to be read with a careful, critical eye. (Fiction. 15 & up)

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February 1, 2016
Grades 9-12 Melon got many things from her mother, Maria: Greek heritage, an oft-told family fairy tale, and a ridiculous name. Maria claims that the name is a reminder of her happy childhood on a melon farm in Crete, but Melon, who, like many 15-year-olds, is stuck in the phase of hating her mom, just sees it as another thing that makes her different. But everything upends when Maria is killed by a London bus, leaving Melon, who has never known her father, alone and questioning everything she thought she knew about her mother's past. This debut novel about loss, family, and the way stories change in the telling is a rich portrait of grief and recovery. Melon tells her own story interspersed with her mother's in fractured, chaotic vignettes that circle the day of the accident: 17 days since, 3 days since, 6 years before. As a narrator, she is harsh and abrasive but always sympathetic. Gritty and sad as this may be, it certainly rings true.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2017
When her mother dies suddenly, Melon finds herself alone and angry. The central narrative of her complex grieving process unfolds alongside "The Story" of her mother's past (presented in dreamy interspersed chapters) and Melon's more recent memories of their life together. Despite choppy, sometimes confusing pacing, this ambitious debut poignantly explores grief, memory, family myth, and teen angst.

(Copyright 2017 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)