In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume

This is a book I received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

When I got this book, I moved it up to the top of my reading list because, well, Judy Blume. I was excited to get started. But once I got into it, I thought maybe it was a YA novel. Until the first sex scene, anyway. The writing seems juvenile, for lack of a better term, and it is choppy, with short sentences and switching POV every few paragraphs. I lost track of how many POV characters there were. Too many to keep straight.

The fictional story revolves around three actual plane crashes that took place in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in just a few months in 1951-52. The many characters are all intertwined somehow, with the main focus being on Miri, a ninth grade Jewish girl who lives with her single mother, her grandmother, and her uncle, who happens to be the newspaper reporter who covers the crashes. One plane narrowly misses Miri’s school before crashing. The book tells how people’s lives are changed by the crashes – not only that of Miri and her family, but also her boyfriend, her friends, their families, their employers, and so on.

The story was compelling enough to keep me reading, and the characters likeable and believable. It’s just the writing style that I didn’t particularly care for.