Poppies for Christmas

Stacy Renée
Keywell
Genre: 
Young Adult

INSPIRATIONAL:  Arty Lenn has a crush on budding high school DJ Dexx and can’t stop drawing pictures of the two of them together.  When she and her friends Kit and Poppy go to a club where Dexx is in action, it’s Poppy he can’t take his eyes off and is determined to win.  Too bad Poppy has an older boyfriend named Declan - a gorgeous international model.  When Declan’s sister, Denver, befriends Dexx and invites him to her house for Christmas, Dexx sees an opportunity to get close to Poppy who will also be there.  Then he meets Declan and begins to realize that, with his disabilities, Declan is not who he had assumed he would be. 

 

One must applaud the author for aiming to demonstrate that people with disabilities can be as successful as those without.  However, unfortunately, the disabilities she has chosen and the abilities and career she has given Declan are completely incompatible in the real world.  Not only is his character unrealistic, but the other main characters are full of inconsistencies and are not very believable, with Declan and Denver’s parents coming across as too good to be true.  Readers may feel that there is not very much to the story and that it is considerably longer than it needs to be.  The writing issues are compounded with Lenn, who is one of the four narrators, disappearing very early in the novel, and there being some typos and incorrect tense usage.  However, teenage readers will hopefully find this story inspirational.

 

Heather Belleguelle