Review : On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

Summary (from Goodreads) 

Title : On the Jellicoe Road
Author : Melina Marchetta
Publication Date : August 28th 2008
Publisher : Harper Teen
Goodreads - Amazon - Barnes & Noble 

I'm dreaming of the boy in the tree. I tell him stories. About the Jellicoe School and the Townies and the Cadets from a school in Sydney. I tell him about the war between us for territory. And I tell him about Hannah, who lives in the unfinished house by the river. Hannah, who is too young to be hiding away from the world. Hannah, who found me on the Jellicoe Road six years ago.

Taylor is leader of the boarders at the Jellicoe School. She has to keep the upper hand in the territory wars and deal with Jonah Griggs - the enigmatic leader of the cadets, and someone she thought she would never see again.

And now Hannah, the person Taylor had come to rely on, has disappeared. Taylor's only clue is a manuscript about five kids who lived in Jellicoe eighteen years ago. She needs to find out more, but this means confronting her own story, making sense of her strange, recurring dream, and finding her mother - who abandoned her on the Jellicoe Road.

Personal Thoughts

I've avoided reading On the Jellicoe Road because it's one of those books everyone just seems to love. Hype as big as that worries me because I have a tendency to build up my expectations to an overly high level and then wind up being crushed beyond belief when I don't want to rave about the book as much as everyone. It's happened to me a couple of times, but I'm stubborn and refuse to listen to my instincts that I'm probably not going to love the book as everyone else. With On the Jellicoe Road though, I'm actually pleased that I went against my instincts.

Initially, I found myself struggling with On the Jellicoe Road. I was lost, confused and felt like I was reading a book written in a foreign language. I whined about it on Twitter and I was told by several awesome readers not to give up and that the book became clearer as the story progressed and indeed it did! Now, if it had been any other book, I probably would have closed it, but I went with it. In the end, I thought On the Jellicoe Road was a beautiful book that touched me and kept me thinking about the story within the pages for days after I had read the final pages. Melina Marchetta is undoubtedly talented in every respect of writing, but from what I gathered while reading this book was that she is extraordinary at character development. Every single character left an emotional imprint on me and I honestly want to know how Marchetta did it. What I mostly loved about these characters was how none of them were really perfect. They had their strengths and they had their flaws. Ultimately, this made them so realistic to me (and many other readers), making it effortless to feel for the beautiful, complex characters. Taylor, the main character, really stood out for me. She's like every other teenager, but she possessed this silent strength and vulnerability to her that made me want to look at her with pride and at the same time, just give the girl a hug for every thing she's gone through. And Jonah Griggs? My Goodness. Never have I wanted to slap a boy and then a page later wanted to swoon over a book boyfriend. Jonah Griggs, with all his imperfections, stole my heart and ran away with it!

Speaking of Jonah Griggs, his romance with Taylor was what I would call slow-burn. It develops from this antagonistic relationship because of their shared history and blooms into respect, friendship and eventually romance at a slow pace allowing you to absorb all these feelings that come along with the characters' ones. It's beautiful, touching and gave me butterflies. The plot of On the Jellicoe Road is hard to explain. You truly need to read the book to experience the beauty and magic of it because my talking about it here will do it no justice at all. I will tell you though that I was slightly more invested in the past story involving Taylor's mother and her friends' story, told in flashbacks at the beginning of each chapter, than Taylor's actual story. I found myself devouring the book to unravel the past story line because I dying to know what had happened to them. It was beautiful, painful and made me want to sob like a baby. I'm sure a lot of you already know just how powerful Melina Marchetta's writing is, but I'm going to tell you again anyways. It's simple, intense and managed to evoke so much emotion from me despite that rough start. This was my first book by this talented author and it's definitely not going to be my last.

If you, like me, have yet to read this book, then I'm seriously telling you that you're missing out on some master-piece of a book that needs to be read and loved by everyone. It's poignant, emotional and breath-taking, not an experience you want to skip.

Rating
Cover : 3/5
Plot : 4/5
Characters : 5/5
Writing : 5/5