Review - Saving Cicadas

"Saving Cicadas picks you up in once place and puts you down in someplace else entirely."   I honestly have to say I agree with this statement.  Please note that  I also do not necessarily think this is a good thing.  First and foremost, however, I have to applaud Nicole Seitz for taking on subject matter that is most often ignored.  As a woman who struggled with infertility and lost a child, I am probably more sensitive to the subject of abortion than others.  Nicole Seitz chooses to take this subject and tackle it head on.  She does not shy away from expressing her complete distaste for this practice in the novel.  That being said, she also does not spend the entire novel condemning her own character for making the decision once and considering the decision a second time. Seitz gives great insight into the struggle to make a decision as weighty as that one and also the grief and guilt that can come from choosing to abort a child as opposed to having him/her.

From the opposite side,  the issue I have with Saving Cicadas is in the execution.  The transition from chapter to chapter was choppy and a bit confusing at times.  Also, Seitz  has a tendency in this novel to set up the end of a chapter with a climactic lead into the next, with the delivery of the climax falling flat. Once could have been overlooked, but she chose to do this multiple times throughout the novel.  In addition, 8 1/2 year old Janie Doe Macy is wise beyond her years. The narrative in most of the chapters is intended to come from her point of view.  As it was written, I had to keep checking to see if it the chapter was in Janie's point or Mona's, as there was no real differentiation between the voice of the two characters.  If the majority of the story was to come from the eyes of a child, this mark between the viewpoints should have been more defined.

In the end, I land on the fencepost in my opinion of Saving Cicadas. The first two parts are slow and were a struggle to complete, with the third part almost making up for it.  Notice the almost.  I usually recommend a book based on the likelihood that I will read it again.  With only one third of the novel keeping my interest, it is not very likely that I would choose to read this a second time.  The ending was fantastic but getting there was not half the fun.

This book was provided free of charge by the publisher as a review copy. The publisher had no editorial rights or claims over the content or the conclusions made in this review. Visit www.thomasnelson.com for more information on this book.