Review : In Honor

Posted by Kay on July 20, 2012 3:41 am in 3 stars reads | 3 comments

In Honor by Jessi Kirby
Pages : 235
Genre : YA, Contemporary fiction
Stand Alone
My Rating : 3/5

Sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint precisely why a book did or didn’t work. In appearance, In Honor should have been a winner for me; I recently read and loved the author’s previous novel, Moonglass, which also was a character-centered story about grief. I love road trips, and bad boys with a great heart, and I love romances from time to time. Yet despite all of its amazing parts, In Honor never completely came together to form a compelling story I could relate too.

What it’s about :

It’s only been hours since she buried her brother, and already Honor is ready to hit the road. Not without a good reason; his last letter before he was killed in Iraq had a special gift she just couldn’t have refused, especially now that he is gone. With her favorite boots on and her brother’s old impala, Honor is ready to road-trip from Texas to California.

What Honor hadn’t counted on is the presence of Rusty, her brother’s old best friends. Gorgeous, yes, but most importantly drunk and arrogant. What follows is a trip full of surprises, grief and revelations.

Having thought about it, I realized the problem was mostly in the novel’s predictability. The big revelations promised by the book’s jacket were easy to predict, as were the car troubles and the longing feelings Honor had for Rusty. Who was, sadly, a very two-dimensional character, in the “bad boy with a great heart” category. I wanted to warm up to him more than I did, and it took too long before I finally did.

I liked Honor. Her quest to see her favorite singer’s last concert was a nice idea. I didn’t feel for her as I did for Anna in Moonglass, but I think this is in part because her grief is too recent; she clearly hasn’t processed the whole thing yet (she mentions many times that nothing has felt real since she heard about her brother’s death), which created some sort of distance. Her brother certainly is on her thoughts a lot though, and he is like an invisible character we never really get to know.

A favorite part of the novel was early in the trip, when Honor and Rusty make friends with other campers and Honor decides to give cenote-scuba-diving a try. A cenote is basically a sinkhole or a natural pit filled with water; the surface of exposed water is small, but you can dive and explore underground caves. (Wiki article for more info here.) I tried searching the internet for the exact spot in Texas where Honor dives, without luck; however, I did find many pictures of a cenote in Mexico (credit where credit is due, this visual trip is offered to you by TripAdvisor! ) :

This photo of Alux Diver – cenote dive -cavern and cave diving is courtesy of TripAdvisor

This photo of Alux Diver – cenote dive -cavern and cave diving is courtesy of TripAdvisor

This photo of Alux Diver – cenote dive -cavern and cave diving is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Gorgeous, right? The colors, the light! Simply breathtaking! I’m kind of panicky about closed spaces and caves, but I so wish I get the chance to explore something similar to this one day. Honestly, I could have spent the whole book in this underwater cave with Honor and it would have been perfect for me!

So, all in all, not a bad novel. It could have used some more originality and some less stereotypes (something I felt Moonglass had achieved). I have no doubt though that many readers will enjoy this one; some will totally fall in love with Rusty, others will be charmed by the slightly country tone of the story and the hot summer scenes, and many will certainly relate to Honor’s loss. While it won’t make the top of my “must read list”, In Honor is a quick read I had fun discovering, and I’m looking forward to whatever else Jessi Kirby writes next.