![\"100](\"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/100-Sideways-Miles.jpg\")
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Ever the sucker for a cool book cover, it only took me one glance at this book\u00a0to decide I “had” to read it.\u00a0 The fact that I loved Winger<\/a>, also by Andrew Smith, certainly didn’t hurt. \u00a0I have to admit, though, that I had a hard time getting into this story.\u00a0\u00a0I felt myself getting\u00a0lost in the beginning.\u00a0 It reminded me of how I felt when I read The Marbury Lens<\/a> — which makes a lot of sense, since\u00a0Andrew Smith also wrote that book. \u00a0In the beginning, there were a few moments where I thought, “Wait! \u00a0Was that supposed to be the “real” Finn or the character (also named Finn) from his dad’s book?”\u00a0 In hindsight, I guess it may have been written like that on purpose, since Finn often felt trapped in his father’s story, but it made me feel a little crazy not to know what was going on!\u00a0 Fortunately, things got less confusing and everything fell (more or less) into place by the end of the story.<\/p>\n When Finn was a young boy, a dead horse on its way to a rendering factory tumbled out of a truck and fell “100 sideways miles” off a bridge to land on Finn and his mother.\u00a0 (Finn frequently cited distances as a means for measuring time.)\u00a0 The impact killed his mother, but Finn survived — with a broken back and a traumatic brain injury that caused him to have seizures.\u00a0 Inspired by the strange scar on Finn’s back (a vertical line with two dots on either side \u00a0 :|:\u00a0 \u00a0), his father wrote a best-selling novel about aliens\/angels who came to earth and cut off their wings to blend in with the humans.\u00a0 Because the main character of the book was also named Finn, had heterochromatic eyes, and suffered from seizures, Finn sometimes wondered whether he might actually be a product of his father’s book rather than the inspiration. \u00a0I liked how Smith wove together typical teen insecurities and coming of age angst with the very outlandish circumstances of Finn’s life. \u00a0And I especially appreciated that the crazy immaturity of Finn’s best friend, Cade, was balanced out by the sweet sincerity of the new girl, Julia. \u00a0Their motley crew reminded me of some of the groupings of friends I’ve had through the years… \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ever the sucker for a cool book cover, it only took me one glance at this book\u00a0to decide I “had” to read it.\u00a0 The fact that I loved Winger, also by Andrew Smith, certainly didn’t hurt. \u00a0I have to admit, though, that I had a hard time getting into this story.\u00a0\u00a0I felt myself getting\u00a0lost in … Continue reading 100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6,8,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-books-for-young-adults","category-fiction","category-reviewed-by-chrissie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}