There's one thing I have to say about Martha Brockenbrough's YA novel DEVINE INTERVENTION before anything else:
Great voice!
Seriously, I don't know how she found Jerome's voice but it is golden. Jerome, a bit of a screw-up with attitude, gets shot in the head with his cousin's arrow and finds himself in soul rehab, where he's assigned as guardian angel to Heidi Devine, a girl with confidence issues. Of course, he immediately "loses" his guardian angel handbook and does as he pleases.
On her website, Ms. Brockenbrough calls herself an author of books for smart kids and juvenile adults, which couldn't be more on mark. This book is clever, hilarious, honest and insightful for almost any age.
Can I, or may I, say again how great the voice is? Because I have to. The story is told in two POVs--Jerome in first person and Heidi in third.
At the end of the first chapter when Jerome reflects on his failed school assignment in 8th grade to take care of an egg all week as if it were a baby, we discover he has some pretty complex layers: "At school the next day, I didn't tell Mrs. Domino it was my pop who ate my egg baby. Even with how things were at home, I have a rule about not ratting because I don't do that to family, no matter what. So I told her I did it, and that it tasted excellent. Because if you're going to get in trouble anyway, you might as well go out in a blaze of glory. That has always been my style. Which explains a lot about the thing that happened later with Heidi."
Life is messy and complicated and this story doesn't pretend it isn't. This is no angel saves the day tale. It is full of misunderstandings and mistakes made by Jerome and Heidi, but they both see the world and other people differently by the end, and, in one way or another, save themselves. And, speaking of the end, this one is a shocker.
