Delacorte Press
March 8, 2016
272 pages
add to Goodreads/buy from Book Depository/or Amazon
What if you discovered that Kurt Cobain is not only alive, but might be your real father?
Nico Cavan has been adrift since her mother vanished when she was four—maternal abandonment isn't exactly something you can just get over. Staying invisible at school is how she copes—that and listening to alt music and summoning spirits on the Ouija board with her best friend and co-conspirator in sarcasm, Obe. But when a chance discovery opens a window onto her mom's wild past, it sparks an idea in her brain that takes hold and won't let go.
On a ferry departing Seattle, Nico encounters a slight blond guy with piercing blue eyes wearing a hooded jacket. Something in her heart tells her that this feeling she has might actually be the truth, so she follows him to a remote cabin in the Pacific Northwest. When she is stranded there by a winter storm, fear and darkness collide, and the only one who can save Nico might just be herself.
Save Me, Kurt Cobain does a fantastic job making the reader feel sad for, about and with main character Nico Cavan. From the way her mother disappeared when she was four to her relationship with her father, Verne, her lack of friends, all the way to her eventual conclusion that the man she sees is Kurt Cobain - and he's her father.
Even if you can't always understand Nico's conclusions or how, exactly, she reaches them, they still do make a strange kind of sense. While still seeming pretty far-fetched if not downright absurd.
The book's first person narration does really bring you into Nico's mind, who she is, what she's experiencing and thinking. In the beginning, it was difficult to really get pulled into her story because it seemed to jump around. Not just in time, but she would talk about one subject, switch to another for a paragraph or more and then be back on the first thing. That did seem to improve as the book progressed.
The first person narration also made it hard, if not impossible, to get an objective idea of how Nico's thinking should be seen. It was hard to know if you should be as worried about her, her decisions and mental state as you were. If it was supposed to be an 'okay' (or relatively so) mindset that just wasn't clicking with me or a troubled, sad, possibly unstable cast or characters and decisions.
The ending wrapped things up a bit quickly for me and I am still wondering just how I feel about Nico and Save Me, Kurt Cobain. The author absolutely came up with a unique character and storyline and really makes you feel for (or with) the character.
review copy received, thanks to publisher, from NetGalley
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