My One Hundred Adventures is a cross between Jim Lynch's The Highest Tide and Joan Bauer's Hope Was Here. Surprises await in every chapter, making the reader want to quickly turn to the next page. By the same token, Horvath is so in-tune with her 12-year-old protagonist and the daily music of her summer days in a small Massachusetts beach town, that I found I also wanted to stop and read passages over and over again.
Jane is ready for adventure. She has spent all her years with her three younger siblings and her single mom in a wonderfully cozy house by the sea, but she is aching for something more. She's ready to leap into the "know-not-what" this summer. And leap she does with a first time solo ride in a hot-air balloon, a trip to the fair with her possible father, an almost road trip to California with an elderly neighbor, and a new friendship with Nellie, preacher and hopeful healer. Just by summoning a little positive energy and opening her front door, Jane's dreams for 100 adventures begin to come true.
So I've stopped and started this review a couple of times now, and I'm still feeling like I can't quite do this novel justice, but maybe that is the highest compliment a reviewer can pay an author. This is not a cookie cutter novel, and I can't just write a quick review. Early in the novel, Jane is thinking about her desire for adventure and how her siblings are just too young to understand her wants, and notes that she is "twisting all alone." What a wonderful expression, and it's exactly how I feel about this novel. It's there swirling in my head. I want to know more about Jane and this adventurous new life she's leading, yet I believe the ending to be just about perfect the way it is. I'm "twisting" for more, and at the same time I'd be crushed if one word was changed in this mystical, lyrical novel. I guess I'll just have to read this perfect novel again to satisfy my desire for more.
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