Rating: 2 stars
Who's ready for a rant fest???
You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone is about two sisters whose mom has Huntington's disease, a dominantly genetic disorder that has a 50% chance of being passed onto them. After getting tested for the disease, Adina and Tovah find out that one of them is positive and one of them is negative for the disease. The girls have never been particularly close, but now one of them will need the support of the other, and it's supposed to bring them closer than they've ever been. Okay, so that's the given description. Now let's talk about what actually happened.
This book was infuriating. For one thing, I couldn't tell if this was intentional or not, but the protagonists are both insufferable. Adina is clearly much worse than Tovah, but there were lots of moments that I was just shocked at their horribleness, both of them. This is a great book for you if you like main characters who:
- Can't take no for an answer, both relating to sexual advances (Adina) and presumptuousness of their own greatness (Tovah)
- Shame little kids for their genuine interests by telling them they'd make them "ordinary" (Adina)
- Vocalize their envy people of with cancer, because "cancer can be cured" while HD is incurable (Tovah)
- Relish in their friend's misfortunes because it feeds their possessiveness, and then claim that that same friend was "a shitty friend" the whole year (Tovah)
- Use sexual manipulation to feel powerful over others (Adina)
- Make petty, low-blow threats because they don't get their way (God forbid, someone told them NO.) (Adina)
- Wallow in melodrama. Ex.: "A broken instrument for a broken girl." (Adina)
- LITERALLY ARE CREEPY OBSESSIVE STALKERS OF SOMEONE WHO HAS EXPRESSIVELY SHOWN DISINTEREST and then get mad when they find out "he was only screwing me out of pity" (Adina)
- Use someone's empathy/sympathy to get attention and affection (Adina)
- Are completely delusional about romantic endeavors - like expecting someone to cuddle up next to you after you have completely violated the bounds of acceptable human behavior, AND THEN invited yourself to stay over (Adina)
- Do terrible, petty things to their sister because ???????? (Adina)
- Assume that their boyfriend (who is a virgin) "doesn't want me" because he wants to take it slow, and then get pissy and not talk to him for weeks (Tovah)
- Get over all of the aforementioned character flaws and become the perfect character within like, two weeks
Those are a few of the incredibly irritating things you will have to pull yourself through while reading this book. Maybe it was intentional, but it did not work for me at all. If you can't tell, I really hate the romanticization of Adina sexually harassing Arjun. I just kept thinking that if these roles were reversed, people would be so much more mad about this book. It's like sexual harassment doesn't exist when it's a woman making the unwanted advances. My mind was just screaming NOOOOOOO at all of Adina's delusions and pressuring and incessant stupidity.
THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH CONTAINS SPOILERS. Please skip down to the next paragraph if you don't want to learn any spoilers.
I want to talk a little more about Adina's scheme also. This just didn't make sense to me. She's mad at Tovah, for I guess not inheriting the same death gene that she did. Which honestly, I can understand the resentment there. So Adina decides she wants to get revenge on Tovah by making her life actual hell. As in, destroying her most cherished items, rubbing her failures in her face, bragging about her relationship with their mom who Tovah isn't as close with. This alone is a little too far for getting revenge about something that can't be controlled. But then Adina is justifying it by saying that if Tovah hates her it will be a good thing because she won't be so devastated when Adina dies??? Like, is she doing this whole revenge thing for revenge or for mercy on her sister? It's never clearly explained, but Adina sure does keep at it.
END OF SPOILERS
Another thing I didn't appreciate was the resolution of Adina and Tovah's relationship. It was shoved into one conversation at the end of the book. Overall, the book is 50% the girls dealing with things unrelated to their sisterly relationship (boys, friends, colleges, school, more boys), 45% of them being horrible to each other, 4% talking about HD, and 1% of the girls actually being civil. I thought this book was supposed to be about how HD, and the knowledge that one of them would eventually have it, brought two sisters, who weren't close, together? This is a TRAIN WRECK. The relationship is hardly resolved at all. But don't worry, we get to see them resolve their relationships with their boyfriends, parents, and anyone else in the story. I just wasn't satisfied with the ending. I have sisters, and the way that everything just turned out okay, after they were SO HORRIBLE to each other, did not check out. On that same note, Adina's major character flaws (previously mentioned) are magically resolved as well. Adina realizes how horrible and inappropriate her behavior with Arjun was and suddenly she's a new person who wants to find someone who loves her for her and not for her body and... yeah this ending and Adina in general are just awful awful awful.
I give this book two stars because I did still keep reading. I was so irritated that I wasn't ever really bored so I guess that's something. I also appreciate the diversity, even if it was a little bit overexplained in the beginning. We don't see a lot of traditional Jewish main characters so it was cool to have two, especially because their approaches to their religion were so different.
I have read it whole :)
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