Citrus County - John Brandon - 5*

Citrus County

John Brandon

*****

No Spoilers.

There shouldn’t be a Citrus County. Teenage romance should be difficult, but not this difficult. Boys like Toby should cause trouble but not this much. The moon should glow gently over children safe in their beds. Uncles in their rockers should be kind. Teachers should guide and inspire. Manatees should laze and palm trees sway and snakes keep to their shady spots under the azalea thickets. The air shouldn’t smell like a swamp. The stars should twinkle. Shelby should be her own hero, the first hero of Citrus County. She should rescue her sister from underground, rescue Toby from his life. Her destiny should be a hero’s destiny.

Citrus County is set in the sun-kissed state of Florida; a small town that is racked by a young girl’s disappearance. It follows the two main protagonists as well as their teacher, intertwining them all in a beautiful yet miserable mystery. All three of the characters, Toby, Shelby and Mr Hibma are beautifully scarred, they are haunted by a misery that depicts them, they each have their own way of dealing with their inner turmoil, their hatred. And it comes out all the same in the end.

The romance is succinct. The prose is beautiful, the setting makes me want to peel an orange just so I can smell the citrus sweetness. It would still leave a bittersweet taste in my mouth after reading this.

Toby is troubled, so troubled that he does something to hurt someone, to make them suffer. His realisations hit him and slowly the budding relationship between him and goody-goody Shelby reaches a bittersweet kiss on the cheek.

Shelby on the surface is fine and dandy; smart and sensible. Within her is a dark little hole that is slowly getting bigger and bigger, startling her and others around her. It is only fair for her to slip into the shadows and meet Toby.

Mr Hibma was my favourite character. Twenty-nine, a teacher, who has had an inheritance. He sits at his desk, fingers aching to reach for an imaginary flask of alcohol. His mindset is delightfully dark, slightly twisted and he means so well sometimes I just want to stroke the page and tell him it will work out in the end -- in fact I wanted to do that to all the characters.

This story was so real, it tugged at me, inside little regions are pinging, my skin is goosepimpling. This book was beautifully haunting. It deals with such a touchy subject of child kidnapping and you never get tired of turning a page. The prose is beautiful, poetic and enthralling. John Brandon has a way with words that an author could just spit with envy for. Even Toby’s Uncle Neal had me reaching into the depths of me and holding onto his words, they were so deep, so cutting.

Notably one of my favourite, one of the most memorable portions of the book comes from Uncle Neal:

'The steam can’t hurt you,’ said Uncle Neal. ‘Might make you happy. I used to look forward to breaking it, but I guess I built a tolerance. I built a tolerance to most thing that might make me happy.’

‘The hemlock is to remind me of the choice I have to keep living or to stop. If I choose to keep living, I have nobody to blame but myelf. Anything that happens to me, I signed up for it.’ 

Raw, poignant, haunting with just the right little amount of bittersweet taste.