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Holly Nicole Hoxter was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. Like her character Lainey, she was named after a soap opera heroine. After receiving her BA in English from the University of Maryland, she went on to work as a bookseller, relay operator for the deaf, housecleaner, legal word processor, and dog walker. She currently masquerades as a medical transcriber and begrudgingly still resides in Baltimore with her three adorable cats. The Snowball Effect is her debut novel.
The Snowball Effect
eBook
$3.99
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ISBN-13:
9780061992056
- Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
- Publication date: 03/23/2010
- Sold by: HARPERCOLLINS
- Format: eBook
- Pages: 368
- File size: 363 KB
- Age Range: 13 Years
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Lainey Pike can tell you everything you need to know about the people in her family just by letting you know how they died. Her reckless stepfather drove his motorcycle off the highway and caused the biggest traffic jam in years. Her long-suffering grandmother lived through cancer and a heart attack before finally succumbing to a stroke. And Lainey's mother—well, Lainey's mother hanged herself in the basement just days after Lainey's high school graduation.
Now Lainey's five-year-old brother is an orphan and her estranged older sister is moving back home to be his guardian. Meanwhile, Lainey's boyfriend is thinking about having a family of their own, and her best friends are always asking the wrong sorts of questions and giving advice Lainey doesn't want to hear. As she tries to pull away from everything familiar, Lainey meets an intriguing new guy who, through a series of Slurpees, burgers, and snowballs, helps her to make peace with a parent she never understood.
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Publishers Weekly
Lainey has just graduated from high school when she finds out that her mother has committed suicide. Her older stepsister, Vallery, is a virtual stranger when she shows up to take custody of Lainey's five-year-old adopted brother, Collin, who has behavioral problems. Lainey's long-term boyfriend, Riley, tries to support her, but her repressed anger leads her to break up with him on her 18th birthday so she can pursue a relationship with a 21-year-old she meets on a late-night run to 7-Eleven. Lainey and Vallery settle into raising Collin together as Lainey begins to work out her feelings about her mother, Riley, and her father, who wants to be there for her. The story could have easily lapsed into melodrama (Lainey's stepfather and grandmother have also recently died), but debut novelist Hoxter gives a masterful portrayal of the effects of grief. The blue-collar setting is impeccably realized, from Lainey's busted Grand Am to her job at a mall kiosk, adding up to a portrait of a complex and relatable main character whose growth feels authentic and earned. Ages 12-up. (Apr.)Children's Literature - Paula McMillen
Newly graduated Lainey was named after a soap opera character and also maybe after her beloved grandmother Elaine who recently died of a stroke. Her life certainly resembles a soap opera. She has an older sister, Vallery, from her mom's first husband who she has only known for one summer. Her own father was gone by the time she was two and has remained significantly absent. Her mom has had a series of boyfriends, all of whom she insisted be called Daddy ____ by Lainey. Her mom finally marries again to a man who does not work and they adopt young Colin, who seems to function at the higher end of the Autism Spectrum continuum. Things were actually looking up, with Lainey's mom starting to act semi-normal and even leading life coaching groups to support the family. But then her newest "dad," Carl, dies when his motorcycle crashes and her mom goes off the deep end and kills herself. Unbeknownst to Lainey, her mother has made Vallery Colin's legal guardian and this stranger of a half-sister has now shown up to manage their lives. It is fortunate that Lainey has a best friend, Kara, and a steady and caring boyfriend, Riley. But none of that is enough to keep Lainey from undergoing her own quiet crisis and nearly wrecking all her significant relationships in the process. A major concern about this book is that it is too long and readers may give up before becoming attached to the story or protagonist. Lainey is credibly constructed and her dilemmas totally believable, but she aggravates the reader as much as her friends and family for the first two hundred pages. The resolution of her story though is ultimately worth the price of the trip. There is certainly a lot of food for thought and discussion around friendships, making good choices, and dealing with loss. Reviewer: Paula McMillen, Ph.D.School Library Journal
Gr 9 Up—Having lost her father to divorce and her grandmother to death, when 17-year-old Lainey loses her mother to suicide it's not a big deal. Really. But now her stable long-term boyfriend seems too perfect. And there's the unexpected arrival of her long-lost half-sister taking her mom's place as head-of-house and guardian to their troubled five-year-old brother. And then there's the question of money, always an issue in their blue-collar lives, but especially important in this summer following her high school graduation. Each thing adds a grimy layer to the growing "snowball" inside her. Lainey's measured voice narrates unemotionally, only occasionally changing tones to allow a peek at the true struggle to find herself beneath the surface. Overall, the mood of this novel is bleak: the palpable feel of this mall-oriented, dull Baltimorean suburb combines with Lainey's bland negativity to create a long slog. Also pervasive is the feeling that the supportive characters, who are well drawn but somehow not very realistic, lack adequate motivation for their actions.—Rhona Campbell, Washington, DC Public Library