Speak No Evil

July 1, 2019
A mute teenager needs to find her voice in order to testify in her own self-defense. At age 15, Melody is arrested for stabbing Asheville, North Carolina, high school sports sensation Troy Alexander. Melody, who's in foster care, hasn't spoken in two years and is court-ordered to attend daily sessions with a therapist. Melody eventually begins to respond through music. In alternating chapters that switch between third- and first-person, Melody tells stories from her past, starting with hunting rattlesnakes with her Cherokee father for her mother's family to handle in church. After Mama dies from a snakebite, Daddy disappears. Melody ends up with a foster family where she's repeatedly raped. At 14 she has semiconsensual sex with a boy who publicly humiliates her, and then, already mute, she's raped again. While Melody endures horrific ordeals, shedding light on the plight of vulnerable young people, the nature of the writing does a disservice to this serious topic. The language used to describe the sexual assaults is likely to be severely triggering to sexual assault survivors. The jumbled timeline requires extraordinary patience from the reader, and the characterization mostly tells, not shows, rendering characters two-dimensional and making the ending overly pat. The musical verses don't convey the strong emotion they're clearly intended to, and elements of mountain folklore and magical realism feel misplaced. The book defaults to white, although Melody's mother and uncle are half-white and half-black, and colorism pervades the story. The Cherokee characters invoke stereotypes around Native mysticism. Not recommended. (Fiction. 14-18)

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July 19, 2019

Gr 9 Up-Melody Fisher, a nonverbal 16-year-old, has stabbed a popular football player with a scissors. As she gets to know and slowly trust her court-appointed psychiatrist, she starts telling him her story the only way she can, through the songs on her mp3 player. In nonlinear bursts, readers learn about Melody's past. Born to two loving parents who are active in a snake-handling church in Appalachia, Melody has both a healthy fear and a mystical connection to the poisonous reptiles that seem to be all around her. When her parents die, she is bounced around the foster system for years-spending significant time in both secure, loving households and abusive and traumatizing ones. The plot hits quite a few lulls, although the time-jumping creates some suspense and intrigue. Melody's story is grim, but hope is weaved in throughout. Song lyrics are integrated heavily into the narrative, with varied effect. VERDICT Purchase where highly emotional stories are in demand.-Beth McIntyre, Madison Public Library, WI

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