Review of The Snow Ball Effect by Holly Nicole Hoxter

The Snowball Effect by Holly Nicole Hoxter, is an interesting novel. I was gifted this book way back at my birthday and it took me a month to get to it, and a month of slow reading to finish it. It’s not that long a novel, just the last couple of months got extraordinarily busy for me.

The novel follows the life of Lainey St James, a 17 year girl who recently lost her Mother, who had committed suicide, yeah I know charming premises but hang in there. Up to now, and the mostly through the first part of the book her life is, as she views it, totally perfect. She never felt close to her Mother and feels nothing over her dying. Then slowly everything starts to fall apart.

Now the way that Holly does this is very interesting, at the beginning I really disliked Lainey, a 17 year old coming off as 40, and seemed to be channeling Juno. Everything she had was all so together, even the boyfriend Riley was too perfect. Then her Sister comes along to become the Guardian of Collin the adopted ADD baby, then bit by bit Lainey loses control of her life, as she finds out she is more like her mother than she realized. The tipping point is when she meets the Slurpie Guy Eric, and starts to learn there is much more to life.

The story is charming, with lots of humor injected into it. This is a story about ordinary people getting on by and living while life stuff happens to them, about taking small chances and the changes it can make to you as a person. It deals nicely with all the stages of grieving, and wraps up with Lainey going through a life changing journey.

On the way she breaks up with Riley, dates Eric, has an alcohol fueled melt down, gets into an ice cream fight, goes on a surprise vacation to Florida, comes back again, finally grieves for her mother, learns some life lessons, becomes a little wiser and puts her life back together again.

While this isn’t really a book I would pick up, I am after all more of a Discworld irrelevant fantasy type person, it does make an engaging read and a fine dialog novel. I can actually seeing this being an indie movie just be the way it plays out – although Juno Lainey at the beginning would get to me a little bit. This is a gentle, fun, loving story about life and the people that are in it with you. Go pick it for your wife, girl, your daughter, or maybe even for yourself, it is good read.

4 thumbs up out of 5

The Snowball Effect by Holly Nicole Hoxter is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble in traditional book and ebook formats