The Healing Time of Hickeys

Nikki Tate-Stratton writes children’s picture books and novels for
preteens. Her most recent novels are Jo’s Triumph, Raven’s Revenge,
and Tarragon Island. Her latest picture book is Grandparents’ Day.

Karen Rivers’s contribution to the oddball humour/teen-confessional
genre is almost fabulous but suffers from an imbalance between plot and
pacing (mediocre) and navel-gazing (excessive). Granted, the main
character, Haley, is a compulsive navel-gazer, but the promise of a
clever cast of characters and an intriguing premise is never fully
realized. Rivers lingers a little too long on the minutiae of Haley’s
life without allowing her neurotic character to fully develop and change
in subtle and complex ways, even when presented with wonderful
opportunities to do so.

The format of the novel is, ostensibly, Haley’s diary, most often
typed on her ever-present laptop computer. Immediately, problems
inherent in this format arise when Haley’s writing is too smooth and
professional for a teenager whose reactions to life often seem flippant
and shallow. The length of some of the entries stretches credulity, and
the coherence of some of the writing when the narrator is more dead than
alive in the hospital is suspect. It would have been easier on the
reader to have interspersed short diary entries with first-person
narrative passages. As it is, there are long stretches of monotone,
which, while excellent in terms of consistency of voice, are wearing to
read.

During the course of the novel, which covers the time period of the
fall term of Haley’s last year in high school, Haley falls in love,
meets her mother (who has been conspicuously absent for most of her
childhood), contracts chicken pox, nearly dies of meningitis, and
suffers the agonies of worrying that she will wind up in foster care
after her drug-dealing father is tossed into jail. There are also
various not-so-plausible friend-related traumas (for example, Jules, her
sort-of best friend, dates the school drama teacher for a
while—revenge for Jules’s mother’s dalliance with one of the
teenager’s boyfriends). Haley’s fretful tone doesn’t change much
whether she is worried about an upcoming meeting with her mother (who
turns out to be a nun) or how long she will have to wear turtlenecks in
order to conceal her hickeys.

Despite the novel’s shortcomings, there are numerous laugh-out-loud
moments, and Rivers does a great job of capturing the nuances of
dialogue and behaviour of teenage girls. Haley is delightfully neurotic
and makes a fabulous hypochondriac, constantly referring to online
medical information sites to see what disease might kill her off next.

Readers will find this a light, entertaining read with a quirky main
character facing both mundane and extraordinary challenges with an
appealing brand of self-deprecating humour. Many readers will identify
with Haley’s insecurities and neuroses and, even if they don’t have
first-hand experience with some of her traumas, will enjoy her
often-misguided efforts to cope. Recommended.