The Space Between Trees, by Katie Williams

Title: The Space Between Trees

Author: Katie Williams

Publisher: Chronicle Books, LLC

Year: 2010

# Pages: 274

Category: Required

Genre: Mystery

My Summary & Critique:

The Space Between Trees is told from the point of view of Evie, a 16 year old girl with a vivid imagination and no real friends. She lives with her mother, who has an unrealistically hopeful view of Evie’s social life. While she is delivering newspapers on her route in upscale Hokepe Woods, she feebly attempts to socialize with Jonah Luks, a high school dropout and the object of Evie’s affection, whose job it is to clear the neighborhood woods of any dead animals. One morning, as Evie is delivering her papers in that area, Jonah discovers a dead body In the woods. It turns out to be a girl from Evie’s high school, Elizabeth (Zabet), with whom Evie had been friends as a child. Evie’s wandering imagination and a few lies about her relationship with Zabet plunge her into a relationship with Zabet’s best friend, Hadley. Together, they decide to find out who killed Zabet, putting the two of them into risky situations and assuring that someone would get hurt.

Overall, I thought this book was simply mediocre. The premise of a murder of a classmate/former friend was a good beginning and the descriptive writing style was very good, even excellent in parts. There was mystery and intrigue that kept me reading, but I was annoyed with the character of Evie. I felt like she was portrayed as too immature to be the sixteen year old she was because of the intrusion of her imagination into her everyday thoughts. This did help to add to the credibility of her character as a loner, a girl with no friends, and I did like the author’s comparison of her to the title of the book:

“At school that Monday after, there were rumors that Hadley had tried to burn down the woods, rumors that she had killed a man, killed herself, killed Zabet. But somehow my name was never whispered, as if I were a ghost, an escapee, the space between the trees, the page on which a story is written.”

That was really the best part of the book, for me. I feel like some teens can relate to this isolated feeling that Evie portrayed through the voice of her character. It is as if she swayed through life, largely invisible, immaterial, and she barely made an impression on people. I feel like a lot of teens could feel this way, clinging to others who have stronger, more vivid personalities, like Hadley, and led to do things that they normally wouldn’t have considered, as Evie is led by Hadley in this story. I was disappointed in the ending of the story, not because the bad guys didn’t receive their just reward or because there was no happily ever after, but because I hoped there would be a point, a bit of growth by Evie or even by Hadley. Instead, I felt that the ending still seemed unfinished, hanging in the air, like I just hadn’t had enough to feel good about reading this book. I don’t have to be happy with the events of a book in order to be satisfied with it, but this book just left an unsatisfied feeling in my gut. When you read a story, you want to see the main character grow, learn, or change a little from the events, especially traumatic ones, but the author did not create that sense of growth in Evie, so it is disappointing. Still, I believe this book has value for teens and would be a good book for a discussion. It would certainly provide good material for taking sides.