Inconsistent by Alexandra Akre
** This will also be posted on Goodreads.
This is a book about a girl named Macy, and how she transformed into who she always wanted to be, who she always locked away because she wasn't free; Meadow. This is about how she found happiness despite the shadows hanging over her head, despite the darkness creeping in her mind. This is how she found a way to live.
From the very beginning, while it talks of her and her mother driving away to a new town, a new place where no one knows their names, we are inside her head and hearing her broken thoughts. We realize very quickly that her father would beat them, and that they are moving because finally, finally the police came and put him in handcuffs. Her mom is broken, she can't live without the man she loves, because who cares if he beats her? She loves him so it's alright.
I watch my mother and know he controls her still. He is a rat who is biting and nibbling at her. Each day he seems to be taking away another piece of her being as he tears away at her resolve with each bite he places on her yielding skin. Even then, after she was just a walking skeleton, he would drag away her femur to gnaw on.
Everyday Meadow has to see her mother's broken shell, and she has to try to pick up the pieces in which only her father holds. It hurts her, and she hates his hold on her mother but she can't help it and reading about it all with the way it is written just makes you an emotional mess and even though it's a fairly dark read you can't help but love it because it's life in poetry, it's real and you get so invested in Meadow's world that it's like you are there yourself, like you are the one laughing, and crying, and running away with Meadow. You feel her hurt, and each time it's a strike to your heat but it's no where near her pain even so.
She will never be released and I watch her sigh and place cucumbers over her puffed eyelids. I know my father is right there in front of her, in the back of her mind, in every move she makes, because she won’t forget. She can’t move on and he will keep gnawing at her body and he will keep chewing at her heart, until she fades away into nothing but a memory, and a sad one at that.
The witting is absolutely brilliant, the flow is fantastic, and the characters are probably my favourite. We meet Dante and Meadow first, with Dante being her new-found best friend, her soul's other half, and also a broken boy because he is gay and his father wanted a man, not a 'fucking faggot'. Dante is a character you find yourself loving immediately. He is the best friend everyone wants, the one to make you feel like its okay to be alive, the one who tells you not to cry over a dick because he doesn't deserve your tears and you shouldn't cry over him anyway. He's the one who takes her on adventures and makes her smile and reminds her of what it is to dream!
It was Dante who said “Get out of the stupid routine, and embrace the numerous possibilities present in every single day. Get out of the mold and start living,” and “You are an individual now, not some clone pumped out by society and cemented by the social media which so pervades our lives.” It was Dante who revealed what it is to dream.
We then meet May, an eccentric lesbian who becomes a close friend of Meadows. And then we meet Liam, who is a drug addict but also ends up being Dante's love, the one, and the three of them fit so well together. Liam is like her older brother, he cares and they care and it's amazing to read about all their adventures and conversations and times spent together because it's so intriguing and beautiful. But then Richmond comes into the picture. He's an outright ass at first, but then after being told off by Meadow he stops, and she finds him always staring at her and then gradually their relationship grows and they're dating, and then they're in love and then they're breaking up because stupid and jealous Anita got in his head.
And we can't forget about her parents either. Her father is out of jail, she left because he hit her and her mother is pregnant again and Meadow knows she's nothing to them, that she never was anything, and it hurts but she leaves and she has Dante so it's okay.
And then the end. I cried. Oh heck did I ever. I won't say a word of the ending, other than how emotional it made me. All I will say it that you should read Inconsistent, you should experience it's brilliance all on your own. And maybe it won't be for you, because not everyone enjoys dark reads with abuse and drugs and suicide and alcohol. But you should give it a try, nonetheless. I mean, this may have just possibly become my absolute favourite novel.
**
So, that's that d:
~Sage
