Review: The Snowball Effect

By Holly Nicole Hoxter
Available now from HarperTEEN
Review Copy



I won this copy forever ago, and thus needed to reread it before writing this review. It took me a little while longer to read it this time. Almost always, I pay more attention to detail and how things fit together the second time, whereas the first time I'm racing along because I must know what happens next.

What I really admire about Holly Nicole Hoxter is the way she makes Lainey Pike's grief so true while still making Lainey an appealing character. Lainey's goals in life are quite different than mine, which sometimes puts me off. She's just graduated high school, but she already knows she's marrying her boyfriend Riley as well as attending community college with him. But things in life always happen unexpectedly, and her stepfather, grandmother, and mother died in short order. Now she's parenting her troubled brother Collin with her estranged sister Vallery.

It's lucky for Lainey in this difficult time that she has Riley, who understands her moods and doesn't mind keeping an eye on Collin. Unfortunately, Lainey wants to hurt. Though she sometimes seems callous to the deaths, she's still processing them, especially her mother's suicide. Riley is too good at comforting her. Being around him makes her feel better, and she can't have that. What she can have is the new guy in town, Eric. He's a nice guy - if not Riley - and interested. He doesn't know what's going on, which gives Lainey a comfortable space.

But I find the family sections as compelling as the romance. Vallery and Lainey want to do well by Collin, but at the same time neither of them are close to being responsible parents, especially to a boy who had behavior problems even before he lost both of his adoptive parents in short order. It's interesting to see them try to act as siblings and parents at the same time - they accept their new responsibility, but it's a grudging acceptance. While much YA seems to happen in a shiny world where money is endless, Vallery and Lainey are quite aware that their jobs are not enough to support a family of three, which is an extra burden on top of all the messy emotions.

Things progress wonderfully, as the small things finally allow Lainey to grieve for each of the people she lost. The things that cause her transformation are logical yet illogical, which is very true. You never know what will finally push you over the edge - or if it will push you over in a good or a bad way.

In some ways, THE SNOWBALL EFFECT is a difficult book. There are no action scenes. A romance is central, but it isn't a sweet and giddy or angsty and forbidden. It's part and parcel of a small, meditative world, where a teen girl is simply trying to moving on when she's become an adult too quickly. THE SNOWBALL EFFECT will definitely attract readers who are interested in character driven novels. Lainey's voice is appealing even as she tries to push away from everything she's known. (In a sideways manner, she reminds me of Parker from Courtney Summer's CRACKED UP TO BE, except I like her far more.)

Holly Nicole Hoxter: You Couldn't Pay Me to be 21 Again

Holly Nicole Hoxter's debut novel, THE SNOWBALL EFFECT, comes out today. I've had my copy for a long time, so I'm excited to finally talk about it! But while this is a day of celebration, Holly's here to talk about some less than fun times. (Keep reading - there is a happy ending.)

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When Liviania asked me to write about what I was like at 21, I got excited at the prospect of sharing stories about my younger, carefree days. But then I started to REMEMBER 21. I'll divulge this upfront: It was a bad year.

A week after my birthday, I was fired from my job for insubordination. It would have been the perfect time to finish writing my novel, but then my grandmother died a few days after Christmas and I spent the next two months depressed and crying.

In March I found a job. It paid well and I felt like such a grownup. Unfortunately the job was 60 miles away in Rockville. On a good day, with no traffic and a blatant disregard for the posted speed limit, the drive took an hour. On a normal day it was more like 1.5 to 2 hours--each way.

Before long, my depression and the stress from the new job really killed my immune system. I was sick for an entire month. Some mornings I could barely lift my arms to shampoo my hair. I stopped going to the gym. I lived on convenient food--McDonald’s breakfast, Triscuits and cheese, BK Whoppers, and endless cans of Coke. I gained thirty pounds. Soon I was depressed, stressed out, lazy, and overweight.

That summer, at my parents’ urging, I bought a house. It needed extensive renovations so I spent my weekdays trekking to Rockville and my weekends tearing down walls and making trips to Home Depot with my dad. After a month, I thought I’d go insane if I didn’t take a break from the monotony. On Monday morning, I drove three hours to Ocean City and spent the day with my friend Scott, a volunteer firefighter who lived a block from the ocean. I admired and envied Scott because he was doing exactly what he wanted to do with his life. As I drove home that night, I looked at the gorgeous sunset over the Chesapeake Bay, and I felt optimistic that things would get better.

But they didn't. Every morning when I drove toward Rockville, I felt like I was betraying everything I'd ever believed in. I could feel my dreams shriveling up and dying. Every morning I parked next to the same car with a bumper stick that said, "Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life." I read that quote by Omar Khayyman every single morning and thought, I am not happy for this moment. I am not happy for ANY of my moments. I hated feeling that way. I wanted to feel hopeful again but I didn’t know how. I couldn't call in sick every day and go to the beach. I had a mortgage. I was a grownup.

But secretly I felt like a failure. I’d always dreamed I would be a literary prodigy and travel the world. I couldn’t figure out how I’d ended up with such a mediocre life.

I beat myself up for gaining so much weight, for buying a house I could barely afford, for getting stuck with a job that ate up all my time, for never writing. During my long commute, I would call a friend or my mother to distract myself from the isolation of the empty car. When no one answered, I would cry instead. 120 miles a day, five days a week. That’s a lot of crying.

My 22nd year was more of the same. But at 23, I decided this was no way to live. I gave myself permission to behave badly, and to fail. If I woke up and didn't feel like going to work, I didn’t go. I made no special effort to arrive on time. Once I took a two hour lunch break instead of thirty minutes. Sometimes I ignored my work and wrote query letters instead. It felt SO GOOD to not care anymore. So I decided to quit.

I had two months' worth of mortgage payments in the bank, no new job lined up, and blind faith that it would all work out. And if it didn't, so what? Even if I lost the house, ruined my credit score, and moved back in with my parents, it would be better than Rockville. At least I would have time to write. I already felt like a failure, so the prospect of financial ruin didn’t frighten me.

But after two weeks of blissful unemployment, I found a job in my neighborhood, where I earned about half of my Rockville salary. I still wasn’t exactly living the dream, and I knew that after I depleted my savings account, my salary wouldn't cover my bills. But I liked the low-stress environment and the location. I didn't want to find a "better" job.



So I knew that my writing would have to save me. Sadly, word on the street was that the novel I’d worked on for five years was "too quiet" to attract a publisher. I literally couldn't afford to spend five years writing something new. So that summer, I frantically wrote the novel which would become THE SNOWBALL EFFECT. In less than a year, I wrote it, edited it, got an agent, and found a publisher. I’d finally gotten where I’d always wanted to be.

21 was a year of wasted time but if I could go back and do it all again I wouldn’t change a thing. It was the rock-bottom desperation and fear of failure that motivated me to finally GO AFTER my dreams instead of trudging along and waiting to see if they would come true. In a way, I think that I needed to experience the soul-sucking joylessness of a mediocre life. If I hadn’t been so miserable and terrified, I’d probably still be slugging through Draft 27 of that first unpublished novel.

When I think about that Omar Khayyman bumper sticker now, it makes me smile. I am happy for this moment. And now I can appreciate all of those other moments, too.