The Goat Children

                Hello happy readers!  So nothing new to really discuss today accept the review.  I previously read Escape from Witchwood Hollow (review) and Cogling (review) by Jordan Elizabeth Mierek and enjoyed it so when her new story, The GoatChildren, came out I was pleased to receive a copy for an honest review.  This was a combination of contemporary and a tiny but of fantasy mixed in there with lots of realism.  It was also described as a story close to the authors heart which I always find interesting to the story so I was game.

Rating:  4.5 Stars

                The Goat Children is the story of Keziah and what happens when her grandmother, her Oma, is diagnosed with dementia.  She’s only seventeen and no longer lives in town with her Oma but when the only option is a home, Keziah leaves her homeschooled life with her younger sister to stay with Oma and take care of her.  The woman whom she has nothing but loving memories of spending time together dementia is making her resentful and her cherished time a chore.  She is faced with hardships she never imagined and through it all finds Oma’s ramblings about the Goat Children, the warriors who ride Pegasus a great escape.  But as things don’t always make sense and her Oma becomes more insistent she begins to question their existence.   

                This book really got to me emotionally.  While I had a different set of circumstances it is horrible to have someone you once had so many loving memories with become less than themselves.  My Ma was my best friend and most important person in the world and we have a long time together even when she got sick, cancer, I still had her and while that last week she started to forget it was a short time.  Still it was hard on me.  The Goat Children is much different and the same, focusing on a disease we are still working to understand fully and try to cure and watching someone you love change during a much longer period.  This is so real and powerful you will feel it.  Oma was my Ma when I read.  This is something I don’t think many of us really understand, I dealt with it but still I was much younger and while I remember it I can also sometimes forget. 

                Keziah has to deal with a lot and as a teenager it’s hard to give up your whole life to take care of someone.  Someone you love beyond measure but who isn’t the same anymore.  Mierek really captured the blender of emotions going on within Keziah in such an authentic way it’s impossible to ignore.  The trials that she goes through in her quest to help her Oma are serious but I also loved learning about these Goat Children.  I liked hearing Oma talk about her Goat Children just added to things for me.  Also I love how it plays on the story and her own imagination and how after hearing about certain things she begins to see them.  Then is it coincidence, your mind is just on them, or could they be real?  The concept was great. 

                I enjoyed the whole story and I look forward to reading more from not only Mierek but other books that deal with real and pressing issues.  I’d love to hear your thoughts and feels below.  Could you relate to Keziah and what she went through?  Share your stories below. 

                Until next time…