The Death of Bees by Lisa O’Donnell

(started reading on 3/3/2013, finished reading on 3/5/2013)
Rating: ***
BookfessionsChica’s Heads Up: This book isn’t actually about bees dying.

The following description of The Death of Bees was borrowed from http://www.goodreads.com: Today is Christmas Eve. Today is my birthday. Today I am fifteen. Today I buried my parents in the backyard. Neither of them were beloved. Marnie and her little sister Nelly are on their own now. Only they know what happened to their parents, Izzy and Gene, and they aren’t telling. While life in Glasgow’s Hazlehurst housing estate isn’t grand, they do have each other. Besides, it’s only one year until Marnie will be considered an adult and can legally take care of them both.

Winter
Marnie

People think Nelly’s nicer than me, but only ’cause she’s off her head. She’s twelve. She likes cornflakes with Coke and period dramas. She likes old movies with Bette Davis and Vivien Leigh. She likes documentaries about animals and anything to do with Harry Potter, she’s obsessed with him. p. 6

BookfessionsChica’s thoughts: Gotta love a Harry Potter reference.

Summer
Marnie

…I thought if I had five more minutes with him it would be enough to change everything, but nothing would have changed and if Izzy and Gene taught me anything it was to recognize poison when you see it, but still, I was drawn to the weakness in him and kissed him. It was the last kiss, I didn’t know that then, no one knows when it’s their last kiss with someone who wants to leave them and if you asked them now, years later, they probably wouldn’t even remember…I suppose this is what it means when it’s over, when you don’t want it to be and when you want to start from the beginning and make it all right again.
At least I walked away. Don’t know how, but I did, maybe because Nelly was waiting for me, I couldn’t exactly leave her in the park, could I? Of course maybe she was the one who couldn’t leave me in the park… p. 213

BookfessionsChica’s thoughts: I’m reminded of parks. And of getting dumped. I was dumped by the ex on New Year’s Eve at a park. Not last NYE, but the one before. The only difference between Marnie and I is that she walked away. I knew it was over before it was actually over. I think that’s one of the things that a woman’s intuition picks up on. We took separate cars and met at a park by my house. I don’t even think it took more than an hour. The only reason it stretched so long is because I had built a case, so to speak, for staying together and was desperately trying to present it to him. Like, with bullet points and everything. He wasn’t having it. To be fair, he was mentally and emotionally tired from all of our petty/stupid arguing, which is what led to the breakup. He’s not a horrible person. I don’t hate him. He was the love of my life. We had a last kiss. But it wasn’t a real kiss, it wasn’t what our kisses were really like. I remember it now having passion, full of our own separate, individual kind of pain. After two years, talk of marriage and babies, and forever and all that crap, he left me on a bench at a park on New Year’s Eve. That is how I rang in 2012.