Goldeline by Jimmy Cajoleas

The novel “Goldeline” by Jimmy Cajoleas is about a ten year old girl named Goldeline. She loses her mother to the town, more specifically the preacher. She then goes and lives in the woods with Gruff and the boys. Friends of Goldelines mother. They steal from carts that pass through the woods. One of the carts they steal from is going to a town to drop off a boy named Tommy, who later become best friends with Goldeline.
The theme in the novel “Goldeline” is to not give up and to keep pushing when it gets hard. Goldeline and Tommy escape from the preacher because he is trying to kill Goldeline. Tommy at first believes that the preacher is a good man. He soon realized that he is not a good man but one of evil. When the preacher finds out that Tommy is helping goldeline escape he then tells everyone that Tommy is a boy of evil now along with Goldeline. The preacher gets some of the town's people to help him look for Tommy and goldeline. When they start running from the preacher they meet three people. The first person is an old man with no legs who lives in a hill. He welcomes Goldeline and Tommy into his home to help them hide from the preacher. The preacher comes to the old man's house and asks if he's seen them, he tells the preacher that he hasn't. But the preacher doesn't believe him and looks in his house. Tommy and Goldeline hid from the preacher and had not been seen by him. They then stay the night, but half way through the night goldeline feels off and wakes up to see the old man over her trying to put a spell on her to make her stay with him. They leave the next morning with a little force but they escape him. The next few days they continue to run from the preacher. When they run into the next person, she is a witch that was friends with goldelines mother, she poisons them so tommy passes out and goldeline is forced to remember all the things her mother made her forget. She remembered that the preacher treated her like his daughter and that he was in love with her mother. She also remembered that the preacher asked for her mom's hand in marriage but she refused and he got mad and told everyone in town that she was a witch and that led him to kill her. When they wake up from the trance they were in the leave and go look for moon heaven, a place that gruff told goldeline to go if they ever get separated. She finally finds moon heaven and when she gets there her dreams are crushed. The whole place had been burned down and ruined. She also finds out the gruff had been killed and that there are only 3 of the boys left and everyone else had either been killed or taken back to the town to be put in jail. Goldeline hears the preacher coming and her and Tommy run from him again. They finally meet the third person and he and his husband help them escape the preacher, that is where goldeline gets sick of running from him and she exposes him to everyone. All the town people turn on him and they all realize the bad the preacher has done. The preacher is then killed by the townspeople and Tommy goes home to his aunt and goldeline lives with them for a bit but then leaves because she doesn't feel at home with them. She goes back into the woods to look for her mom's friend who helped her remember everything.
I liked how even though goldeline would get hurt and would face a lot of problems escaping the preacher she still kept going until she found her peace. I also liked how she grew closer to Tommy and started to feel comfortable with him. I didn't like the part where she meets the old man in the hill. That part was uncomfortable to read and I also didn't like that the book didn't feel complete with the ending it had. One thing that I did love about how the writer wrote the book was, he went into detail about how the characters looked and it created images in your head about what they would look and sound like. When Jimmy Cajoles described gruff you can imagine that he was a tall older man with a beer belly. You could also imagine that he had facial hair and had long hair. When describing Goldeline you could imagine that she was pale with golden eyes and white hair.
Something that I think other readers might not like about the book is that some chapters are a little all over the place. Another thing that other readers might not like is that it's only from Goldelines perspective and no one else's. I highly recommend the book. The book goes into a lot of detail and it is overall a really good book to read if you like fantasy books. I would recommend the book to people who are between the ages of 12-17 and I would also recommend the book to people who like fantasy, adventure, and visual books. I would give this book a 5 out of 5. ( )

(This review can also be found on my blog.)

I’m not typically into Middle Grade books, but this was an exception for me. I don’t remember what drew me to this title, I believe I saw a review somewhere, but it could have just been featured on a TBR post. I picked it up not really knowing what to expect, but finding myself pleasantly surprised with what I found.

Goldeline is a quick read that’s easy to power through, but contains a lot of heavy content. I was really surprised to see the age range was 10 considering the themes present. There was a decent amount of violence and death, as well as some spooky scenes. The MC, Goldeline, really went through a lot of traumatic stuff!

I find that it can be difficult to find books with young MCs that aren’t written in an infantile way, but the author pulls off Goldeline’s inner voice wonderfully. The narration is naive and childlike without becoming unreadable. The relationships between the characters were great, and there was even a M/M couple, which was nice to see.

Overall, I thought Goldeline was a nice read and would recommend it to anyone interested. It’s quick to get through and tells a unique story. ( )