Life on the refrigerator door (by Alice Kuipers)

Another one of those gimmick “novels”, if you can call it a novel at all of course (you’re through the 200+ pages in all of 30 minutes…). The gimmick in this case: a life between mother and her 15-year-old daughter seen exclusively through the notes they leave each other on the refrigerator door: boy trouble for the teenager, a health scare for the mother. Get rid of the gimmicky style and what is left is an utterly predictable story, a shallow characterization, and an acknowledgment by the author that is more extensive that anything you can read ‘between the lines’ of the notes.  This book is just an empty box of promise and definitely a missed opportunity to do something more with a potentially neat trick.