LitPick Review
Josie Sedgwick and Mitchell Morrison have known each other since they were six years old, the only kids their age in the Indian Paintbrush Community Village for Sustainable Living, a place where the entire community lives in cabins, electronics are banned, and they grow produce to provide for most of the community.
The pair are best friends – they’ve done everything together since the day they met up to now, their senior year. It’s time for them to think about life after their graduation, and they couldn’t have more different opinions.
Josie can’t stand the thought of leaving Paintbrush. She can’t think of a life without it – she’s a part of Paintbrush. Additionally, she feels like she can’t leave her family, or things will fall apart. She lives with her mom and her twin sisters, away from their abusive dad they almost never knew. Her mother is extremely trusting – so much that she lets them do whatever they want without batting an eyelid – which seems to be a growing problem for her sister, Libby, who wants to be popular even at risk of hanging with the wrong crowd. Josie can’t leave, doesn’t want to leave, and isn’t ready to leave.
Mitchell, on the other hand, has always been waiting to be able to leave Paintbrush forever and go to college and start his own life. His desperation to escape grows even more when his parents drop a bombshell on his life by telling him they’re going to split. He becomes angry at his mom, his dad, and the man his mom is tearing their family apart for. He needs to leave, wants to leave, has to leave.
Their lives are completely different and they couldn’t think less alike on many things. But life seems to be drawing them together. The pair start to fall in love, but soon they find that love isn’t very easy and that life has a long, bumpy path ahead for them. They need to make choices, and they need to accept the consequences of those choices.
Opinion:
I found Paintbrush to be an immersive and wonderful story. I had difficulty putting it down, and I especially enjoyed that the story was told through the alternating eyes of Josie and Mitchell. I found that it gave the story a whole new depth and gave me the entire story.
I often found myself sympathizing with some of the characters, especially Josie. Josie, in my opinion, is an incredible character. Instead of being a “perfect” girl like in some stories who says just the right thing at just the right time, Josie is incredibly realistic, resembling a real-life girl more than most of the main characters I’ve read about. She’s clumsy, awkward, lovable, sweet, and like me and many other girls, struggles with choices. I feel like Josie sometimes when I consider my own future and leaving my family to go to college – like it’s something uncertain, and I found the similarities refreshing.
If you enjoy romance novels and realistic fiction, this book is most certainly for you, and you will love it!
