Review by Brigitte Gallegos -- Karinya by Paul Drewitt

[Brigitte Gallegos]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Karinya" by Paul Drewitt.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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Karinya by Paul Drewitt is an easy and short read that brings up an important and contemporary topic in North America. I give this book a rating of 2 out of 4. While I enjoyed reading it, I would not necessarily recommend it to a friend as the narrative and characters lack depth and the turn of events often seem too abrupt for it to be an elaborate story.

The story takes place in an indigenous community in Australia where Kirra, the main character, and her boyfriend Banjo have spent their whole life. The community is plagued by alcoholism, violence, unemployment, high suicide rate, etc. similar to many other indigenous communities around them.

The two teenagers find themselves tired of and stuck in their overall dire situation with little perspective. They decide to take matters in their own hands and start small by aiming to win a voucher for a night at a local hotel to escape from their reality for 24 hours. After initially things seem to go well, due to a sudden and unexpected turn of events they find themselves in a situation of fight or flight. They decide to flee and buy themselves time to come up with a plan on how to capitalize on their situation and create something good. Within hours they become activists for the matters of indigenous communities in Australia, something that Kirra always felt she had in her.

Their situation starts drawing media attention and support from key stakeholders such as other communities, law enforcement and even the church. Their initial action snowballs into something unexpectedly big that they use to draw more and more attention to their cause with the end goal to create a legacy.

The story is about determination and believing that change is possible. That is the part I enjoyed the most as it gives hope and inspires not to settle with the status quo. However, the storyline stays very superficial and characters nor events offer much depth. Random people support Kirra and Banjo in their journey without giving much of an insight to the reader about each person’s motivation. I wish the author would have added another 100 pages to this relatively short book and used them to add more depth and smoother transitions to the development of the story. Sometimes turn of events seem sudden and unrealistic. The main characters often jump from one situation into the next within minutes and it seems at times overwhelming to the reader how such a sudden change came upon them. Bottom line – great topic, interesting narrative, but could be told with more details and layers.

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Karinya
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[shamayelnur]

The story sounds pretty interesting to me. I wish the writer would have written the book in a more detailed way to make it better. Thanks for the review it helped me judge better.

[Justine Ocsebio]

Two teenagers challenging the status quo and inspiring change make a wonderful message. Too bad the execution was poor. Thanks for a very honest review.