Final Draft by Riley Redgate
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Aspiring scifi writer, Laila Piedro, is in her senior year of high school. Her main focus is her creative writing class, taught by her favorite teacher, Mr. Madison. He loves her work and is quite encouraging regarding her future prospects for success.
He is a scifi geek himself and they really bond over the same books and shows. Unfortunately, Mr. Madison is hospitalized after a horrible accident and cannot finish out the school year. With just 3-months remaining until graduation, how bad can the substitute be?
Turns out, pretty bad. Nadiya Nazarenko, a Pulitzer Prize winning author, gets selected to take over Mr. Madison’s creative writing class. She has never been a teacher and her methods are…
…not the best. The first time she grades the students stories everyone fails. Laila is shocked. She had never received a grade such as this and was mystified by how this could happen. Mr. Madison always loved her stories.
After a few chats where Nazarenko basically tells her she needs to live life in order to correctly write life, Laila takes this direction to heart and begins to actively try to shake herself out of her comfort zone. She becomes fixated on gaining Nazarenko’s approval and this leads to distance from her friend group and a string of risky decisions.
I picked this book up as part of the Dragons & Tea Book Club. It was their June pick and since it had been sitting on my TBR since it was released, I was excited to join in. I like so much of the content in here, such as:
~great family dynamic = wanted more
~exploring sexuality = wanted more
~squad goals/strong friendship group = wanted more
~examination of identity/culture = wanted more
~relationship with Hannah = wanted more
~Laila’s writing progress = wanted more
Do you see a theme?
While this was a good story, I wanted so much more of all the things! Redgate has a smooth, intelligent way of writing but this honestly could have been 100-pages longer. Anytime I was getting attached to a topic, it would end and we wouldn’t really revisit it.
Even with Nazarenko, in the end, she just kind of faded to black. It made the whole interaction seem inconsequential. Maybe that was the point. It’s high school creative writing; the real lessons were learned outside the classroom.
Overall, I am happy I read this and I would read more by Redgate. The writing is worth a second chance even though this one didn’t blow me away.
