The ending had got me staring into space for a good 5 minutes :')

Personal Ratings : 3.5🌟

A story that is somewhat neurotic but its still addicting in a sense. I find myself wanting to know about Wendy and Ginger and their antiques. I read the book in one seating, and it was like reading a memoir-of-sorts but with added trauma and neurotic(?) aspects. I find myself doubting myself whether I had really enjoyed this book or I was just curious on how it ended.

The book started by Wendy being in jail; and the thing is, it was not her fault. 19 year old Wendy, who works as a bus driver was in a depressive state after her mother died. Then she met Ginger on her bus, a 15 year old who has charms of her own. Two people who unconventionally became friends and somewhat ended up relying up on each other. A story of female friendships set in Glascow a small town and about aspiring authors and escaping from the person that you had become.

Personal Thoughts

Ginger and Me was a novel that I read in one seating and its a tale of Female Friendships that feels incovenient but somewhat showed how two broken souls somewhat related with each other. Wendy is a person that adds the neurotic aspect to the book. She has a naiveté mindset that can be considered as mostly the people who are usually socially outcasted in a circle group. The day she met Ginger, they somehow connected with one another, but I can't help feel that they are both good and toxic for each other. The author had shown the Effects of Traumatic Childhood and how it had impaired growth for both of these characters. Wendy grew up with an alcoholic father and Ginger grew up with an absent mother. I felt both sorry and sympathy for Ginger and Wendy despite frowning at some of the actions that they did in the book. Their story is quite mundane and yet, its addictive in a sense that you would want to find out more of what happens to the fate of these two souls.

The side characters in this book, whilst its not best written, it adds drama to the story. The dynamics of Wendy and Ginger as a duo is both worrying but yet has the element of youth with it. It kind of brings to millennial aspects and how there are teens that had been abandoned acted the same things that both Ginger and Wendy did. The chapters in the book was divided into a few parts and its somewhat a flashback of what had happened before Wendy went to jail. The ending threw me off a bit but it was a read that left me a bit speechless.

Would recommend if you would like to read a book on female friendships and complex characters, set in a small town.

Biggest thank you to Times Reads for this ARC!