The Carnival at Bray by Jessie Ann Foley

The Carnival at Bray by Jessie Ann Foley
It's 1993, and Generation X pulses to the beat of Kurt Cobain and the grunge movement. Sixteen-year-old Maggie Lynch is uprooted from big-city Chicago to a windswept town on the Irish Sea. Surviving on care packages of Spin magazine and Twizzlers from her rocker uncle Kevin, she wonders if she'll ever find her place in this new world. When first love and sudden death simultaneously strike, a naive but determined Maggie embarks on a forbidden pilgrimage that will take her to a seedy part of Dublin and on to a life- altering night in Rome to fulfill a dying wish. Through it all, Maggie discovers an untapped inner strength to do the most difficult but rewarding thing of all, live. (via Goodreads)

I read this in one afternoon in spring, so be aware.

Positives:
1. Look at how many awards it's won- perfection
2. Chicago and Ireland
3. Music is a huge theme, but I don't like music all that much, and this book was great
4. Lots of troubled relationships
5. It's pretty short, so it's not hard to read in an afternoon (240 pages)
6. Jessie Ann Foley is great, and I have so many positive memories about reading this book
7. 1993
8. Three parts
9. Written in third person, which isn't as common as it used to be.

Negatives:
1. If you're not a reader, I don't think this book would appeal to you very much. For me, I don't think I would've liked it as much if I had read it a year or two ago.