Book Review: Bright Shiny Morning

I had already read A Million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard so I sort of had an idea of what James Frey's writing was like and what I could expect before I picked up Bright Shiny Morning. However, this story moved me in ways unlike his other two. Although clearly deemed fiction, so much of Bright Shiny Morning seemed so real and it was incredibly hard for me to even put it down.

So hard to put down in fact that I found myself reading it whenever I could (even during some downtime of the weekend) and I finished the 500 page book in four days. I almost don't even know where to start with this book besides how much I loved it and I'm glad I read it.

Bright Shiny Morning follows the lives of various characters with extremely different backgrounds with the one connection that they all live in Los Angeles county. However, the story not only follows a select few characters throughout the book but various characters appear and dissapear as quickly as they were written. Along with that the book is layered with an assortment of Los Angeles facts, statistics, historical trademarks and anything else Frey deems appropiate and necessary to share.

Like I said, I loved this book. By the end of it, I wanted more! I didn't want the stories to end, I wanted to know what happened to each and every character (specifically the young couple Maddie and Dylan) once I was at the last page. I feel like James Frey should write a follow up book just so we know exactly what happens, but I guess that was also the point, the keep us guessing, let us decide. And I sort of loved it.

I also loved all of the Los Angeles fun facts. True or not it was definitely entertaining to learn something new about my city. Actually I learned a lot about my city. I learned about laws from the past, natural disasters that had occurred, the number of museums in the city, how certain places came to be, and so much more. And it was all so interesting.

Needless to say, if you've read James Frey's other books and like his writing style you will definitely like this book. The stories are touching, the characters are almost real and everything about this book made me love it. Hopefully you will too.