Out of This Place by Emma Cameron

Out of This Place by Emma Cameron

Originally published under Cinnamon Rain

3.5 stars

Luke spends his days going to school, hanging out at the beach, and working at the supermarket. His friend Bongo gets wasted to block out the memories of the little brother he can no longer see and his addict mom and abusive stepdad. Casey is the girl that they both love. She longs to get away from her controlling father and be free. This is a verse novel and it’s been forever since I read a novel in verse. I forgot how fragile writing a verse novel can be because either you can accomplish it or it will fail. This novel was in the middle of the plain between crashing and soaring above the sky. I adore poetry and verse always fascinates me, but I don’t think some characters should be written in verse. Some stories are meant for it and some are not. This novel alternates between Luke, Casey, and Bongo, but instead of alternating in the usual Ellen Hopkins fashion of one character then another and repeat this book focuses on one character for a few hundred pages and then alternates to the next character.


The main female character is Casey. Casey longs to be free. She is the perfect of example of a caged bird and when she finally breaks free it’s refreshing. While Casey is in her house it always felt so trapped, but once she finds her way out no matter the circumstances you can feel Casey’s happiness. Casey’s story was my favorite and she is my favorite character in Out of This Place. I liked seeing Casey grow and become a different person.


Kick-Butt Heroine Scale: 8.5

The main male characters are Luke and Bongo. By the fact that these boys are both in love with Casey you would probably think that there is a love triangle. Rest assured that is not the case. Luke is in love with Casey, but Casey has always kept him as more of friend or brother. He’s very over protective of her and questions her personal life a lot. Bongo is also in love with Casey, but would never hurt his best friend. He never acts on his love for her, but Casey had wanted him to several times. Luke is an OK guy, but I personally thought his story was boring. This is where what I mentioned about verse comes in. For me Luke’s story in verse was unnecessary and really Luke didn’t know what he wanted in life or even who he was. This made him incredibly boring. Bongo was much better to read about in verse, but it still didn’t flow as nicely as Casey’s story had. Bongo though stole my heart from the moment Luke talked about how Bongo not able to see his brother destroyed him. I liked Bongo’s story, but while he was homeless for that period of time the story dragged for me. He seemed to be to lost and I was worried that the story would stay that way, but it didn’t.

Swoon Worthy Scale: Luke: 7 Bongo: 8

Character Scale: 7.5

I loved the setting of Australia. I also read this at pretty good time since they go to the beach a lot. The writer did a good job of showing how a person’s life evolves, but sometimes this evolvement dragged a bit too much. Out of This Place is a novel about finding who you are and I liked how Cameron showed this.


Cover Thoughts: I love the cover it’s so beautiful. The only thing that bothers me is how Casey is holding one of the boy’s hands. She should probably be holding both of their hands.

Thank you, Candlewick Press and Netgalley for a copy in an exchange for an honest review.