Review of Viola in Reel Life by Adriana Trigiani

I’m sorry that I looked at any reviews of Adriana  Trigiani’s first young adult novel, because although I enjoyed reading it, I realize that some of the criticisms are accurate.  On the other hand, I’m glad I didn’t read the reviews before I read the book, because I probably wouldn’t have liked it as much.  Viola is a teen who has grown up in Brooklyn, NY, with all the benefits of living in such an ethnically diverse community, so she’s not too pleased when her parents drop her off at the all-girls school, Prefect Academy, in Indiana, for a year while they travel to Afghanistan to make a documentary film.  Viola is a budding filmmaker, and her relationship with her camera is one of the things that sustains her when she feels she’s lost everything else.  She does adapt a little too easily to living in a quad dorm room for someone who professes to be such a loner, but of course you’re happy that she finds such good friends.  There’s a little bit of a supernatural element to the story, too, that I really liked.  When Viola is looking at the footage she first shot when she arrived on campus, she notices a flash of red in the background.  When she looks closer, she sees it is a woman in an old-fashioned red dress, who she is sure wasn’t there when she was filming.  One of her friends back home assures her that it is a ghost who has something to tell Viola.  Later in the book, Viola decides to make a short film to enter in a student film contest, and the identity of the red ghost-woman gives her the personal interest slant that she needs.  During the course of the book, Viola gets her first boyfriend (who turns out to be too good to be true), finds out the real reason why her parents sent her to the academy for a year, and spends Christmas on the almost empty campus with her Broadway actress grandmother, who brings along her latest, much younger boyfriend.  All in all, the book was a lot of fun.  Review by Stacy Church