The Gypsy Moth Summer

Book 5 of my 2018 Reading Challenge

The Gypsy Moth Summer by Julia Fierro

Summary (via the book jacket)
Summer 1992...Gypsy moth caterpillars have invaded Avalon Island, an islet off the East Coast.
Leslie Day Marshall, only daughter of Avalon's most prominent family, has returned to live in "The Castle", the island's grandest estate. Leslie's husband, Jules, is African American, and her children biracial, and islanders from both sides of the tracks form fast and dangerous opinions about the new arrivals.
Maddie LaRosa straddles those tracks: a teen queen with roots in the tony precinct of East Avalon as well as the crowded working-class quarter of West Avalon - home to Grudder Aviation's factory, the lifeblood and bread and butter of the community. When Maddie falls in love with Brooks, Leslie and Jules's son, that love feels as urgent to her as the questions about the new and deadly cancers showing up across the island.
Vivid with young lovers, gangs of anxious outsiders, a plotting matriarch and her demented husband, and a quietly troubled young boy, The Gypsy Moth Summer is about love, gaps in understanding, and the struggle to connect: within families, among friends, and between neighbors and entire generations.

My Opinion
My palms were sweaty the entire time I was reading this; I wanted to keep reading to alleviate the tension but also didn't want to read because I didn't want to know if the bad things I felt were coming actually happened.

The author did a great job of making me feel the characters' progression so that when Jules acted differently in the end of the book than he may have in the beginning, it felt authentic because of the isolation and madness of the island and the moths.  I normally would've felt sympathy for Dom but only felt anger.  The ending didn't make me happy but I was satisfied.

This is an accurate description of parenting:
  "She waited for her boy...to come to her.  She'd hold him.  Kiss his sweaty forehead.  Beg him to tell her his sadness.  Hang over his pain.  She'd swallow it whole to free him."

Quote from the Book
" 'On an island with one exit,' she said, 'everything is heard.' She sounded tired. Bitter. 'Seen is another matter. You could say that Avalon is a magical place. Girls don't get pregnant. Boys don't drive drunk. They money what's-her-name stole from the PTA account is replenished as if it never happened.' "