5 stars

Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock wrote a fabulous novel, and I couldn't wait to read more from her; that's why I was THRILLED to receive the arc for this collection.

Though they happen in different small towns, the stories in this grouping connect through the characters, who appear as primary or ancillary at different points. It's fascinating to piece together intentionally missed details. The settings are incredible, and one of Hitchcock's greatest talents absolutely lies in the ability to make the place a character and a central aspect of the human (and mermaid!) characters' lives and experiences.

There are so few noteworthy story collections in the YA realm. This one stands out not only for that reason but also undoubtedly on its own merit. Highly recommended -

Really enjoyed this book. The collection of short stories was really well written and I look forward to writing Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock's upcoming novels and stories.

Seemingly unrelated characters are all strung together by the thread of the small towns that they hail from. Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town is like a collection of short stories each having some common characters but all with unique stories. At first I found it confusing but once I realized that theme was across the book was just the small towns themselves it became fun to try to find the common threads. This is a great book definitely worth reading. The book does have some abuse that may trigger some readers.

A smart, compelling middle grade book. The title alone draws you in, and the cover is reminiscent of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks.

While I appreciated the ways in which the stories dovetailed together, it sometimes felt forced, and I did not necessarily enjoy a lot of the thornier topics they dealt with. However, if you're looking for more of a "serious" YA read, this will definitely hit the spot, and it's always great to see students exposed to short stories outside of teacher-assigned reading.

Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town took my breath away and I read it in one sit. This is a beautifully created short story collection, with a unique form, as a series of vignettes. Readers meet one character in one story and then get more crucial information about them in a next. The author describes the characters with tenderness, understanding and compassion.
I admire Bonnie - Sue Hitchcock style of writing, poetic and elegant. This is one of those books one will always remember

Thank you to The Publisher and NetGalley for a copy.

Wildfire. Basketball Bears. A mermaid. Bonnie Sue Hitchcock’s Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town takes the reader from the beautifully rugged Alaskan woods to isolated Pacific beaches to tiny towns in the American west. In this collection of short stories, a cast of loosely connected characters make quick decisions with lasting impact: Ruby’s explosive revenge against a cheating boyfriend, Delia’s brave stand against abuse, and Finn’s rescue of a small child. In every story, a character chooses to move past hurt and misunderstanding and toward forgiveness, love and redemption. There’s a little bit of everything in this book. Readers will fall in love with the characters and want to know more when each story ends.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review.

A beautiful collection of intertwined stories about life in small towns. I loved the descriptions of the towns and the time period when it was set. The writing was a little cheesy at times but overall really enjoyed.

This book is kinda an anthology/vignette collection - it episodically tells little slice of life stories from different kids’ lives, spanning different people, states, and experiences. They’re all a little bit connected, and the connection goes a little deeper with every story.

There’s not a huge storyline, nothing super pressing to get to the end quick about, but instead every story kind of wraps up nicely enough. It’s kind of just a book about the human experience. There’s a summer camp, a town obsessed with basketball, a town evacuated by a wildfire, a new girl who threatens a long term relationship... just stuff that could be happening any old day. But it was just really well-done and easy to read. I recommend it just because it was a cool reading experience.

#EveryoneDiesFamousinaSmallTown #NetGalley #LJDOD
I read this as an e-galley. With thanks to Random House Children's Books, my opinions are my own.

I helped a student the other day whose question was "are trigger warnings used outside of academia?" This book comes with one, because some of the interconnected stories deal directly with child abuse, and all of them deal with the direct and indirect effects of those experiences. However, the descriptions are not graphic, and no one should avoid the book because of the subject matter.

These stories are character driven, and the author succeeds in telling a complete story in each of the stories, the mark of good short stories, and a rare talent. The interconnections would make an interesting discussion topic, because some of them are subtle, and some are far-reaching.

Most of the teens in the stories are older, and the book lies in that borderland between teen and young adulthood making the book also accessible to adult readers interested in coming of age stories and small town life.

Despite the title, the setting is not as much of a focus as I expected, though some things are unique to the West and to the small town environment. The characters are well developed and interesting, and you are caught up in their world and their issues, none of which are trivial. Recommended.

Small towns can hide big secrets. Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town is a series of interconnected stories of towns and camps in Colorado, Alaska, and the Pacific Northwest. Sadness, regret, loneliness, love, anger, longing, and revenge all simmer below the surface, occasionally erupting in unforeseen ways. You might not like everyone in the book, but you'll understand them. The final chapter ties all of the stories together in a shocking, heartbreaking bow.

Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town
by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock
Pub Date 20 Apr 2021
read courtesy of http://www.netgalley.com

12 1/2 million stars!!!! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

As in I wish I had written this. Or I wish I had the mind of Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock. These stories are brilliantly combined without being repetitive. Each story is complete within itself while implying the wholeness of the world in which it was created. Nothing left me questioning any of the characters, their motives, or their choices. I am completely impressed with Hitchcock's storytelling.

I'm hesitant to describe this as a book of short stories, and although some reviewers recommend reading these independently, I caution against it. Part of what made this engaging was experiencing the connections between seemingly independent characters and finding how intertwined our lives and experiences can be. With a bit of six-degrees-of-separation, we're all interconnected.

I absolutely loved the 9th story. SPOILER ALERT: It reminded me of the skillful storytelling of the movie "The Sixth Sense."

I think I had such a connection to the storytelling because I didn't know this was a collection of connected short stories, and the serendipity of discovering the existence of the connections myself was so enjoyable. This happened to me because I misinterpreted a description that said, "Each story is unique, yet universal," to mean the characters' stories, not literally separate short stories. I became so engaged with Hitchcock's adroitness in creating those connections that I took the time to map out all of the connections. This suited my personality, my skills, and my absorption with the stories. >>Do not look at this concept map if you want to figure out the connections on your own: https://www.mindmeister.com/1707227917?t=SEvUSMP5Sj

I wish I could pin point what makes Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock so compelling but everything about the book makes one want to know more and find out how all the lives of her characters intertwine. I really hope there will be more coming for all of them.

For whatever reason, this book was just not what I was expecting. I guess the title led me to believe that there would, in fact, be some sort of death to contend with. Instead, it was just a compilation of anecdotes about the lives, adventures, and even non-adventures of teenagers in small-town America.

One great thing about short stories is you can be choosy about which ones you read. I found some of the tales much more compelling and enjoyed reading about the basketball star living out her parents’ dream and the young hitchhiker who meets and then parts from a would-be friend.

Others did not seem quite as compelling and left me wondering why this story needed to be told. Overall, if this writing style is one you enjoy, I would recommend it, but I was left wanting a “so what” at the end of each mini-memoir. Overall, the stories of overlooked people are ones that need to be told, I just wasn't sure all of them really needed to be analyzed in such great detail. Many of the protagonists did not seem up to the task of sharing their own stories. Others were really well developed and felt like fully-fledged memoirs that were just dying to get out there!

Thank you NetGalley for the book. Overall, I enjoyed this book. The writing style isn't necessarily my favorite, however, the author did a great job keeping me interested and engaged.

So many broken lives - and so many connections that connect each of these lives. Told in a series of chapters from seemingly random perspectives and characters eventually connect at the end of the story: the story of the little girl who has an invisible friend ties to the disappearance of another young girl, which ties to her sister getting into a car accident with her boyfriend because he is cheating on her, which ties to the new girl who moved to the town and flirted with all the boys because of the amputated foot in the boot that was found on the beach which is tied to the best friend who still lived on the beach who found the teenager buried in the sand and nearly died which led to........

After reading the first chapter, I was doubting the book and thought I wouldn't get too much further before I abandoned it. After a couple pages into the second chapter, though, I was hooked! I couldn't put the book down. So many events happen in our own small worlds, and it is impossible to know the far flung reaches of each action, decision, choice and reaction. This book was different from anything I have read in a very long time and I loved it.

I thought this was great, and I wasn't sure at all what to expect from it. The way the stories connect is really creative and original, and I totally got the sense of small town life. Really good. Something to pair with Look Both Ways by Jason Reynolds, maybe, although this is older.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a DRC of this title for review. All opinions are my own.

I had read Hitchcock's earlier work (The Smell of Other People's Houses ) and enjoyed the premise, but didn't feel like I was "literary" enough to appreciate the minutiae of what she was doing. With this book, a collection of interconnected vignettes that look at sexual abuse, grief, and the weight we give to girl's voices, she knocked it out of the park. This is a book I would gladly read again, just to enjoy the cadence of the words and to redraw the lines between all of the characters. It is also a book I would be ITCHING to get my hands on to put into a HS Language Arts curriculum, because to pair these vignettes about grief with O'Brien's The Things They Carried would be incredibly powerful.

There is no way to summarize this book. Each chapter gives you a glimpse into someone's life, and then, in the next, it's as if the image has been shifted just slightly, so now a person who was merely in the background, or half cut off by the edges, is now front and center. And by the end, you've started to understand these people and the universal truths of growing up and small towns: everyone and everything is connected. And while you might "know" everyone in your small town, you eventually realize you didn't actually know them at all.

Highly recommend.

Short stories merit a writer’s finest discipline, and Bonnie Sue Hitchcock has achieved this in her poetic depiction of life in small towns – where ordinary incidents can be extraordinary in their impact. Set in Alaska, Colorado and the Pacific Northwest, these stories portray the anger of grieving teens, the disillusionment of betrayal, friendships that span time and distance, and the power of sibling love. One of the most appealing qualities of this book is the recognition of one’s own experience, whether you have lived in a small town or not. Who hasn’t persisted in an activity to please a parent, pretended to be someone different than they were, trusted the wrong adult, or fantasized about sneaking into the bedroom of a crush? Each story in this collection is compelling on its own, but the real beauty lies in the thread Hitchcock weaves between them. I found myself reflecting on earlier chapters as I gained a deeper understanding of a character’s motivation and circumstance. It was as if I was having one “Aha” experience after the next. A beautiful and heartbreaking read to which I will return again and again.

A wonderful group of interconnected short stories focused on teens dealing with trauma, loss, changing friendships, natural disasters, death, betrayal. It has everything!! I loved learning how each story connected to the next and sometimes looped back around. I also enjoyed that the stories were set in the west and Alaska. So many books for young people seem to be set on the East Coast. A nice change of scenery - literally!