Traveling Sisters Review: The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker

The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Date read:  September 7 – 10, 2017

Traveling Sisters Read Review

THE ANIMATORS by KAYLA RAE WHITAKER is an emotional, heartbreaking, profound, and a thought-provoking novel with a multi-layered storyline about a friendship that starts off with two small town flawed misfits that come to terms with their past through their animations and take their stories to the bright lights of New York City.  This story creeped up on us and blindsided and consumed us with how real this story was and had our emotions on a roller coaster ride throughout this entire book.

The story is told in the voice of our main character, Sharon about her personal life and her working relationship with her best friend Mel. They are a mismatched but a dynamic duo who come together as business partners and friends that creates an interesting and intense story as we were learning about their relationships through the extremely heartwarming and heartbreaking scenes.  They both share a passion for their work and bring their lives into their work as we see the differences between these two characters.  Sharon is quiet, ambitious, and self doubting where Mel is brash, interesting, complex, and life of the party with a rock star personality but then we see more of a gentle side to her when it comes to her relationship with Sharon.

KAYLA RAE WHITAKER delivers a vivid and well-written read here with an artistic flare to her writing style that really made us stop and think about all the underlying messages which at times was quite the heavy read.  The characters were complex, well-developed and KAYLA RAE WHITAKER does a fantastic job with the dynamics between Mel and Sharon.  We could really feel the tender, unique, and the strength of their friendship through their bond and their love that they had for one another.

This book wasn’t exactly what we were expecting but we all thoroughly enjoyed it.  It had our emotions all over the place as some parts were quite funny but mostly it was moving and sad and really affected us.  THE ANIMATORS is a story with characters that will stay with us for a very long time.  Would recommend!