This was a book club selection and I had the hardest time reading this book. It literally took me WEEKS to read. Ugh.
I found the author annoying and the character she created. For instance, I understand that the girl had tourettes but the way she would describe it bothered me. How does one pop out their eyes? Did she actually say the word croak or did she make a sound like a frog?
There are too many things I did not care for in this book or that I felt the author did a good job writing on and I feel like I just wasted too many weeks on this book.

I should have stopped reading it when I wasn't captured by page 75 (a good rule of thumb from what I've been told). I kept hoping they're was going to be a big ending that would excite me, and all the way until the last page, I was bored and annoyed that I wasted my time on it. The only reason I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 is because it was interesting to see life through the lens of the main character. But as a whole, it was disappointing. From now on, I'm going to follow that rule of thumb!

Almost a five star, I would say. What is it about southern writers? And why do I love to read books that have poverty stricken, Appalachian settings? I don't know, but this one has an interesting slant, as it focuses on a girl with Tourette's Syndrome, that does not get diagnosed until she is grown. Throw that on top of poverty, and you get, well...you'll see.

This is an excellent book. It’s a Oprah’s Book Club pick and I can see why. It’s a well written book with a good story about a girl growing up in the mountains of Kentucky. Her biggest problem is learning to live with her disorder and to accept herself as she is. I would recommend this book to anyone. I would also recommend that other readers check out Oprah’s list of boo club books. I’ve read several books from her list and they are excellent.

I wanted to love this book more. I absolutely loved its message and the entire concept behind it. There was just something about the way it was executed that it just didn’t work for me. Still worth a read, but a tough one to stick with in the middle of a streak of reading exceptional novels.

I was a little concerned by how critical some of the reviews on this book were when I started it. But I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s written from the perspective of an older woman remembering when she was a 10 year old, which I think kind of explains some of the plot holes and over exaggerated meanness of the adults in her life.
I felt it gave a fairly accurate insight into one person’s struggles coping with a disorder and her ways of living with it-which was another part I noticed people were critical of-the ending. But everyone has their own path to becoming their own person and Icy certainly was able to use her struggles to find her strengths and cope to the best of her (dis)ability.

Icy Sparks lives in Appalachia (rural Kentucky) with her grandparents as her parents had both died. It is the 1950's and Icy's life becomes conflicted when she develops violent tics and uncontrollable urges to curse. No one knows what is wrong. She is shunned by everyone. Not until her adult life does she discover a name for her ailment - Tourette's Syndrome.

This is a very touching book that brings out joy, laughter and sadness.

Weird book. It took me a day to get used to the writing style and then I started focusing on the plot/writing which I was not impressed with. I don’t have Tourette’s so I can’t speak to how accurate the description. I felt like the author was trying to be too deep and mysterious for this book. She tried to get her point across through weird metaphors and other symbols in the book but they were too thought out for what a young preteen would be thinking. Very odd in my opinion. The ending of the story was awful and I feel like had no relation at all to the point of the book. I would not recommend this book.

Icy Sparks lives with her grandparents in rural Kentucky in the 1950s, she suffers bouts of uncontrollable grunting, croaking, cursing, and violent gesticulations. Despite gaining the attention of principal Wooten and the well-meaning staff at an asylum for kids, Icy's Tourette Syndrome goes undiagnosed for the duration of this entire book. Personally I didn't really find this colorful story funny or enjoyable.

LAME. VERY LAME.

"Yessir, I was about to get wilder than a March hare in mating season."—page 182

'Icy Sparks' is such a terrific name. For a person and for a novel. Too bad the story of the novel, ICY SPARKS, by Gwyn Hyman Rubio, is so terribly lame, and its vapidity compounded by a touch of the distastefully crude.

Recommendation: I regret wasting my time. Surely you deserve better.

"You've made your blister." ... "Now sit on it."—page 240

Adobe Digital ( ePub) Edition, 300 pages

This is a book which was interesting in the first part, less so in the second (although very moving) and finally disintegrated into a fairly routine teenage coming-of-age story. Yes, we all feel for poor Icy but she turns out to be a lot special in the eyes of the author than we'd hoped and the usual array of quirky Southern small-town characters also failed to be as charming as they started out to be. Disappointing in the end but very Oprah.

I did not like this as well as I thought I should have. The characters are interesting and complete people both the bad and the good. The story is involving. Perhaps it is because I didn't really like Icy and that left me feeling ambivalent about it.