Just a book loving girl, wanting to share it with the world. When life fell apart, books got me through it. Maybe they can help you too. I'm here to review books and talk about life. The good and the bad.
* I received a copy of this from the publisher and NetGalley (thank you) all opinions are my own.*
This is my 5th draft of a review for this book. Sometimes books are put into our lives that we just KNOW we were meant to read. Those rare ones that you never know how to put into words. Here we are… on the struggle scooter.
Truth is, I’ve been avoiding everything this book made me feel for a long time now. I’ll explain later.
This book is about a girl named Olivia Foster whose little brother drowned in the backyard pool 3 years ago, pretty much taking the whole family with him.
Her mom is a shell of a person, barely existent, drugging her feelings away on any prescription pills she can get her hands on.
Dad is nonexistent, working late nights and emotionally unavailable.
As for Olivia? She’s just… there.
She acknowledges her desolation constantly, but her numbness keeps her from connecting it as a feeling.
Her house has become a tomb, 3 hurting people, so overwhelmed with grief that they’ve disconnected from every aspect in life, including each other.
I already knew from chapter 1 in this book that I was in trouble. I had to tame my fight or flight urge to push it away.
See, I WAS Olivia. I AM Olivia. I was Olivia when at 15 the only close family member I had decided to shoot himself at school and my family refused to talk about it because it’d upset my grandma who had already lost a son to suicide. A few months later, she suffered a stroke that left her unable to walk or speak and I was expected to watch her disintegration for 6 years acting strong so I didn’t upset her up until she died. She was the only mom I ever had.
Everything Olivia thought and how she reacted was like looking back at a mirror of myself. My heart hurt for her.
In the book, a family of women move in across the street including a girl Olivia’s age named Kara. She’s mysterious and risky. She’s a bad influence, keeps serial killers as pen pals and is obsessed with death. Instead of repelling Olivia, she’s drawn in. Why? Because FINALLY! Someone not afraid to talk about it!!!
It’d be really easy to be judgmental and say that Kara is a toxic friend. (She is, but I mean, she’s flawed. Like us all.) She’s manipulative, sometimes cruel; but she has a PURPOSE in Olivia’s life: to bring her back from the dead.
I think it doesn’t matter so much the means by which we start to awaken again, even if we DO make some really bad choices, or veer off track for a bit. Because those are human mistakes.
And when you’re wrapped up in your PTSD cocoon of numb indifference to everything, you may as well not be human.
Trust me, I know. I’ve been fighting to come back to life for a while now. My last Apocalypse took everything I was and tossed it into the ether. Including the old me. The new me hides from feelings and fights off the numbness every day.
We all need a Kara to shake things up sometimes. I guess in a way this book was my Kara.
This book is a raw look at the cataclysmic destruction that trauma and grief can do to a family, and strangely, the beauty of clawing your way through it. Only the REAL way. Not the pretty way.
Ava Morgyn has a poetic style of writing that gets me right in the feels. I love that.
I would recommend this to anyone who has actually experienced REAL pain and loss. I feel like this is a book you’ll either really get, or you won’t.
As for me, I REALLY got it. I mean, I’m pretty sure she wrote it just FOR me. 😉
Inkandpaperwanderlust 