I really enjoyed a previous book by Amber Smith, so when I saw this on the shelf at the library, I jumped. And I was not disappointed.
Brooke feels like her life is about to begin for real. She's been accepted at a great school for her last two years of high school and feels like she is finally on track to live her dream: get a college scholarship and get out of town. She has the grades and the drive and nothing is going to stop her.
Then her mother is arrested after murdering her father.
It's a shock. Her dad has always been abusive, but Brooke never thought her mother would do anything but forgive him and make excuses the way she has for years. No one knows exactly what happened, even Brooke's younger sister who saw the whole thing happen.
Suddenly, Brooke's world is in turmoil and rather than getting through her summer reading list, she's staying with her mother's best friend she never knew existed, picking her sister up from a therapist's office and meeting a grandmother she's long assumed to be dead. Plus, dealing with her older brother who fled the house a few years earlier to move in with his girlfriend rather than face their father's continual abuse.
I thought this book was very realistic in the way it portrays the long-term effects f living in an abusive home. Brooke has always hated her family's dynamic, yet is the most unable of her siblings to give up on keeping the family together as best she can. When she forces her brother to move back into their apartment and act as guardian to her and her sister, I knew it was not going to work out.
Alongside the family struggles, Brooke's clumsy attempts at first love and finding friends at her new school plays out in a very realistic way. As someone who has been keeping their home life struggles a secret her whole life, Brooke's inability to open up to the girl she likes is wholly realistic. And as the secrets pile up, her increasingly desperate attempts at holding what's left of her family together have a devastating effect on not just her, but everyone around her.
It's not an easy read. It's actually quite harrowing in places, but that's what makes it so strikingly realistic. Brooke is so stubbornly a teenager, despite all the responsibility she takes, and her inability to foresee the consequences of her actions is very realistic.
So, I'd recommend this one if, like me, you enjoy gritty, realistic stories about characters going through traumatic things.
But don't just listen to me.
Here's the blurb:
How do you let go of something you’ve never had?
Junior year for Brooke Winters is supposed to be about change. She’s transferring schools, starting fresh, and making plans for college so she can finally leave her hometown, her family, and her past behind.
But all of her dreams are shattered one hot summer afternoon when her mother is arrested for killing Brooke’s abusive father. No one really knows what happened that day, if it was premeditated or self-defense, whether it was right or wrong. And now Brooke and her siblings are on their own.
In a year of firsts—the first year without parents, first love, first heartbreak, and her first taste of freedom—Brooke must confront the shadow of her family’s violence and dysfunction, as she struggles to embrace her identity, finds her true place in the world, and learns how to let go.
No comments:
Post a Comment