“There are things happening inside me that I don’t even have words for, and I usually have words for everything, even if I don’t say them out loud. A shiver suddenly breaks us apart. A sharp chill rushes through me, when just a second ago, I was warmer than I’d ever been. My teeth start chattering.” 

this book was so good in so many ways, and the second contemporary book to ever make me sob after all the bright places by jennifer niven. and i mean genuinely, it made me cry so many times throughout the chapters. but it also made me laugh a lot of times as well; this is definitely a book i’d recommend to almost anyone, and i never say this. i personally feel like everyone has a preference and everyone has a genre they stick to or fall in love with, but this is one of those few occasions where i’d recommend it to almost anyone.

from losing grandparents to uncles and aunts, i know grief is a hard thing to put on paper; the wave of emotions that hit you is stronger than anything and putting all your thoughts into words can be hard; having someone you love deeply die is one of the hardest things we have to face as creatures with intense emotions. i feel like this book somehow made me feel all of it firsthand. i did lose my grandparents at a very young age, but i recently lost someone near and dear to me, so i know the feeling of not knowing what to do, who to turn to, and what to say.

“It could be disappointment, too, Tiger, and you need to prepare yourself for that. But if it’s disappointing, it doesn’t have to be devastating, does that make sense? Life has this, life has that, and then something else comes along again, like a wave. We ride the waves. You go down, you go up, you go down, sometimes you just drift.” 

althought i myself have never experienced foster care or anything in the lieks of it, i still felt like i could relate to the intense fear and sadness of the main character when put through it. as someone who deals with a disability and mental illness, i felt like it made sense to me, all of it, how out of control of everything you feel, like everythings been taken away from you and theres nothing you can do but watch.

speaking of, even a large portion of the book is about the main character struggling with depression and, dare i say, suicidal thoughts; it is never directly said but its heavily implied and obvious in one instance. the author is very good at bringing up the two things people love telling you when going through a hard time: ‘stay strong’ and ‘things will get better’; again, it made me feel so many things, especially because i know how that feels, and i cant stress enough how well the author put it into words on paper, because god knows i would never be able to comprehend my own thoughts like that.

“Sometimes you need to open yourself to the possibility of the miraculous, Tiger Tolliver. Sometimes you just do.” 

i loved this book, and i loved how brutally honest it was. im not much of a contemporary reader, but i will pick one up here and there, and sometimes they’ll surprise me and i’ll love them as deeply as this one. instead of teaching us to be optimistic and to tell ourselves to be positive all the time, it teaches us that its okay to accept things the way they are; life is hard, and thats okay, being in pain doesnt necessarily mean its the end of the world, it just means youre human and you feel. all you have to do is learn how to get through it.