3.5/5 stars.

Last week, I was snowed in while on vacation in Idaho and I only brought my ipad with me. My library has a limited amount of books that you can check out in ebook form, and this book was the first one that I found on my TBR shelf that was available. When I was younger, Cynthia Hand was one of my favorite authors ever. I’ve met her two times. She has been a huge inspiration to my writing journey. I was a little nervous going into this book because I haven’t read one of her books in four years. When picking this up, there were so many thoughts going through my mind. Like: “What happens if I don’t like the book?” and “Will my opinion of her writing change if this isn’t my favorite book?” I was really nervous, but in the end, I really am glad that I read it.

This book was not easy to read. It’s about a girl who’s brother commits suicide. It’s not supposed to be an easy book to read. I knew that this book was possibly going to be very emotional for me because I have had people in my family commit suicide. And, to an extent, this book really did hit a few of those pressure points. Cynthia Hand does a really great job of describing the weird feeling of how everything continues when a love one dies. I think that’s something that we don’t see very often in Young Adult, which made this book really refreshing. A lot of the time in YA, when someone dies, everyone around that person kinda checks out from life for a while. That is a very valid and real way that people can respond to the death of a loved one, but that was not the experience that I had. It was really nice to read about an experience that I could relate to. It was nice to see Alexis struggle with going on. It was nice to see her go to counseling. This was one of my favorite things because counseling was a huge factor (and is still) in my mental health after my loved ones died.

With all that being said, it took me a while to actually connect to Alexis. I connected to the process and the way in which she was doing things, but I did not actually connect with her until halfway into the book. Her diary entries are what really helped me get to that turning point with her. She was really closed off to the rest of the world and it was great to be able to see what she was feeling every once in a while.

I really liked the experiences that I was able to have with this book, but I cannot say that it was my favorite book. As I get older, I realize that YA is not written for me and that I may not connect with it as much as I would have when I was younger. That does not mean that I will not identify with YA books or that I can’t like them, but I just realize that it’s okay if I don’t connect with them as much as I would have when I was younger. That was the case with this book. I think that if I would have read it when I was younger, I would have been all over it, but right now, I’m not, and that’s okay. I’m happy that I picked it up because it really was a good experience.