Tag: loss

Book Review: In Search of Us, by Ava Dellaira

Title: In Search of Us
Author: Ava Dellaira
Genre: Young Adult
Rating: 4/5

In LA in the late 1990s, Marilyn is a pretty 17-year-old with a mom who has ambitions; she expects Marilyn to make it big in Hollywood, so Marilyn can support them. But her mother never asks what Marilyn wants: going away to college and becoming a photographer. With Marilyn landing fewer jobs, they soon find themselves living with Marilyn’s unpredictable uncle.

Marilyn is just biding her time, living for graduation, when her “real” life will start. Then she meets James, the boy who lives downstairs. James shows her how to live in the now.

In the present, Angie has a single mom, a dead father she never met, and no one to help her sort out her identity. With her brown skin and curly hair, she looks nothing like her mom, and she knows nothing about her father. Then Angie finds out her mother has been lying to her all along, and she sets out on a road trip to LA with her best friend, Sam, hoping to discover who she really is.

In Search of Us is an emotional story about family, love, and finding yourself. These two stories are entwined seamlessly, and I’m not sure which I was more emotionally invested in, Marilyn’s or Angie’s. Both feel like their mothers don’t understand them, and both want more out of life. Marilyn is struggling to break her mother’s hold on her, and Angie struggles to find her father in more than just a single old picture. Racism is a strong theme here, portrayed honesty and realistically, with a large helping of grief. I was in tears by the end, and this book made my heart ache, as well as being so vivid I felt like I was a part of the story.

Ava Dellaira is the author of Love Letters to the Dead. In Search of Us is her newest novel.

(Galley provided by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR) in exchange for an honest review.)

Book Review: A Short History of the Girl Next Door, by Jared Reck

ash — Image belongs to Knopf Books for Young Readers.

Matt Wainright has lived in the same cul-de-sac as long as he can remember. His best friend, Tabby, has always lived just across the street. They’re inseparable, and Matt can’t imagine anything ever changing. Except his feelings for Tabby. Matt never saw that coming, and he has no idea how to tell her, but he will. Probably. Until a senior basketball star falls for Tabby, and suddenly everything changes.

Now his best friend is always too busy, and instead of shining on the JV basketball court, Matt finds himself fumbling. Even his younger brother is driving him crazy. Only his favorite class, creative writing, seems to make any sense. Then a tragedy occurs, and Matt can’t make sense of anything, as his life spins out of control and he teeters on the edge of self-destruction.

I was not prepared for this book. At all. I loved Matt’s voice from the very beginning. (With that movie-director voice in his head, of course he’s going to be a writer.) He has grand visions of himself, but his follow-through doesn’t always live up to his hype. This book captures the hope and the confusion of high school, as well as the gobsmacked feeling of first love. I laughed, I hoped, and I cried, right along with Matt. You MUST read this! I’m looking forward to seeing what Jared Reck writes next.

Jared Reck is a teacher who writes alongside of his middle school students. A Short History of the Girl Next Door is his debut novel.

(Galley provided by Knopf Books for Young Readers/Random House in exchange for an honest review.)

More reviews at <a href=” https://tamaramorning.com/”>Tomorrow is Another Day</a>

The Rules Do Not Apply, by Ariel Levy

Ariel Levy is a staff writer for the New Yorker. Her newest novel is The Rules Do Not Apply.

Ariel Levy grew up watching her mother come alive for a man besides her husband, and then watching that relationship stall out after her parents’ marriage ended. It was only after the end of these two relationships that her mother—eventually—found herself. Ariel decides she will love whomever she wants—and proceeds to do that, disregarding the fact that the other woman is already in a relationship when they meet.

A few years later, Ariel is pregnant, married, and secure in her own life when she heads to Mongolia to cover a story. When she returns, she is none of those things. Reeling from her loss, she discovers her partner’s alcoholism, which is too much for her to deal with. So, Ariel must decide—once again—what she wants, so she can go after it.

The writing in The Rules Do Not Apply is solid and evocative, but the author seems to be keenly analytical of other people’s flaws…and not her own. She went through a horrifying experience, one no woman should ever have to experience, and dealing with that grief is the most honest part of this book. The rest of the novel seems more about blame and veiled criticism of others, along with some scathingly accurate cultural analysis.

(Novel provided by Random House via NetGalley.)

Traveling with Ghosts, by Shannon Leone Fowler

traveling-with-ghosts-9781501107795 — Image belongs to Simon and Schuster.

Shannon Leone Fowler is a marine biologist who has traveled and worked all over the world, and studied everything from sea lions to killer whales. Traveling with Ghosts is her first book.

Shannon Leone Fowler, marine biologist, loved backpacking all over the world almost as much as she loved her fiancé, Sean, an Australian who shared her love of travel. In summer of 2002, they were in Thailand, when a box jellyfish, the most venous animal in the world, stung Sean, killing him in minutes as Shannon watched. While the authorities tried to label Sean’s death a “drunk drowning,” two Israeli women helped Shannon wade through the red tape to bring Sean’s body home to Australia, to the family he’d left behind and that she was no longer a part of.

Reeling from Sean’s death, Shannon returned home to America, but could no longer make sense of her world. So, she decided to travel as she searched for healing. Poland, Israel, Bosnia, Romania…all places she’d never been with Sean, but she could not escape his memory. Finally, she ended up in Barcelona, where she first met Sean, and confronted the ocean, which took her love away.

Traveling with Ghosts is an immensely personal memoir, about a harrowing loss and a woman’s struggles to heal. The narrative switches between Shannon’s travels after Sean’s death, the fateful trip to Thailand, and their travels when they first met. Her grief coats every page with a patina of sorrow, as she struggles to find a way to deal with her loss.

(Galley provided by Simon & Schuster via NetGalley.)

But You Did Not Come Back, by Marceline Loridan-Ivens

Marceline Loridan-Ivens is a French writer and film director. Her memoir, But You Did Not Come Back, is available on January 5^th, 2015.

When Marceline was fifteen, she and her father were arrested by the government. He told her that he would not come back. They were sent to concentration camps, he to Auschwitz, and she to Birkenau. The three kilometers separating them might as well have been a million. Occasional glimpses of her father kept her going, but the note he managed to get to her kept her hope alive even in her horrendous, terrifying surroundings. She made it out of the camp alive and came home. Her father did not come back.

But You Did Not Come Back is a novella-length letter that Marceline wrote to her father, the man she never knew as an adult. Her experiences in the concentration camp colored the rest of her life, and through it all, her father’s memory lived on, her grief over him shadowing every day. Eventually, Marceline found her calling as an activist for refuges and as a documentary filmmaker.

Her heart-wrenching tale is filled with emotion and sorrow, grief and determination, in this memoir of one of the darkest times in history.

(Galley provided by Grove Atlantic via NetGalley.)

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