She didn't tell me it was going to be okay. I knew in that moment that things would be forever different-that today was going to be a day that split my life into before and after.
ALL THE FEELINGS.
I've never had to put a book down so many times just because I didn't want to face all the emotion it was making me feel. And the weird thing was, I'd put it down and have to pick it back up within five or ten minutes. It's like I didn't want to face the emotion of the book but I was so in love with it and wanted to keep reading.
The only thing that stopped me from crying was the fact that my boyfriend was in the room with me. Plus all the times I stopped reading to compose myself.
This was personally the hardest book I've read in a while. TFIOS made me a little emotional but I didn't find it that hard to read. A Monster Calls was only hard for a few pages which made it easier to get through. This book almost demolished me, about fifty times.
From the beginning of the book, you learn that Taylor and her family are going to spend their summer at their old summerhouse. You also learn that they haven't been there in five years and the reason they're returning is because Taylor's father has been told he only has a few months left to live. He has stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
Taylor and her family go to the summerhouse and Taylor has to face up to a couple of mistakes she made when she was 12, when she hurt two people she cared for, her best friend Lucy and boyfriend Henry. She has had no contact with either since then and now has to deal with living next door to Henry and working with Lucy, when both of them seem like they couldn't care less about her existence.
She also starts spending genuine one-on-one time with her father, sneaking away in the mornings to get breakfast together, learning about each other.
Less than half way through, I started choking up at the smallest things. I quickly fell in love with the characters and their quirks and especially fell for Taylor and her dad. In particular, the relationship they were forming.
The puns. The licorice. The breakfasts. The pushing her empty coffee cup to the edge of the table so it would get re-filled. The ice cream. Murphy the dog. The facts. The dock. The buttercream icing. The skittles. The stars. Casablanca. The listening to the other person breathe.
I loved this book. I immediately put this on my "to read" list last year when I finished Amy and Roger's Epic Detour, which I loved. I was worried that I wouldn't really like this one as much. I was silly to worry. I think I might have loved this book more that AaRED. I at least love it just as much. It's debateable which one I love more. I love them for different reasons. This one made me feel much more, while I found AaRED more fun.
I recommend this to anyone and everyone. I can't deny the power it had on me or how much it made my heart break. Completely broken. For half the book, I was on the verge of tears. These characters made me feel so much and all the little things made it all seem so real.
“So,” he continued, taking a sip of his coffee, “I used to just stand in your doorway, listening to you breathe. Making sure that you were still with us. Just counting your breaths until I was convinced that you were sticking with us for a bit.”
Have any of you read this yet? Let me know what you thought!
Lisa x
