Goede representatie

“People are complicated beings, Brennan. We break, we fall, we piece ourselves together again. We tear relationships apart, and we glue them back together. Maybe it’s not always perfect, and by nature happy endings come after a lot of crap. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t happy endings. And you’ll never know if you don’t try, because the happiest endings always require some kind of effort on our part.”

I had heard a lot of great things about this book in terms of representation. This book, like the description says, deals with some heavy and delicate issues. Anxiety and PTSD are definitely subjects that need to be talked about in a good way, to show people what it’s like. Especially these stories with teens as main characters, it’s really important to really impact the readers and even make them relate or think differently about these mental illnesses.

Anxiety has a lot of different forms, but I related a lot to Brennan. The anxiety in this book was described in such a great way that I could really feel it, as if it grabbed me by the throat. Really confronting and handled in a really unique way.

I know a little less about PTSD so I’m not going to dive deep in on that because I really can’t speak about things I don’t know much about. I thought it was represented great and I’ve heard that it is as well. It made me really want to find out more about PTSD.

But apart from these well done representations, we had a plot. This book was slow paced, like really.
Sometimes I was just really frustrated because I felt like nothing interesting was happening. I was getting bored and really wanted to put this book away at some point, but I still had this sparkling hope inside of me.

The thing that really did it for me were the characters. Jonas and Brennan have been through a lot and I didn’t really see them as stereotypical, which is a good sign. How their world collided was really heart-warming, but the most important thing to me was that they had a life outside of their relationship. They were really developed characters with trust issues and a lot of insecurities, but that’s not it. You don’t get a love story, it’s so much more than that!

I think I would enjoy this more if I reread it, because of the fact that I might appreciate the “boring” parts a bit more. There’s something about this story that just makes me want to reread it immediately, so it probably won’t take too long.

Even though I had a lot of problems with the pacing, I still really enjoyed this book and its characters. A 3.5/5 for me!

I was provided with an e-arc by the publisher and Netgalley.

Love,
Alissa