Alluring Reads

This review is probably going to be an incoherent jumble of feelings that I can’t translate eloquently into words so there are some things I want to just throw at you in the beginning to make sure that I get my point across. This book. This book is everything that I want in a book; this book is about love and it is so full of heart that I found myself teary eyed pretty much once in every chapter. This book is full of amazing characters and amazing relationships; it is bleak, it is honest, and it is a novel that will definitely stick with me for a long time to come. Carey and Janessa are girls who have grown up living in a camper in a national forest most of their lives. There they live with their mother, but not really because she is a meth addict who disappears for weeks (sometimes months) at a time leaving Carey in charge of feeding her younger sister & herself and in charge of bringing Janessa up. The way that these girls lived is terrible. They freeze in the winters and often find themselves eating nothing but beans for days, it was shocking to see all the things that they went through growing up. Not only do they live under harsh conditions but the people that their meth addict mother brought into their life and the things she made them do to feed her meth addiction are disgusting and had me so angry that addictions like this exist. The desperation of users to get their next fix is frightening and it puts everyone around them in danger as they are used as pawns. We get most of this part of the story through memories that Carey has throughout the novel, the real story here is when they are found and taken to live with Carey’s father on his farm.The transition to living in civilization is what really brings these characters to life for me. The bond that Carey and Janessa formed in their years of living in the wild and Carey essentially raising her younger sister is beautiful. Once they are found that bond remains and Nessa really looks to Carey for how to react and deal with everything that is going on. I loved Carey, my heart broke for her situation but she had such a big heart & her undying devotion to her younger sister made everything OK. Even in their dismal situation in the forest their relationship brought light to their life and really got them through it. Nessa was an adorable character and through her mutism we learn that something pretty bad happened that made her lose her voice. What really blew me away here was how Nessa felt like such a developed and well rounded character and for much of the novel the girl didn’t even talk. I loved her and I wanted to cuddle her. We see through Carey how she can read everything about her younger sister without words and it’s really beautiful. I also really liked Carey’s father and his wife Melissa, the effort that they put into helping the girls is so great and you really just felt the love they had for them so much in every page of this novel. There is no way that this review will ever do this book justice and I don’t even want to think about how many times I used the word love in it but everything I think about this book is love. The characters, the relationships, just everything. There are some pretty shocking scenes, ones that are so hard to read but looking back on it love just conquers all and is what I took away from it. Read this book people, and have some tissues at the ready. An Advanced Reader's Copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.__You can read all of my reviews at Alluring Reads.