‘I love you. I’m sorry for what I did to you. I’m going to write it all down, explain everything that happened, why I broke your heart, and then I’m going to email it to you. I will be waiting for you at 5 p.m. Friday by the windmill hole at the crazy golf at the Pier where we played once. If you still want me then, when you’re done reading this, come and get me. OK? Consider this the most … screwed up love letter ever.’So begins Nick Lake’s brilliant tour de force romance which introduces readers to Cassie, a New Jersey Shore teen who, over the course of one summer, experiences the exhilarating highs of new love, the frightening free falls of personal demons and family tragedy, and the bumps along the way to forgiveness, acceptance, and self-discovery. Told entirely through flashbacks, readers will savour every moment of Cassie’s relationship with a boardwalk boy and race to the last page to discover how it all ends.
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I thought that this book was very well done. I have had this book in my review pile for years now but for some reason never picked it up. I decided to finally give it a try and went into the story rather blindly since the only thing that I remembered about the book was that it was a YA story. It turns out that this is a story about dealing with mental illness, grief, romance, and even a bit of a mystery. I am glad that I finally read this emotional story.
This is a rather long book at 544 pages and it tells a big story. I started reading this book as I went to bed and planned to read one chapter before setting it aside to go to sleep. This book is not broken up into chapters like I am used to seeing. The book is broken up into two sections but there are breaks within each of the sections. The story is told as if it were a letter that Cassie is writing to the boy she hopes will give her a second chance.
There is a lot that happens in this book. A lot of those things don’t occur until the second half of the story so it would be a bit of a spoiler to discuss those plot points in this review but I did appreciate the way that many later events were foreshadowed in the first part of the book. The first part of the book focuses almost entirely on the evolution of Cassie’s mental illness. She describes when the voices start and exactly what they make her do. I felt her anguish and couldn’t imagine living with that kind of pain. She has quite the journey as she receives treatment for her condition.
The book also follows Cassie as she deals with moving forward in her life with her illness. We do learn more about her past and the trauma that may have played a part in the development of her condition. We also get to see Cassie making friends and even getting to know the boy that she is writing the letter to. I loved getting to see Cassie having some fun and experiencing some of those typical teenage milestones. The relationship between Cassie and her father wasn’t perfect, not at all, but it felt genuine. They both have a lot of pain, and more than a few issues, and don’t always know the best way to interact with each other.
I would recommend this book to others. This was quite the emotional journey and I thought that the mental health aspect of the story was very well done. I wouldn’t hesitate to read more of Nick Lake’s work in the future.
I received a digital review copy of this book from Bloomsbury USA Children’s Books via NetGalley.
its amazing but i hated the the ending