Book Talk Review; Left Drowning

 It's Thursday!

 

 

 

 

 What does it take to rise from life’s depths, swim against the current, and breathe?

 Weighted down by the loss of her parents, Blythe McGuire struggles to keep her head above water as she trudges through her last year at Matthews College.

 

 Then a chance meeting sends Blythe crashing into something she doesn’t expect—an undeniable attraction to a dark-haired senior named Chris Shepherd, whose past may be even more complicated than her own. 

 

 As their relationship deepens, Chris pulls Blythe out of the stupor she’s been in since the night a fire took half her family. 

 

 She begins to heal, and even, haltingly, to love this guy who helps her find new paths to pleasure and self-discovery. 

 

 But as Blythe moves into calmer waters, she realizes Chris is the one still strangled by his family’s traumatic history. 

 

 As dark currents threaten to pull him under, Blythe may be the only person who can keep him from drowning.

 *This book is intended for mature audiences due to strong language and sexual content.

 

 I love this book. It is so touching, it is so heartbreaking. It's about life and love and struggling to keep above the harsh current as life weighs you down. 

 

 Blythe is drowning. After losing her parents in a horrific fire she can barely pull herself through the day and she is just living in a perpetual state of numbness. 

 Then one day she meets someone. Someone who is also battling the demons inside and out, someone who's ghosts are more dangerous and torturing than Blythe could ever imagine. 

 Chris and Blythe grow closer as Blythe is thrown into the life of the Shepherds. The siblings are close and they take Blythe in as one of their own. 

 

 As Chris and Blythe grow closer Blythe begins to heal. It's an unexplained healing, but something about Chris pulls all the bad out and exposes it. Forcing Blythe to accept the pain of her past and to finally move on. 

 

 But the same happens to Chris. He can't accept the past like Blythe is learning to. 

 

 As the two become more deeply involved and eventually they lose the fight and fall in love. Something neither of them ever wanted.  

 Chris begins to pull away shutting out their possible involvement before it even gets started. 

 When Blythe feels that Chris is falling too far and too hard, she tries to break through and help him as he helped her. 

 Will she be able to save him from himself and his past. Or will the suffering he experienced for years drag him under? 

 I cried hard during this book. Both Chris and Blythe's stories are hard ones, they are ones built on pain and heartache. They need each other but resit the pull that happens when the other is around. 

 But when Blythe gives in can she convince Chris that what they need to stay afloat is each other? 

 This book ripped at my heartstrings. It is a tough book to read. But so beautifully done. I cried so hard for both Blythe and Chris. I loved this book so much. 

 All the characters where beautifully written. This is the first Jessica book that I've read and I am so glad that I did because it was so amazing. 

 I love all the Shepherds. I love how close they are and how they try to ban together. It breaks my heart that they had the past that they did. It hurts that they are so traumatized by the past that none of them can quite let it go. 

 Jessica is a brilliant writer who took such heavy subject matter and made a beautiful book with it. 

 *Quote- "We run through the remnants of our pain, and more importantly, we run for our present and our future." -Blythe

                "We can't change the past and the choices that we've made." - Blythe

For...

 Jessica's Author Talk: http://realtalkbooktalk.blogspot.com/2014/07/book-talk-jessica-park.html

 Flat-Out-Love's Book Talk: http://realtalkbooktalk.blogspot.com/2014/07/book-talk-review-flat-out-love.html

 

-Abri