wow wow wow. it took me a hot minute to get my thoughts in order. as soon as i finished the book, i just sat on the couch and stared up at the ceiling. even as i’m writing this review, i’m having trouble putting this into words.

i am absolutely FLOORED by this book. bennett tackled such heavy themes (abortion, church hypocrisy, death of a parent) with such great detail and skill that it just wrecked me. the writing was beautiful (as you can see from all of my highlights) but not distracting. it was concise but packed with raw emotion. i felt sad the entire time—not necessarily because of nadia’s mom’s suicide or the abortion. but because of the melancholic tone that bennett chose to write in. the tone was not only melancholic, but it was also full of *yearning for peace.* nadia was just a girl full of sadness and just wanted inner peace. she was lost.

this is a story where well-meaning hurt people hurt people. no one is evil or selfish. no one has bad character. they’re good people but loss and pain have jaded them. and out of this jadedness, they retaliate and hurt people in order to find some kind of peace. we see this with nadia, luke, and aubrey. we see this with nadia’s father. we even see this in “the mothers” (the church ladies). out of hurt, people hurt others. sometimes there are devastating consequences.

this is a painful book, and extremely realistic. this isn’t one of those books that end well for everyone, where people get closure. but such is life. in life, we hurt others and we ourselves are hurt. sometimes we get closure, but most of the time we don’t. we have to do our best to be good people regardless.

i can’t praise this book enough. i feel absolutely devastated. this is definitely a top book FOR SURE.

read this if you liked “normal people” by sally rooney and “sula” by toni morrison.