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I know that depression and anxiety have many, many different representations. And I gotta say, I loved the way this book portrayed them. As someone with both, I thought it was a great representation. Realistic, frustrating, and just doing your best. How is that in the same book as “If this is what it is to burn, he thought, then I will be worth more as scattered ash than any of my unscathed pieces.” This story you get the strong sense of family that both Claire and Jake feel towards their respective families and towards each other. You have fully developed characters with depth and soul. You finally get to know the Walker brothers as caring men with good hearts instead of the bravado of book one. You feel their shared grief from losing their mother and the healing that is slowly taking place in all of them after the loss of the person that literally saved them with her love.
This book was an incoherent mess (intentional I know) that deserves an incoherent mess of a review. Here we go. Calling in a favor from an old friend and getting her daughter a week-long stay in the luxe guesthouse of a gorgeous home in the California desert — all for free. These two fell in love with each other in third grade. When graduation came Claire left to follow her dream of becoming an Archeologist while Jake stayed on his mothers farm. Claire didn’t want their love to become hate filled so she left, as she couldn’t see herself settling down and raising a family when she wanted to discover the world. Jake wanted a family and a life with Claire on his farm. The farm was as much of a part of him as Archeology was for Claire. Instead of trying to figure out how to make it work they both walked away from each other for seven years.Jake and Claire loved each other from young kids. Jake wanted the stay at home wife and kids. Claire wanted more she wanted a career and she chose to have it she left Jake and became an archeologist and went on digs in many countries. On one of her digs her mother calls and tells her her dad was thrown from a horse. The dynamics between Austin and Eloise were PERFECT. Reverse grumpy x sunshine at its finest. I loved the way they balanced each other out and the way they went from strangers to friends to having a relationship was so sweet. Filled with some teenage drama and a little bit of angst, I thought it was great for the YA category (and there’s only kisses!). Pond” examines a father’s conflicted feelings about his twenty-something daughter who is autistic and little more than a child herself when she gets pregnant during an unsupervised moment at her day care facility. The grandchild, who is completely healthy and normal, makes his affection for Martha more complicated. Burton’s relationship with Martha and with his grandson reveals itself as something more than he had supposed in the wake of a near disaster. They had come halfway around the world to have “an experience.” And yet, there were moments when she felt more ephemeral than ever, when the gaudiness of this experience-hoarding made her all the more unsure of what it meant to be living. This is a love story, but not a love story, because it's complex, it shatters, it sometimes has jagged edges, which gives everything life. Which gives life to love.
What I really liked about this book compared to the first one in the series was the depth of the characters. You could feel the excitement when Claire discovered a new artifact you lived her discovery with her. With Jake you felt how grounded the farm made him you felt his to the animals and the pleasure and joy he felt in this slower paced world. Marisa Silver is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel, Mary Coin (published by Blue Rider Press, March 7th, 2013). My only downside was the cursing. It just felt too much, personally, for a young adult novel. I would have liked to see the characters not limit their language in that way.
BookBrowse Review
i really enjoyed the philosophical discussions within the book. they were quite interesting and thought provoking, as well as endearing. i found myself looking forward to hearing their thoughts on different theories and ideas and learning something new. His clarity rendered her speechless. How could she have known that the bed thing she would never recover from would be love?" There was nothing worse than being predictable. Nothing smaller than feeling ordinary. Nothing more disappointing than being reminded she was both. Alone with you is a fantastic collection of short stories that will give readers insights into the human psyche, whether it is evoked by the characters, or the secondary figures. These often dryly humorous stories are introspective in an unsentimental way, making them all the more powerful, while overall, Marisa Silver’s work remains humble yet moving, lending it strength and significance. Their personalities had two or three distinct traits and little to nothing else to cling onto, as a reader, as we meander throughout their relationship that seems all consuming to them, but, as an outsider, deeply confused me because they speak for hours on hand but manage to say nothing in the process. Their connection is superficial and deeply obsessive (they both don’t have a single friend and barely reach out to their family because they are all consumed by each other), and it concerns me that their ending connection feels like a triumph when they are not in a good place to be in a relationship.
I could study you for a lifetime, carrying all of your peculiarities and discretions in the webs of my spidery palms, and still feel empty-handed.” Claire has always loved Jake but she knew she wouldn't be happy staying on the ranch with a family. She loves digging up the past and traveling the world. She knew she couldn't stay with Jake or she would regret not following her dream. Then she gets a phone call from her mother telling her father has had a horse riding accident and Claire is needed at home. Claire comes home but she dreads meeting Jake again. She ends up having to take their horses to board at Jake's ranch and meets Jake. Their feelings are as strong as ever. Jake offers her a three week fling to help them get over their feelings and Claire agrees. The problem is just a few nights just makes them want each other more. Will they ever figure out a way to merge their two worlds? What I didn't love: entirely too much strong language for a YA book, and sometimes I don't love the I hate everyone but you. I hope Lou learns from her mistakes and starts reacting with more kindness towards others (mainly her family and siblings)...I just don't like when rudeness is justified. As for Marianne, she’s an absolute icon and I loved her dearly. I’ll take no criticism of Marianne, please and thank you. There were a couple of instances of “telling instead of showing”. They were very well implemented, don’t get me wrong! The only reason I’m complaining is bc I kind of wanted to see some of those things played out lol (like them planning their Halloween movie night, Austin meeting Eloise’s family, etc – these things were mentioned, but we didn’t actually *see* them happen). I just liked these characters so much that I wanted more 😅.
Book Summary
i can’t even put into words how much i not only loved this book but connected to it. olivie puts into words the thoughts and feelings i feel that i myself can’t find the words for. how tf can someone write something so captivating?!? But, Jake is determined to have her again, even if it's only for the three weeks she's going to be in town. So when he proposes no strings sex for those three weeks, who is Claire to deny herself some sexy times with the man she has always loved? No matter that it will break both their hearts because nothing has changed between them. She still wants to be free to travel all over the world, digging up ancient artifacts. He still wants to live and die on his ranch, have a bunch of kids, and a happy homemaker wife waiting for him. While this book isn't necessarily a romance for me, its been a long time since I felt so connected to the characters AND the connection between them. They're so special to me. Their connection is so special to me. The way they love each other, the way they know each other ahhsjajajjak I am utterly, wholly, completely ruined by this book and aldoregan. So this is what it is to love something you cannot control, he thought. It felt precisely like terror.’
There was only one thing I disliked, which is minuscule and became a less of an issue the further I got into the book. In the beginning, the wording was a bit repetitive when describing Austin as “golden retriever energy”. It happened often in the beginning and slowly died off. I noticed “chain smoked” was used often as well, but wasn’t as bad. i know it says a love story on the front, but this book is very much about mental health + choosing to not be medicated for mental health conditions. it was a hard read for me, but a very impactful one. and olivie blake just is just such a talented author and the sentences she is able to string together, about really dark and hard to talk about things, really resonated with me in a way other words just never have before.For Regan and Aldo, life has been a matter of resigning themselves to the blueprints of inevitability—until the two meet. Could six conversations with a stranger be the variable that shakes up the entire simulation?
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