Pages: 229
Publication Date: September 25, 2009
Type: Paperback, bought
Dear Caitlin, there are so many things that i want so badly to tell you but i just can't.
Devastating, hopeful, hopeless, playful . . . in words and illustrations, Ingrid left behind a painful farewell in her journal for Caitlin. Now Caitlin is left alone, by loss and by choice, struggling to find renewed hope in the wake of her best friend's suicide. With the help of family and newfound friends, Caitlin will encounter first love, broaden her horizons, and start to realize that true friendship didn't die with Ingrid. And the journal which once seemed only to chronicle Ingrid's descent into depression, becomes the tool by which Caitlin once again reaches out to all those who loved Ingrid - and Caitlin herself.
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I want to say so much about this book, but no matter how eloquent I try to be, it won't be enough. This is just one of those books, I suppose? One of those books that I can't review, that I can't dissect and analyze or simply shout "I love it!"
I can't. I can't do that to a book like this.
To be honest, I don't think anything I say will fully communicate this. This book. This everything. My review will never be able to express what this book is, and what it does.
All I can say is that this book is real.
It's so real it's painful. It's so real that you pause, double back, make sure that this is fiction, that there is no Dylan no Maddy no Tyler no Caitlin no Ingrid. That these people, their world, it doesn't quite exist.
Even those stories where I praise the beautiful three-dimensional characters, their faults and their assets and their everything, those stories where I say, If I just looked out the window, I could see them there. Walking along. Living their lives.
They're not this.
This is not a story glossed up and prettied and toned down, a story written to appeal to the masses, to make some dramatic point, to have some transcendental meaning. It's a girl and the loss of the one person who knew her best. It's a girl and new friends, new love, real family. It's a girl dealing with grief and anger and hope and life.
This book is short because it doesn't have to be any longer. It says all it needs to say in 229 pages.
I would recommend this to everyone.
