A New Book

I love when friends suggest a book or an author that they have been reading and really think I will like as well. I LOVE finding new books and authors...there is nothing quite as thrilling as reading a good book, as I have stated in SO MANY of my other posts. I LOVE to read. Sometimes a friend will suggest a book that just holds no interest for me and I will trudge through the book out of respect for that friend's thought that I might like it.

I came across that very issue these last few weeks. An author was suggested in a friend's post on facebook and that friend recommended I start with this one book (that is the first in a series). I saw it was a bit much to download (I have a Kindle that I LOVE), so I got it at the library.

It started off as a bit of a yawn. A girl with a bad mom and a loving dad. It took me a couple weeks to get through the first 1/4 or more of the book...I had no desire to read it (but I kept renewing it hoping something would click).

As the book went on, something happened that rarely happens. I was reading, in a sense, my own story. The girl in this story was me and I felt her pain, her depression, her blind searching for meaning to life. It was quite amazing.

I, like this character, was abandoned by my mother (well, not initially...long custody battle....dad won....mom left and I saw her twice from age 3 until....well.....now....and now she is no longer living, so all opportunity is gone). My father tried his hardest to make a good life for me....though many things stood in his way. Like the character in this book, I was an outcast in school with little purpose or direction. She had a best friend she loved, a boy who lived close by, who, in a sense, abandoned her when he went to college and fell in love with a girl there. I had a best friend who was my only friend, whose family moved away. I was robbed of any chance of regaining that friendship...she died just before turning 16.

This character decided to shake the dust off of herself and went to college determined to be exactly the opposite of who she had been...trying to fit in the best she knew how.....though she found social life hard and thought so very little of herself. This was so much like when I arrived at college. I took off for college alone and watched as so many families dropped off their daughters (I was in a girl's dorm) with tears and hugs. I walked into the common area and began chatting with the only other girl that was there. It was so hard and exhausting to be that open, friendly girl and not that shy, awkward girl I had been (especially hard since I had just had jaw surgery and my teeth were wired together....not the best first impression).

The character in this book went on a path I did not, though I could still relate to her feelings and awkwardness. I had friends who cheered for me when the wires got cut and my jaws were free. We ordered pizza and had the first real conversations I had had. We laughed and talked and it was wonderful.

It is interesting to read a book with a girl who has raw feelings and emotions...a girl I can more than relate to, I can feel. It has had a real impact on me. I am not even sure why I am writing about it. I just felt the need to!! The book "After the Leaves Fall" by Nicole Baart is not a great book, in my opinion, but I am anxiuos to see how she deals with what life has before her. She is seeking God, though she is not sure how or why or what to do when she finds Him. It is so surreal to have such a parralel life to this fictional character.

The second book starts off with this dedication "For Mom: Because Janice is entirely a work of fiction. You are everything she is not and more." Janice is the mom who abandons the main character, Julia. This sent a jolt of electricity because I did not have a mom...or at least not one that was there for me and it has been my everpresent goal in life to break the cycle, to "be everything she (my own mother) was not and more."