Spoilers Ahead: Read at your Own Risk
I loved this book. Though it was written in a format that I've constantly expressed hatred towards, I really feel like there was no way to not like this book. What the author lacked in dialogue he made up for with Charlie's complex yet beautifully written thoughts. So many of the things he's said were relatable. It was almost like talking from confused freshman to another confuse freshman. And the ending was just fantastic. At the beginning you feel like he's talking to someone else, to whoever he's writing to. Or maybe that was just how I felt. Towards the end of the book, however, you realize that you are not reading as someone else that is reading these letters. It feels like you've actually recieved his letter in the mail and opened it, and read it to yourself. And if you put yourself in that mind set, the things that he says about you at the end, about how he's heard you're a good person and that you are kind and that you'd never judge is just touching. I know it's not necessarily directed at you in particular, but I recognized those phrases were specifically put there so that a person who is sturggling with some type of insecurity or whatever they're going through can read that and be extremely content.
I'll admit, the things that Charlie revealed that he went through is horrible. And it also depresses me to see that they were done by a person that he was so close to, a person who was only mentioned briefly but frequently. You would have never assumed until he says that the psychiatrist asked a lot of questions about her and his childhood and all of that. It's only until he's about to do-the-doo with Sam that he slowly begins to fall apart. It's really sad, actually. And it had been so long until it happened, he must have blacked it out in some way. And he blames himself for way too much that's happened, I just wanna give him a hug... Then smack him straight....
Anyway, since the last paragraph was pretty brief on what happened to him, he basically discovers from one of Sam's touches that he had been molested by his Aunt Helen when he was younger, and goes haywire, breaks odwn, is found anked on the couch, and ends up in a hospital. I know, pretty hard core. What makes me kind of sad is that he wasn't mad at her, or anyone for that matter. He said he couldn't blame her, but instead blamed the man who molested her prior to that situation. He said that that was unfortunately who she turned out to be. At one point he says “So, I guess we are who we are for alot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them,". That quote broke my little heart in two because, I don't know, I think about that a lot, really. It always bothers me when people say that they would change something in their life, or that they wish something that happened to them was taken away. I mean, life is no rainbow and sunshine. We've all got screwed up things happening left and right. While some things can be more severe than others, I think as long as we look at who we are and realize that if you changed even one tiny variable, even if it was not eating that cracker off of the floor when you were little, you wouldn't be the same. While we may not be who we want to be just yet, we've got our whole lives ahead of us. Hell, a majority of you reading this are 14-16? Pfft, you'll be fine.
The book is definitely well worth the read, though if you aren't into heavy stuff (most of which surprised me at first when going on, but didn't really bother me) then you probably should back off. There is drugs, the doing-of-the-do, rape, relationship problems, and just overall drama. If you're not willing to feel, don't read this book. Or just sit down and just don't read. Play with your carpet or something, I don't know.
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