I'm going to be honest. Even as I'm writing this review with the book fresh on my mind, I have no idea how I feel about it. It kept me interested, yes, but there are so many parts of it that didn't totally make sense to me.
***SPOILERS AHEAD***
There are three parts to this book. Part number one is told from two perspectives.
You first have Mia. She's smart. She's the ideal student, girlfriend, sister. She had a trim figure but can seemingly eat whatever she wants. She has great friends and a picture perfect boyfriend. But, she has a secret. Ever since the kidnap and disappearance of her twin sister Leah, she has been getting these migraines that cause her to pass out and black out.
Second you have Leah, the kidnapped sister. She is locked in a basement room with only a few books and boarded windows. She has scars on her back from beatings she believes she deserved because she did something to upset Mother and if she would only follow the rules like a good girl she wouldn't get beaten. She's also wicked smart even though she in home schooled by Mother. At one point she plans an escape and is found out, starved into the brink of death, but because of her resolve still manages to escape. Leah is strong as crap (Think of the theme song to the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt right here because it totally applies).
Okay, so Part one pretty much puts the base work down for the characters, until you get to Part two and find out that Leah is actually Mia and the Mia from part one was a figment of her imagination and she made up all the stuff about her. The Mia character in part one is actually everything that Leah wanted to be. She wanted to have her friends and her family. She wanted to have her boyfriend and to be able to eat all of the food. What I found a little sad though, was the way the parents were portrayed in the dreams of Mia. Mia really believed that her parents didn't love her anymore and that they didn't care about her. She was told that by Mother and it showed in her dreams.
Part Two also shows us the aftermath of the kidnapping. Mia is reunited with her family and recovers in the hospital. She gets put back in school Seems to make friends and tries to get on with her normal teenage life. Except that's not the case which we find out in part three.
Okay, so along with telling us that Mia is Leah's real name and that there is no twin, we also get introduced to some characters. Gunner, Heather, Molly, and Katie. We also meet the real Jacob, the brother. We meet the parents, Blake and Tracey. We meet Dr Marshall.
Jacob's character had to be my favorite throughout the whole book. Even the fake Jacob in the first part. In the first part he was Mia's best friend. he was the only one who knew how bad her headaches got. He was the one who shared her pain about Leah. He knew everything about her. In Part Two he may not have known everything about her, but it seemed that Mia trusted him more than any of the other characters and she did so right off the bat. he hugged her and he was the first one she didn't shy away from when she was reintroduced to her family. She recognized him and the bond they had shared when they were children. Throughout Part Two he tried to help her adjust. \He was the only one who wanted to be completely honest with her. It was the almost as is he was the only one who thought she could handle everything. Her parents and Dr. Marshall tended to be almost too cautious when it came to what she needed to be told.
Of the parents, Tracey was my favorite. Blake was a d***. he left his family when they needed him most so you don't see him to much until the end and even then he seems to react like a spoiled child being made to do something he doesn't want to do. Tracey seems like the average soccer mom to me. When she gets her daughter back she does everything she can to try and get life back to normal even if it means her daughter talks to imaginary people sometimes (we will discuss this in a minute). She takes her daughter shopping and allows her to choose things for herself, which is something Mia hadn't had before. She cooks and even allows Mia to help in the preparation of meals, which is another thing Mia never got to do. She was a mother who had been dealt crappy cards in life, but she managed to make the best of them and did what she needed to do for her children and I loved that.
I didn't really care for Dr. Marshall's character much at all. She didn't seem to really help Mia until Part Three. She was pretty much just a filler character through Part Two to show that Mia was going to therapy. I don't really think much of her as a character. I honestly feel that Jacob did more for Mia than anyone did.
Alright, so let's talk about Gunner, Heather, Molly, and Katie. None of these characters were real. They were all people Mia made up in her mind to help cope with the stress of certain things she would have to encounter outside of the little world Mother had created for her. Gunner helped her through a host of firsts. he gave Mia her first taste of chocolate and peanut butter together, her first ice cream, her first soda. He ultimately got her through her first adventures outside of her hospital room after they took the IV out of her arm. he was the one she created to get through all of those and to help her mind reintroduce things she already knew but had forgotten while she was locked up. Heather got Mia through her first day of school and her first lunch period along with Molly and Katie. They helped Mia get through the school day. These people that Mia created in her head to help her just show us one of the amazing ways the brain helps trauma victims cope with what I and many others would consider normalcy. I loved that the author included something like this in the story, even though until the end of Part Two and beginning of Part Three I was beginning to think it was going to be just smooth sailing.
Now, Part Three we begin to see how different the whole situation really is from what we as readers originally thought. We find out all of the info above about Mia's imaginary friends. We find out that Dr. Marshall missed some big things in Mia's behavior and doesn't react in time and Mia has a break down. I think that's part of why I don't really like Marshall's character. She knew from the time Mia was in the hospital that something wasn't right, but she still didn't do anything about it. She let Mia go back to school, which is a hugely high stress situation, as if nothing happened. As if she didn't just say goodbye to an imaginary boy she met in the hospital. She kind of drops the ball in a big way and Mia ends up suffering for it in a bigger way.
So, Final Thoughts... I would totally recommend this book. It was different in a lot of ways, but at the same time it keeps the reader thinking. The twists that are added into the book make it captivating.
No comments:
Post a Comment