December 2016, Lake Union Publishing, 10 hours & 35 minutes, Audiobook, Review copy from Audible
Content: severe anorexia issues, occasional bad language (I think, can't quite remember), very sweet romance
Summary from Audible
A loving mother. A perfect family. A shock wave that could shatter everything.
Freya
Braithwaite knows she is lucky. Nineteen years of marriage to a man who
still warms her soul and two beautiful teenage daughters to show for
it: confident Charlotte and thoughtful Lexi. Her home is filled with
love and laughter.
But when Lexi's struggles with weight take
control of her life, everything Freya once took for granted falls apart,
leaving the whole family with a sense of helplessness that can only be
confronted with understanding, unity and, above all, love.
Nayu's thoughts
Until I wrote this review I
hadn't realised that Amanda was the narrator, which is really cool because she knows exactly how each voice should be! & the voices work really well. Shortly after finishing this book it was temporarily unavailable on Audible, who I'm reviewing it for. It may be
because closer to the end there were several parts which hadn't been
edited out, where Amanda made a mistake in the narration and then
repeated herself. I personally didn't mind this, one of the
unintended out-takes was hilarious, and answered a question I'd had
as to how audiobooks in general are recorded. Thankfully you can now purchase it!
This book is sheer brilliance. I
adore family centred reads, which this definitely is. How Lexi's
anorexia is discovered had me in tears. Freya goes into a lot of
denial which drives her husband potty (at one point I thought they'd
split up because of their differing views about Lexi). The lengths
Lexi goes to avoid eating are so sad to read, knowing that many
people in real life suffer similarly. What is most apparent is the
bonds of love between all the family members. No matter how they feel
about each individual situation, even when they are extremely mad at
each other, they are linked through family love, and do what needs
doing rather than what they want to do when times are tough.
There is
a lot of discord, especially when Freya is trying to pretend Lexi is
getting past the anorexia. I sighed a lot when Freya lived in lala
land (aka denial), but as both the family and myself were shocked
with more revelations about the seriousness of Lexi's condition,
Freya and reality met up. It was interesting that Freya knew she was
too close to Freya to take difficult decisions, which made the
medical and psychological help provided by the medical team very
welcome, as some things were taken out of their hands.
There was a
very good depiction as to how anorexia affects siblings: poor
Charlotte got forgotten about a lot while Lexi was the centre of
their parents' interests. She had to skip out on going to events,
especially when new disasters cropped up. Naturally Charlotte got a
little bitter about it, but she was able to work though that in a
sweet way that made me cry.
This is an extremely shocking read, I
think it's true-to-life too, and I had to take a few breaks in
listening to it because it got a bit too hard at times, but that's a
personal issue I have. I take a lot of things to heart, which is why
I don't read lots of books like this close together. I love it, and
I'm already looking forward to relistening to it!
Find out more on Amanda's website.
Suggested read
For another read that deals with eating issues check out Nothing Tastes As Good by Claire Hennessy (Young Adult, 9/10E, short and sweet review)
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