
Author: Amber Smith
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry
Release Date: April 12, 2016
Pages: 200
Format: e-ARC
Source: Netgalley
Age Group: Young Adult
Genre: Contemporary
Eden was always good at being good. Starting high school didn’t change who she was. But the night her brother’s best friend rapes her, Eden’s world capsizes.What was once simple, is now complex. What Eden once loved—who she once loved—she now hates. What she thought she knew to be true, is now lies. Nothing makes sense anymore, and she knows she’s supposed to tell someone what happened but she can’t. So she buries it instead. And she buries the way she used to be.Told in four parts—freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior year—this provocative debut reveals the deep cuts of trauma. But it also demonstrates one young woman’s strength as she navigates the disappointment and unbearable pains of adolescence, of first love and first heartbreak, of friendships broken and rebuilt, and while learning to embrace a power of survival she never knew she had hidden within her heart.
Before starting this review, I just want to point out that
this book contains mature topics including rape, sex, alcohol, drugs. This book
I recommend for the older teenage group as it relates to the topics brought up
in the reading.
This book is yet another book that I have read that have
presented heavy topics. I have no idea what kid of track I am with these type
of books but I am not complaining. Even though it take me a few days to get through
these books I have not been finding myself in a reading slump. I moved through the
book at a causal pace taking in every detail.
The story follows our character Eden as one night she is
raped. WHOAH!!!!!!!! I know right. Right from the start we are hit with a heavy
topic. What is going on through Eden’s head is something that no one should
ever feel and it is something I could not even imagine what it must be like.
She decides to keep it a secret as the person she gets raped by is her brother’s
best friend.
This story is told over her four years of high school and
each year we see a change come over Eden but not in a way one would hope. As
weird as this might sound, each year got darker and darker as her character
progressed through the years.
There were some parts of the book I just did not understand the
actions Eden was taking but then I was thinking back to my years to high school
and thought, there was a person like Eden there. I think this book talked to
the ideas of how we always fixate on things that seem outrageous but we miss
the bigger picture and do not take time to understand it.
I am glad the book ended the way it did. Answers were
revealed and I feel that Eden could be more at peace with the overall situation.
I really enjoyed the book because it took me out of my comfort zone with the
topic and it opened me to different books. Take the chance to read Eden’s story
and find how The Way I Used to Be can show the struggles some teenage girls go
through and how one must lose themselves to find a better self.
I give this book 4 souls!
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