Tag: trauma

TSM Book Club Book #24: Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez

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Started: June 11th
Finished: June 18th
TSM Rating: 5/5

Abby Jimenez is such a beautiful writer. She weaves hope and humor so seamlessly with dark topics that it’s sometimes easy to forget the serious nature of her characters’ issues.

Yours Truly exists in the same universe as Part of Your World, focusing on Ali’s best friend, Briana Ortiz, as she navigates finalizing her divorce, caring for her chronically ill brother, and competing for a promotion at work. Her competition? Jacob Maddox, a newly hired doctor in the emergency department.

After making a terrible first impression, shy, anxiety-prone Jacob writes Briana a letter. Nothing romantic, but an apology and a do-over. She finds it so endearing that she writes back, and they continue this back and forth, building a connection and a foundation of friendship.

I knew for her they were probably just notes…But for me it was a lifeline. An outstretched hand while I was falling, an umbrella in a downpour. Friendship in a hostile place.

Jacob, page 96

Then start fake dating, and miscommunication and misread feelings ensue. Even when they both show each other how much they love and consider and are “harmless” to each other, they both doubt that the other could have real feelings for them.

While Jacob deals with very real social anxiety, Briana is plagued by abandonment issues that threaten their fragile relationship.

“…I gave Nick the part of me I don’t give anyone. I gave him the kind of stupid, innocent love that you can only give before you better. He got the best of me. And I’ll never find that me again”

Briana, page 119

Even with all they have going on, I loved the way these two characters curled up into each other and found comfort. They both saw how fragile the other was and approached the relationship with kindness and vulnerability. They built a support system for each other in the most beautiful way.

And being liked by Jacob meant something because he was so shy. It’s like when someone else’s pet comes to sit with you instead of their person, and you feel like the chosen one. It made me feel a little special, like he saw something in me. Though I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what that was.

Briana, page 165

It was weird to say, but she made me feel alone — the way I felt when I was by myself. Calm and unaffected… I liked being alone. With her.

Jacob, page 205

I love how Jimenez allows her characters to be utterly flawed and to work their way through those flaws instead of miraculously being cured at the end. She acknowledges that we are all a work in progress and that only time and patience can make anything better.

TSM Book Club Book #21: Recipe for Persuasion by Sonali Dev

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Started: May 22nd
Finished: May 31st
TSM Rating: 4.5/5

It is only by pure coincidence that the last two books I picked up to the end of May featured protagonists struggling with mental health issues with varying degrees of severity. Both deal with heavy topics of suicide, depression, loss, drug abuse, and parental abandonment.

First up is Recipe for Persuasion, whose lead, Ashna Raje, spends her whole life doing what she can to make her father happy much to her own detriment. She also spends most of her life angry with her mother for abandoning her time after time.

On the brink of losing her restaurant, typically reserved Ashna, through some coaxing by her best friend and cousin, ends up a chef competing on a celebrity cooking show in order to win the money to save it. The show’s premise is to pair a professional chef with a celebrity, and much to her surprise, Ashna is paired with her high school sweetheart turned professional soccer player Rico Silva. For his part, Rico has his own struggles as he never really got over Ashna and the abrupt ending to their relationship. When we meet him, he has reached the point where he has to confront his past in order to move forward.

On top of all this, Ashna’s whirly-gig of a mother, Shobi has chosen this moment in Ashna’s life to come back and try to fix things with her. Ashna has spent her life building walls to protect herself from her mother bouncing in and out of her life. To protect herself from her parents’ fighting. Even when her father commits suicide, she builds walls around herself to keep herself protected from disappointment and disappointing.

Throughout the book, we see her struggle to maintain control over her life and struggle as she tries to be a stronger version of herself. She needs to be that version of herself as she confronts the past with Shobi and Rico.

Recipe… epitomizes the phrase, “Sometimes you have to go back to move forward.”

I loved it for how it examined mother-daughter relationships and even what it means to be a mother. Shobi’s struggle to find work-life balance and to reconcile her own feelings about being a mother and wife and what she was forced to give up to reclaim her independence.

This was the problem with motherhood, the part Shobhan didn’t understand — why did it have to be an all-or-nothing game? Weren’t mothers human?

Recipe for Persuasion, pg. 269-270

I also loved the depth of love Ashna and Rico have for each other, even after twelve years apart. Love, real love, can stand the test of time and distance. The word Dev uses over and over to describe how Ashna and Rico feel about each other is essential. I loved how perfectly and succinctly it sums up what they are to each other.

Sometimes when people leave you, you get so caught up in trying to convince yourself that you can cut them out of your life that you think you’ve actually figured it out. You keep moving. You ignore the feeling of being chased, even as you can’t stop running and running to get away. But then you realize that you haven’t moved on at all. Those who are essential to you have always been an absence. Even when you refused to acknowledge it, their void was always there.

Rico, Recipe for Persuasion, page 344

This was such a good read. Even with some of the darker themes, there was a lot of hope and love infused into the story. It should be noted that this is the second book in a series. I didn’t realize it until I started this one, but the stories are stand-alone. I’ve already added Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (the books are Sonali Dev’s reimagining of Jane Austen classics).