Review: Me Since You by Laura Wiess

Title: Me Since You
Author: Liesa Wiess
Genre: contemporary, YA
Publisher: MTV books
Publication date: February 18th 2014
Pages: 368 (paperback) 






Are there any answers when someone you love makes a tragic choice?

Before and After. That's how Rown Areno sees her life now. Before: she was a normal sixteen-year-old - a little too sheltered by her police officer father and her mother. After: everything she once believed has been destroyed in the wake of a shattering tragedy, and every day is there to be survived. 

If she had known, on that Friday in March when she cut school, that a random stranger's shocking crime would have traumatic consequences, she never would have left campus. If the crime video never went viral, maybe she could have saved her mother, grandmother - and herself - from the endless replay of heartache and grief. 

Finding a soul mate in Eli, a witness to the crime who is haunted by losses of his own, Rowan begins to see there is no simple, straightforward path to healing wounded hearts. Can she learn to trust, hope and, believe in happiness again? 

- Goodreads -

Me Since You was so sad but also so moving. It is really eye opening. Laura Wiess captured the grief Rowan and her family had to go through well. And she showed beautifully how each person reacts different to the same situation.

 The first couple of chapters didn’t start that unusual. We get to meet Rowan, a normal teenage girl, who skips a day of school with her best friend in order to hang out with some senior guys. But Rowan could never have imagined that this single decision would cause a ripple effect that would change her family forever. The real tragedy doesn’t occur till we are a quarter in the book. This way we can see better the kind of impact it had on Rowan and those surrounding her, the before and after.

After the unthinkable happened Rowan is on a rollercoaster that only seems to go downwards and she doesn’t know how to make it stop. She even doesn’t know if she wants it to stop. Together with Rowan we pass all stages of grief: numbness, sadness, anger and forgiveness. Nobody seems to understand her. Why can’t she move on, after all it has been months since it happened. It’s a real eye opener, as an outsider you never know what is going on in people like Rowan’s life. But know you kind of get to see it.

This book wasn’t all sadness. There were also happy moments in it. There was young hopeful love and friendship. But most of all this book is about moving on and finding the light in the dark. In the end Rowan find her own way to get her rollercoaster back up. And the character growth was amazing, it’s impossible not to mature after what Rowan went through but still.

Me Since You was an amazing book about overcoming grief. It shows that there will always be light at the end of the tunnel no matter how dark it might seem at the moment. 

El