In an uncertain world where Willow truly feels alone, he is her rock, the only person she can depend upon.

He pushes her to get better, while at the same time he never stops caring for her despite her imperfections. He’s simply the catalyst that allows her to start to look for answers within herself. While Willow does sort have that feel, and I was fearful of that exact scenario happening, Guy really isn’t the answer to all of her issues. Typically I hate when YA books give the message that all a girl will need is the right guy and all of her problems, no matter how big or small, will go away. And it just made me so sad, but so hopeful at the same time that at some point throughout the story she would stop. She had so much shame for what happened, so much self-hate that the only thing she could do with all those feelings was to physically harm herself. I wanted so desperately to crawl inside the book and give her a big hug and tell her that what happened to her parents was not her fault. Willow is in so much pain, it is just palpable – you can actually feel her pain as you’re reading her story. Willow is an extremely powerful, emotional read. Willow needs to get healthy, and to do that she needs to not only deal with her pain, but reach out to her brother, and accept the love that Guy is willing to give. But Willow isn’t prepared for Guy’s acceptance, or the fact that he insists she figures out a way to heal.

One day Willow meets Guy – someone she, inexplicably, trusts with her secret, and they form an extremely strong bond because of that. Because she blames herself for their deaths, and because her brother is so deep in his own grief he can’t seem to comfort her at all, she resorts to cutting herself to deal with her pain. The book starts out seven months later, with Willow living with her older brother, his wife, and their baby girl, trying to make sense of her life now that her parents are gone. Unfortunately, Willow wasn’t prepared to drive in the rainy weather they were having, and she ended up crashing the car – killing both of her parents. When they realized they’d had too much to drink, they asked Willow to drive home – on a learner’s permit. One rainy night, sixteen-year-old Willow was out to dinner with her parents in what she thought was just a regular evening. Title: Willow Author: Julia Hoban Release date: ApPublisher: Dial Pages: 336 Genre: Young Adult Fiction Source: Library

Willow by Julia Hoban