Hannah ◇ReaderintheRough◇'s Reviews > If He Had Been with Me

"Perhaps he would ask me what books mean to me. I would tell him that it means living another life."

This book was so uncomfortable to read. The metamorphosis of Autumn runs parallel to my own teen years.

This book didn't feel like another life, it felt like an alternate universe of my own. Not because I had a boyfriend I didn't appreciate, or a boy that I loved and didn't deserve. Because I asked the same questions, showered until I was numb, craved books because I couldn't stand my own actions in a blurry and unforgiving world, and feared I was on the path to being trapped in my own mind like my couch-ridden mother.

“I can see some of the roses still blooming in my mother´s garden. Brown on the edges and bright in other colors, their petals drooping downward, dying just as their lives have begun."

You know where the story will end with the never-ending sense of dread in Autumn's narrative; it's no surprise. But what may surprise you is that part of you goes down this rabbit hole, welling up newfound regret, breathing in anger at the fucked-up world that honestly doesn't get better as you get older. You learn to cope and to harden, to get over it and care less. The past is over and you can't do anything about it, so just keep moving. Right?

Autumn doesn't. That is mental illness: the constant rewind and fast forward of feeling too much and not enough, the past being as palpable as the present.

This is one of the most real and painfully beautiful teen contemporaries I have read.

"I can feel the printed words seeping through my skin and into my veins, rushing to my heart and marking it forever."

Lay your fingers on this thorny rose of a book.