Reviews

I picked this up on a whim because I remember Ashley appearing in a video with John Green and talking about the book and it sounded really interesting and spoiler alert, it was! I really really enjoyed her style of writing which wasn't too flowery but is still really beautiful.

She talks about family (with an abusive mother and incarcerated father), sexual assault (and the aftermath of it) and growing up and what it's like to find your footing in the world.

I wanna leave this quote here that appears near the end and almost made me cry: "You're going to miss it, I thought, I'm going to be so much better than I am now, and you're not going to be here to see it."

If you like memoirs I highly recommend this one.

TW: child abuse, rape

#IndigoEmployee

whatshaileyreading's review against another edition

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4.0

Such a sad story of a life that turns into something beautiful.

jennbcunningham's review against another edition

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challenging emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

Content Warnings

sarah2438's review against another edition

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3.5

Rating a memoir is really hard because you don't want to be critiquing another person's life experience. At the same time, I think that the description of this book was pretty misleading, and that was disappointing for me. I thought there would be more focus on trying to reconcile the vision Ashley had of her father with the idea of a man who committed the same crimes she had experienced upon herself. That was acknowledged briefly a couple of times but Ashley didn't really dig into it. On that same note, I would be curious to see what thought Ashley has given to her father's victims and how she reconciles that with her own experiences. I think it's likely that she is still working on processing that herself. But if that's the case, the memoir shouldn't be advertised in that way. The focus is much more on her growing up and her relationships with her mother and grandmother-- her father remains more of a background figure.

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