A review by whimsicallymeghan
What Comes Echoing Back by Leo McKay Jr.

3.5

 Sam has just moved to a new school after the events of the worst night of her life have been caught on video for the world to see. Once at her new school, she meets Robot in music class and soon realizes he has a similar story. All he wants is to move on from the mistakes he’s made, but his small town makes it hard to do so. Finding themselves bonded over their love of music, they start to realize they can use that to overcome and heal from the traumas they’ve endured. This was a very heavy novel that dealt with difficult and traumatic topics such as assault, rape, suicide and murder. Despite the severity of the topics talked about in this novel, there was still a lot of beauty in it. The reader liked how amongst all the sorrow, light could be found in the smallest of places; they liked that how hopeful this felt when everything looked and felt hopeless. McKay did a beautiful job of capturing that essence really well; it’s a fine balance of creating a story that is moving, while also not diminishing the awful hard truths and he did it wonderfully. The way this was told, swaying back and forth from past to present, and sometimes past to even further past, left the reader a little dizzy at first. It was hard to fully grasp what was happening, especially at times when McKay only alluded to what was happening instead of telling his readers directly, which this reader understood was to create a sense of curiosity to read more, while also not giving too graphic a description, which we appreciated, but it left the reader a little confused in the beginning. As we got further into the story and got to know the characters better, it got easier. As for the characters, they were good, solid characters, but the reader felt they were missing something; like we didn’t get to know them enough. They were developed well, and their journey was engaging and important, but it felt like all we got to know was them through their trauma and this reader just wanted to get deeper. Maybe it’s because this novel was so short that we didn’t get the time to truly explore all there could have been for topics so big. It just felt like we could have gotten a little more, especially after the main characters started to bond. That being said though, this was still a really good book, it could get emotional and a little overwhelming at times, but it’s still a very poignant and touching story.