A review by bluebeereads
Send by Patty Blount

5.0

Istyria book blog ~ B's world of enchanted books

So after reading Some Boys yesterday, I knew I had to read another book by this woman. She totally surprised me, came out of nowhere. So I looked her up on Goodreads and found this book. It was in the blurb of Some Boys too, so I decided to get me a copy and read that one. Just to see if it was as fantastic as Some Boys was. Well... Patty Blount just fried my brain and got herself a spot on my auto-buy list.

Send is about Dan. When he was fourteen, he made one of the biggest mistakes in his life. He was sent to juvie for almost a year and since then he's paid a high price for that one stupid mistake. Now it's a bit better. He and his family moved and changed their names. Now he can start again in a place where nobody knows him or what he did. But his first day at his new school doesn't start out as he planned. He breaks up a fight while everyones else just doesn't do anything. And now he's in the spotlight again. While he's trying hard to keep his past a secret, there is one girl who looks at him like she knows all of his secrets. Like that he knows what it's like to be bullied because he used to be one...

Bullying is a very hard topic for me. Not for the same reason as it is for Dan, the main character in this book. No, I used to be on the receiving end of it. So it's hard for me to read a book that centers around that. I honestly thought I wouldn't be able to finish it and I thought I'd hate Dan. But I finished it and I loved Dan. Still do. He was such a deep character. There were so many layers to him and I couldn't help feeling bad for him. Yeah, what he did was stupid. But it wasn't worth the price he paid. I won't say anything about that because it would ruin the book a bit if you knew beforehand. Dan's past gets revealed little by little and when he finally told the whole story, it destroyed me. I was a sobbing, crying mess and I thanked the gods I wasn't reading this book in public.

Patty seems to be one of those authors that isn't afraid to write about these kind of topics. Some Boys deals with rape and Send deals with suicide and both of them deal with bullying in different ways. Yeah, they're hard to read about. Really hard. It messes you up. But to be honest, we need more books about this kind of stuff. Hard, honest books that don't shy away from the truth because the things Patty write about could just as easily be true stories. It's terrifying to think about, but it's the truth. And I admire her for that. Not only her, there are other authors that do that. Like Katie McGarry, Colleen Hoover, Jessica Verdi,... All authors I love and admire for that. They write stories that need to be read by everyone. And even though I'm a mess afterwards and it fries my brain, I'll read every single one of their books without hesitation.

For those of you who don't know this, here's the missing epilogue of Send, which made me cry again. I did like the open ending in the book, but I loved finding out what happened after that. I really needed that closure. Oh, before I forget! So Dan talks to himself and he calls the voice in his head Kenny. Kenny even has his own room in Dan's head. It seems weird, right? But it was so right for this story! And it was funny too sometimes, which made the book feel a bit less heavy. And as strange as it sounds, I did grew to love Kenny as a separate character.

Send is a hard, honest and emotional book that messed me up so much I didn't know what was what for a few minutes after finishing it. It's a book that confirmed my love for Patty Blount, who now has a place on my auto-buy list. I recommend it to everyone!

{My review for Some Boys will be up on my blog on August 1st, if you can't wait until then to read it, you can read it on Goodreads already! Just go here.}