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A review by lawbooks600
The Things I Didn't Say by Kylie Fornasier
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Representation: Main character with selective mutism, side implied Asian character
Score: Seven points out of ten.
This was sitting at my library for a while right next to If I Stay (I read that earlier but it was only okay) and I wanted to read this so I picked it up and finally read it. When I finished this novel I had a lot of thoughts inside my head that I want to show you here, well first off other than the disability rep this is your standard run-of-the-mill romance novel, it gets uniqueness points since it's Australian (I don't see that much Australian literature) but the ending... I was lost for words. It starts with the main character Piper Rhodes or Piper for short and at the beginning she was in a dream where she tore her journal up for whatever reason and then was about to jump into the water but it was all a dream. After her friend abandoned her (cliché, I know), she moves to a new school in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales where she meets this other significant character called West whose last name I don't even know (Really? Never seen a name like that.) She tells me that she has Selective Mutism or SM for short so she can speak with her family just fine but she finds it harder to speak with people at school. Now that I said that Piper develops a relationship with West since this is a romance book after all and everything looks like sunshine and rainbows until the last few pages. After a soccer accident West was hospitalised and not much time afterwards the story ended there. That was the most open ending I ever saw.
Score: Seven points out of ten.
This was sitting at my library for a while right next to If I Stay (I read that earlier but it was only okay) and I wanted to read this so I picked it up and finally read it. When I finished this novel I had a lot of thoughts inside my head that I want to show you here, well first off other than the disability rep this is your standard run-of-the-mill romance novel, it gets uniqueness points since it's Australian (I don't see that much Australian literature) but the ending... I was lost for words. It starts with the main character Piper Rhodes or Piper for short and at the beginning she was in a dream where she tore her journal up for whatever reason and then was about to jump into the water but it was all a dream. After her friend abandoned her (cliché, I know), she moves to a new school in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales where she meets this other significant character called West whose last name I don't even know (Really? Never seen a name like that.) She tells me that she has Selective Mutism or SM for short so she can speak with her family just fine but she finds it harder to speak with people at school. Now that I said that Piper develops a relationship with West since this is a romance book after all and everything looks like sunshine and rainbows until the last few pages. After a soccer accident West was hospitalised and not much time afterwards the story ended there. That was the most open ending I ever saw.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical content
Moderate: Bullying
Minor: Suicide
Full trigger warnings: Bullying, suicide, coma, hospitalisation