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A review by gilmoreguide
Be Safe I Love You by Cara Hoffman
4.0
Even before she decides to go to Iraq Lauren Clay is fighting a war. A war created by two parents who, for different reasons, are unable to care for her and her nine-year-old brother, Daniel. Instead, Lauren is left, at age 14 to take care of herself, her brother and her father, who lies in bed and cries. Despite having a prodigious talent as a coloratura soprano and having been accepted at a major music school, when the foreclosure notices arrive on their house, Lauren gives up her hopes for her future and signs up for the Marines. Be Safe I Love You by Cara Hoffman begins when Lauren returns after her tour of duty and finds a world that is both familiar and unknown.
Hoffman does an admirable job at portraying the almost impossible transition from solider to civilian. As Lauren struggles to adapt back into her previous life there are simply too many elements that no longer add up—her father is working now and taking care of her brother, Daniel has become a normal teen attached to his phone and PC, and Shane, the love of her life, is a college student and moving in a world as foreign to her as Iraq once was. How she reconciles these changes and where she sees her place in her old world are the crux of Be Safe I Love You. If underneath the sameness of everyday life there is a much larger trauma that colors her perceptions, Lauren is determined not to show it and, indeed, she doesn’t seem to know it herself. At best,
…she now knew the difference between never and always was small. Never and always are separated by a wasp’s waist, a small sliver of glass, one bead of sweat; separated by the seven seconds it takes to exhale the air from your lungs, to make your body as still as the corpse you are about to create.
The rest of this review can be read at The Gilmore Guide to Books: http://gilmoreguidetobooks.com/2014/04/be-safe-i-love-you/
Hoffman does an admirable job at portraying the almost impossible transition from solider to civilian. As Lauren struggles to adapt back into her previous life there are simply too many elements that no longer add up—her father is working now and taking care of her brother, Daniel has become a normal teen attached to his phone and PC, and Shane, the love of her life, is a college student and moving in a world as foreign to her as Iraq once was. How she reconciles these changes and where she sees her place in her old world are the crux of Be Safe I Love You. If underneath the sameness of everyday life there is a much larger trauma that colors her perceptions, Lauren is determined not to show it and, indeed, she doesn’t seem to know it herself. At best,
…she now knew the difference between never and always was small. Never and always are separated by a wasp’s waist, a small sliver of glass, one bead of sweat; separated by the seven seconds it takes to exhale the air from your lungs, to make your body as still as the corpse you are about to create.
The rest of this review can be read at The Gilmore Guide to Books: http://gilmoreguidetobooks.com/2014/04/be-safe-i-love-you/