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gschwabauer 's review for:
The Ethan I Was Before
by Ali Standish
I'm conflicted.
Ethan worked extremely well as a narrator. His flashbacks/memories of Kacey were genuinely poignant; this one was hard to read at times because I shared his guilt and frustration and that constantly looming sense of "but MAYBE if I just go over that scene in my mind again, I can say something different, and none of this will ever happen...."
The grief and anger are handled very well. The fraught family relationships feel real and multidimensional. And yet......something was missing.
The pairing of the grief/loss story with his new friendship didn't quite work for me. By the end I was supposed to have Coralee and Kacey on the same level in my mind, but instead, while I liked Coralee, I felt that the book ended with her and Ethan finally Actually Becoming Friends For Real. Which is a fine way to end, but felt tonally weird because the book tried to convince me that they were now BFFs, but I just hadn't seen that kind of stability yet. The brief memories of Kacey were much more convincing.
I loved the depth and nuance throughout most of the book, but it wrapped up too neatly for my tastes, especially Ethan's grief. I found the last few resolutions unrealistic and overly, well, resolved. Grief isn't a thing you just Get Over.
Ethan worked extremely well as a narrator. His flashbacks/memories of Kacey were genuinely poignant; this one was hard to read at times because I shared his guilt and frustration and that constantly looming sense of "but MAYBE if I just go over that scene in my mind again, I can say something different, and none of this will ever happen...."
The grief and anger are handled very well. The fraught family relationships feel real and multidimensional. And yet......something was missing.
The pairing of the grief/loss story with his new friendship didn't quite work for me. By the end I was supposed to have Coralee and Kacey on the same level in my mind, but instead, while I liked Coralee, I felt that the book ended with her and Ethan finally Actually Becoming Friends For Real. Which is a fine way to end, but felt tonally weird because the book tried to convince me that they were now BFFs, but I just hadn't seen that kind of stability yet. The brief memories of Kacey were much more convincing.
I loved the depth and nuance throughout most of the book, but it wrapped up too neatly for my tastes, especially Ethan's grief. I found the last few resolutions unrealistic and overly, well, resolved. Grief isn't a thing you just Get Over.