Every Time You Go Away by Abigail Johnson is one of those books that is difficult to review because it's so utterly beautiful.

Abigail Johnson managed to write something unlike what I expected and yet exactly every thing I could have hoped for in a book.
I feel like all my words are inadequate to express how wonderful this book truly is.
This YA book had me laughing and tearing up along with Ethan and Rebecca.
This book filled me with both sadness and hope. Johnson managed to get so many emotions into one book and yet it was all just right, it wasn’t too much.
It was just what was needed.

"I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own."

Thank You NetGalley and Inkyard Press for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

Review copy courtesy of Netgalley. There's enough emotional energy in here for a trilogy. There's pain, guilt, love, loss, and a lot more, blended into the story of two lost kids who are held hostage by the actions of others. Yes, Rebecca may have made a mistake in judgement by getting drunk, but she followed that by doing something smart and calling her parents to have someone come get her. Unfortunately, that resulted in an accident that killed her dad and left her paralyzed from the waist down. Everything since that night has left her feeling like a guilty hostage.
Ethan is hostage to a different set of circumstances, thanks to his addict mother. Read how the two re-collide (more than reconnect) now that they're older teens. The author took a big risk in writing this book because of her own experiences, but she's done a superb job.

Thank you Netgalley and Inkyard Press for allowing me to read and review this book! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Every Time You Go Away is like receiving the warmest hug from a friend you haven't seen in a while.

Abigail Johnson's writing is immersive and relatable. I enjoyed reading Rebecca's and Ethan's personal journeys and the difficult paths they traveled on. I liked being able to read about Johnson's personal experience, in the Foreward, before reading Every Time You Go Away. I feel like it added more depth to the characters and their stories.

I liked the back and forth point of views of Rebecca and Ethan, and their past decisions. I was blown away by the storytelling and the character development.

The only nitpick I have is with the pacing. Other than that I adored this book, its cover, and the chemistry between Ethan and Rebecca is heartbreakingly tender and bittersweet.

4.75 stars

Wow! Blown away! This is my favorite young adult novel of the year! There's so much here to relate to, and so much for nondisabled people to learn from. I am recommending this to everyone!

I really enjoyed this story! I was drawn into this by the beautiful cover and was so excited to be able to dive in. I did find it was a bit tough to relate to the characters because they were so young but I was still able to enjoy and have a good time. It was a captivating story and I really liked this authors writing style.

A beautifully told story of two teens navigating the transition from youth to adulthood while working through past traumas and sorting out how to reach for their own happiness. Ethan’s committed to the caretaking of his substance abusing mother. Rebecca’s committed to being the perfect daughter to her emotionally distant mother, following a tragic accident that killed her father and paralyzed her lower body. The pair has a LOT to work through, both of them defaulting to ensuring others don’t see their pain, even if that means deferring their dreams and avoiding supportive, personal connections that will ultimately enrich their lives. With sharp, evocative prose, Johnson shows how two “broken” souls might ultimately be the perfect person to push the other toward the life they truly want, one full of artistic creation, supportive friendships, and maybe even a few perfect kisses in the rain. I loved the visual metaphors woven throughout the book. Flowers left on a windowsill. Jewellery remade. Murals in a treehouse. I also loved that the characters weren’t made into one-dimensional heroic martyrs, despite their profoundly difficult circumstances. They make mistakes. They get mad and say unkind things. They let secrets fester long past the point of healthiness. In other words, they act like real teenagers. They also grow, and learn, and become, such that the thread of “before” and “now” that weaves through the book expands in meaning with each successive chapter. An emotionally rich dual coming-of-age story, told with a fully dimensional supporting cast, an unforgettable cat, gorgeous imagery, and a beautifully authentic, resonant narrative voice.

Every Time You Go Away grabbed me from page one and I fell in love with this book. Rebecca and Ethan’s story broke my heart and I just loved these two characters. I can’t say the same thing about their mothers whom I found disliking throughout the entire book. I’m so glad these two emotionally damaged teens got their happy ending. I loved how the story alternated from the POV of Rebecca and Ethan. I also enjoyed the Before chapters because you really got to know the main characters and their backstory. Great book and I know this will be a hit with all ages. You could never go wrong with reading an Abigail Johnson book because they’re always amazing.

If everything worked out in life, Ethan and Rebecca might've been the two neighbors we see in movies and television shows with facing bedroom windows who use walkie talkies and handmade signs to communicate when they were little, only to later take each other to the prom. But, this book isn't about everything working out. It's the powerful story of Rebecca, who is paraplegic after an accident, and Ethan, who only stays at his grandparent's house next door to Rebecca's when his mother 'can't handle him' due to her devastating addictions. When Ethan returns two years after Rebecca's accident and they are both on the precipice of adulthood, old wounds fester and must be tended to.

With Ethan and Rebecca's challenges, this book is a beautiful beacon of hope, filled with the story of how two people broken by different circumstances learn to help put each other back together to find a way forward.

I couldn't put their story down. I will recommend this book to all of my students. I also liked that neither character is following what most believe to be the traditional path (college), and have great hopes for their futures doing things they are passionate about.

I recommend to anyone reading to turn to the back and first read Abigail Johnson's Acknowledgments. It is then that the reader realizes that this story is her heart poured onto the page, and reading every word thereafter is a reminder that after darkness, one can find light.

Everything doesn't always work out in life. What a beautiful book to share with students as a solace that even though that's true, we still find people and ways to make it wonderful.

Thank you to NetGalley and Inkyard Press and Abigail Johnson for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. I have read most of Abigail Johnson's other books and have thoroughly enjoyed each and every one of them so was so excited to be able to read this one. This one is different than the others . . . and not in a bad way . . . in a very personal way. I did some research when I read an earlier book about this author (as I often do when I read a book by an author that is new to me) and found out that she was a quadriplegic after a car accident. I was intrigued by her and her ability to write these amazing romance and young adult books. So, I was really interested to read this book because this book was about a girl that suffered a car accident at the age of 17 (like the author) and was in a wheelchair as a result - the girl in the book is a paraplegic.

Abigail Johnson writes what she knows about - and this is in no way a "feel sorry for me" book b/c she is paralyzed. This is a book about teenagers who have a wide range of emotions - like all teenagers - but these teenagers also have some really hard family life stuff to deal with as well. Ms. Johnson does a great job in talking about the challenges that come along with being in a wheelchair, but she does not dwell on it. This story is about two young adults who are faced with several serious challenges and how we as adults sometimes think we are doing best for them by hiding our feelings when we really aren't. When does a teen become an adult? When do they get to share in all the good news along with the horribly sad news?

The best thing about this book is that it shows what friendships can truly mean. Friends can come in different ages and in different stages of your life but we all need a good support system.

While I overall enjoyed the themes and characters in this book, I think I am just the wrong demographic, I kept wanting the plot to be a little more in depth and more "raw" however for a YA audience I think it is perfect. The story still brought tears to my eyes, reading about Rebecca and Ethan's struggles make you think and evaluate the problems and issues that many people face daily.

The lack of communication between Rebecca and Ethan was frustrating at times, I wanted to shake them both and let them know it was ok to express how they were feeling, but I think that truly speaks to how badly they were both struggling.

Overall I found this to be a very enjoyable, emotional and though provoking read!

This book is intense and beautiful. I had tears in my eyes multiple times because it's just so real. Though I'm not disabled in the same way, reading a book about someone with an acquired disability written by someone with the lived experience meant a lot because certain thoughts and feelings the character had were still relatable. Both MCs have had a lot to deal with in their 17 years and their journies together and individually are emotional and gripping. I requested this book because there was a character in a wheelchair on the beautifully designed cover, so I didn't have a ton of expectations going in about the story itself and it knocked my socks off.

Thank you NetGalley and Inkyard Press for the ARC! The book releases Dec 5/23. My review lives on my Instagram story highlight called ARCReviews.

Thank you to the publisher for allowing me to read this eARC.

Honestly, this was just okay. Nothing unique or super interesting, the characters were meh, there wasn't chemistry between them. There was just nothing that made me excited to read this or to ever read it again.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Like any other of Abigail Johnson’s books, Every Time You Go Away deals with some pretty heavy topics, most notably, substance abuse and grief.

I enjoyed the book, but the characters irked me at times with their lack of communication and their tendency to hide how they felt. I also didn’t feel the chemistry between Rebecca and Ethan. They both had so much going on and I felt as if they were better off as friends. Their relationship was also way too angsty for me. I just wasn’t as invested in them together as couple and was more interested on their individual stories.

All in all, this was an okay read. I just don’t think I was in the right headspace for it.

***Thanks to NetGalley for providing me a complimentary copy of EVERY TIME YOU GO AWAY by Abigail Johnson in exchange for my honest review.***

4.5 STARS

Rebecca lives next door to Ethan’s grandparents. The two become friends as kids when his mom drops him off to get clean. As quickly as he arrives he disappears, returning at various intervals without their childhoods. Now seventeen, Ethan is back after a four year absence, angry and resentful. Rebecca, partially paralyzed from an accident that killed her father carries even more scars on the inside. The two emotionally damaged teens try to regain their friendship and maybe more in EVERY TIME YOU GO AWAY.

I enjoy Abigail Johnson’s writing style, the characters she creates and her storytelling. Though the characters are now seventeen, EVERY TIME YOU GO AWAY will appeal more toward older middle grade and younger young adult readers as it lacks some of the grittiness and harsher realities of substance abuse older readers would expect.

Thinking of my clients whose parents abused substances, I can’t imagine any would still have hope or try to locate a parent who left rehab for the umpteenth time when there has never been a period of sustained recovery. By the time they’re seventeen, they’re jaded to the unkept promises and while they’re often parentified and blame themselves, they also lack hope that *this time* will be different.

My favorite character was John, Rebecca’s future stepfather. I love how he tried to show Rebecca that her mom demonstrated love in different ways than she did. I could see how her mom’s coldness felt like a lack of love to Rebecca and it made me think of people in my life who were less demonstrative, showing love in deeds rather than words like her mom. This is a great message for young people depicted through the actions of characters, something I wish I had read as a young person.

In the preface Abigail Johnson says she never thought she’d write a paraplegic character and that while Rebecca’s story is not hers and Rebecca is not Johnson, Rebecca couldn’t have been written by an able-bodied person. The experience of someone who’s had to navigate spaces that don’t accommodate wheelchairs, so many places like doors, tables, bathrooms, door handles I’d never considered, could only be told authentically by someone who knows from experience. When I was in college in the early 1980s I worked retail. A customer in a wheelchair complained because the clothing racks were too close together and she couldn’t get through or even shop. It was Christmas time, we jammed as much merchandise as we could into our department. I figured it shouldn’t matter because we rarely had customers in wheelchairs. This was before the Americans with Disabilities Act and not long after Handicapped Parking, as it was then called, be more common. I don’t think I realized until reading EVERY TIME YOU GO AWAY how awful my thoughts about the customer’s very justified concern were. I share this in my review to illustrate the importance of Johnson writing a character like Rebecca are. Representation matters and the manner in which Johnson shows Rebecca’s daily life obstacles are less about her paralysis and more about inadequate accommodations by people who probably thought like I did in the 1980s or not at all because they never had to.

I can’t read the title EVERY TIME YOU GO AWAY without the song ringing in my head. This important book should be in every middle and high school classroom and library.