I received an ARC from NetGalley to read and review. The below is my honest, unbiased opinion. Thank you, Jessica Therrien, the publisher, and NetGalley, for allowing me to review.

Lucy and Ruth are country girls from a broken home. When they move to the city with their mother, leaving behind their family ranch and dead-beat father, Lucy unravels. They run to their grandparents’ place, a trailer park mobile home in the barrio of San Jose. Lucy’s barrio friends have changed since her last visit. They’ve joined a gang called VC. They teach her to fight, to shank, to beat a person unconscious and play with guns. When things get too heavy, and lives are at stake, the three girls head for LA seeking a better life. But trouble always follows Lucy. She befriends the wrong people, members of another gang, and every bad choice she makes drags the family into her dangerous world.

CARRY ME HOME is a contemporary young adult novel about loss, love, sacrifice, survival, and friendship. This was a quick read that was told in three points of view: Lucy, her mother, and her sister. However, I didn't have any trouble following along. I enjoyed Therrien's writing style, which was completely immersive. This story was beautifully written and has some of the best underlying themes for YA literature, like darkness and redemption. I highly recommend this one!

Review copy provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. So inspiring! This gripped me and held me till the very end! This book consumed me and I finished it in one day, it was so good! If you want a book to keep you on the edge of your seat, go read this NOW! You're welcome.

This book told the story of Lucy, Ruth and their mom. Those three characters had each a point of view. However, Lucy was still the main character, most of the story revolved around her and the chapters in her point of view were the most frequent and usually the longest.
The book starts with Lucy and Ruth’s mom fighting with their father who is drunk. When he pushes her and she falls, she decides she has had enough and leaves him, taking away the girls to her parents’ place in San Jose.
Arrived there, Lucy who has always been closer to her father is angry and reconnects with her summer friend, Ro. Except Ro has changed since the year before and she has joined a gang. Lucy gets in the middle of gang related stuff and the troubles are only just starting.

First of all, I really wasn’t expecting this book to be this violent. Then, I had a lot of trouble connecting with the characters. Ruth was ok I guess but I could really relate to her. The mother and Lucy, I hated. Lucy was thoughtless, never thinking of consequences, always acting like she was a victim even before she actually was. But even after that horrid scene, she hasn’t learnt anything and keep acting thoughtlessly, making bad decisions after bad decisions.
The mother might actually have been the worst of the three. The word that was most associated with her was “whining”, she was constantly whining, relying heavily on Ruth for everything and letting Lucy do whatever the hell she wanted because her prime concern was that everyone was happy and no one fighting. That’s not parenting. She was an awful awful mother but was almost never criticized on it… This all drove me insane.
I had a lot of trouble going through this book and I even found it painful at times and not in a good way. I got so angry I couldn’t see straight.
Still, I’m very thankful for Ruth because she helped me get through it.
Finally, I thought the ending was not at all satisfactory, it seemed almost too easy after everything that happened...
Basically, this was not for me.

*Trigger warning for rape, drug abuse, and gang violence.*


Musings:


Filled with suspense and lots of action, Carry Me Home is the tale of two sisters torn apart by ones choice to hang out with the wrong crowd. Mostly this book is about Lucy. Lucy who gets caught up with gangs and spirals downward into situations that could have ended in her death more then once.

Told in both a small town and a larger city the dynamics of both places add to flavor of this novels brand of fear. What was really cool for me was that the city it takes part in is Glendale, California where I had lived for most of my life. It was nice to read and see how well the author described my home town and what it’s like to live there.

As the novel progresses, Lucy gets into more and more trouble and further and further away from her family. The person that she especially starts to push away is her sister Ruth and Ruth begins to also take her own path, but they are bound by their blood so they continue to clash.

The gang world is one that I know I will never be a part of, but it very real and very terrifying. This is a story of what happens when you get caught in that sort of environment, for some they make it out alive and others don’t. Gang violence is a vicious cycle of killing for revenge until you forget what started it all and give into to anger until you too are dead. For these reasons this novel was important to me, so that I could understand another’s way of life weather I agree with it or not.

I appreciated the subject matter that the book deals with because there are not very many books that discuss gangs. I thought that it was interesting to see the progression of indoctrination into a gang through Lucy. I would have liked to have seen to book focus more on the gang aspect rather than dealing with many other issues. I felt like the author took on too much by adding so many other things to the story. This also may have hurt the pacing of the book because it was a bit slow but with a few tense filled scenes in the first half and then the pacing picks up in the second half making it difficult to process everything going on.

I found it hard to connect with the book which made it difficult to read. I'm not sure if this is because the things that Lucy deals with are hard to read about or if I found it hard to connect with the story and characters as a whole. I think that it may have been a bit of both. I feel that the things that Lucy deals with are at times glanced over rather than spoken about with emotional depth. It seems almost as if the author is saying that things affected the character but when I was reading it, I wasn't feeling that she was as affected as was stated.

I found it hard to fully connect with the characters due to this and traits that the characters possessed. I wanted the mother to be to be strong enough to stand on her own two feet instead of being helpless and leaning on everyone around her. I found it hard to understand Lucy and why she went down certain paths in the book. I found myself becoming angry at her towards the beginning of the book and by the time I finished reading I was glad that I didn't have to live in her head anymore. She was such a frustrating character who seemed gullible and ignorant. Ruth was the only character that I can say that I liked. I related to her in quite a few ways which in turn helped me to sympathize with what she was forced to deal with.

San José, gangs, guns, fighting… In the beginning I was slightly hesitant to start reading, as I already was expecting to dislike it. BUT! HOW WRONG WAS I?! It was an absolutely amazing book and I haven’t been able to stop talking about it since I picked it up!!

Jessica Therrien created the most gripping, realistically unrealistic story that makes your jaw drop in awe! The events that took place within this quite short novel were very INTENSE, definitely not for the light-hearted.

The story began as a FAMILY DRAMA. A drunk father, abusive over to his wife. A weak and co-dependent mother. But finally she had enough and decided to take her teenage daughters and leave him. Maybe not for good, but just to get away. Almost a classic family drama. However, the events started to spiral from there on without any breathing room!

I don’t want to say that Lucy is a main character because I loved reading about Ruth, her older sister, and even their mother just as much as I loved reading Lucy’s perspective. But it is true that events that happen with Lucy are more DISTURBING AND UPSETTING to read about.

The story wasn’t the most emotional I’ve ever read, but it kept me engaged, it kept me turning the pages and wanting to find out what happened next to their little family. I wanted Ruth to be alright and not having to deal with Lucy’s screw ups, I wanted their mother to be stronger and to not put everything on her daughter’s shoulders. I was invested in the story and worried about the characters.

2017 has been an epic year for books and specifically the Young Adult genre. Some ground-breaking books have been hitting the shelves that shatter the Young Adult stereotype and will pave the way for future YA authors to come. Carry Me Home is a tragic, touching, painful and moving tale about a family fleeing their broken home to create a better life. It is about a mother wanting more for her 2 teenage daughters but we all know, things aren't always as easy as they seem.

Carry Me Home is told from the perspectives of Mom, Lucy, and Ruth. Each character dealing with their own deep-seeded insecurities. Lucy has the strongest influence in the novel. Her story is raw, at times, sickening and mostly heart-wrenching. She is a teenage girl begging for acceptance and love in all of the wrong places. Mom has always been under the thumb of her alcoholic, abusive husband and after scooping up Lucy and Ruth and moving to Los Angeles, she is now solely responsible for providing for these children. Keeping food in the stomach and a roof over their head. Working and going back to school, her presence at home is almost non-existent and her parenting lacks authority, especially when it comes to Lucy. Yet, her intentions are strong and she loves fiercely. Ruth is quiet and an introvert. She is not like her outgoing sister, Lucy, and they bump heads constantly. Ruth is the one that tries to pulls Lucy's reigns when Mom doesn't know what to do, but it causes more problems than fixing them.

Each character has so much depth and the author does a spectacular job at letting each of their stories unfold effortlessly throughout the entire book. She crafted an emotional and relevant reading experience that will leave you thinking about it long after you've finished the last page. You will simply devour this extraordinary tale of heart-ache, pain, and redemption.

3.75 stars! I was lucky enough to receive an ARC of this book from NetGalley, and was so excited to read it.

Let me start this by saying that this book reminded me of the movies McFarland, USA and Real Women Have Curves mixed with the book The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. And I mean that in a good way, it kind of brought out the best of both worlds.

This story follows three points of views from the members of a broken family. It shows how a mother and an older sister have to deal with their dear family member Lucy, and her involvement with gangs and drugs as they are sorting out the lives of their own.

I enjoyed the themes covered in this story, and truly felt a connection to many of the characters. I especially related to Ruth and her point of view in the story. However, despite being entertained throughout the book, I felt like there was almost no "point" or "context" as to why this family was important to read about, or why it was this part of their lives that was featured in the book.

In my opinion the writing felt a little bit awkward at times, but nothing that really took away from the story.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this book to a variety of readers for very different reasons. I think everyone who reads it could take something different away from the story.

This was an emotional and addictive read. I believe it will do well with fans of Ellen Hopkins (thematically not stylistically). The writing was a bit simplistic but it packed a very strong emotional punch.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and Acorn Publishing. All opinions are my own.

Carry Me Home is a beautifully written novel that follows a family of three women, each trying to escape their own reality in different ways. I found myself able to identify with all three women at different times throughout the novel. These three characters became so real to me throughout reading that I felt as if I could touch them. Jessica Therrien breathes life into these women with her artfully crafted prose.

Although there were times where this novel was filled with action and edge-of-your-seat scenes, I would not refer to the pacing as fast. The point of view switches made it easy to set down in this case. Which is actually okay because this is a novel that invoked so much thought that I don't think it should be devoured in one sitting. But with such beautiful writing and thought provoking prose I did not find that it invoked much emotion within me. With the subject matter it certainly could have, so I kind of felt like that was a missing piece of this puzzle. I just felt a bit of an emotional disconnect, especially with Ruth. Probably because she was the character I related to the least.

This book has so much packed into it that I feel like it might have been better split into several books. Gangs, violence, drugs, alcoholic home, love, grief and family dynamics. It is a realistic story though. It shows you how a person could find themselves addicted to drugs and makes you understand why someone would wind up there. This story is full of ugly truths, and it feels 100% real.

I found myself wondering if this novel is based on personal experience or not. At times I feel as if it could be my story about my years of teenage rebellion. (I wasn't quite as wild as Lucy, but I did sneak out my bedroom window.) It just feels extremely authentic and I wouldn't be surprised if the author had lived through some of this herself.

I would suggest this book to lovers of dark, realistic fiction. At times it might not be entirely appropriate for all young adult readers, probably best for 15 and up.

A very emotional journey of three women (two teens and their mom) trying to make it through various hardships. Some of their decisions lead to consequences they are not ready to deal with. Some of the book feels like an amalgamation of the stories of multiple people or else just a condensed timeline of events.

Thank you to Netgalley for an ARC of this book.

This book made my stomach twist & turn in the worst of ways. Having a daughter myself, it just tore me to bits thinking of how things can play out in someone's life. The story came to life in the pages of this book and I think it'll take me a little time to recover from the intensity of it. My only criticism would've been to get more from the epilogue!

Definitely worth reading, but know that it's not an easy, light hearted read.

This was very well written, with a great plot and characters that I connected with.
Thank you netgalley for this arc for an honest review.

Carry me home by Jessica Therrien.
Lucy and Ruth are country girls from a broken home. When they move to the city with their mother, leaving behind their family ranch and dead-beat father, Lucy unravels.They run to their grandparents’ place, a trailer park mobile home in the barrio of San Jose. Lucy’s barrio friends have changed since her last visit. They’ve joined a gang called VC. They teach her to fight, to shank, to beat a person unconscious and play with guns. When things get too heavy, and lives are at stake, the three girls head for LA seeking a better life.But trouble always follows Lucy. She befriends the wrong people, members of another gang, and every bad choice she makes drags the family into her dangerous world.Told from three points of view, the story follows Lucy down the rabbit hole, along with her mother and sister as they sacrifice dreams and happiness, friendships and futures. Love is waiting for all of them in LA, but pursuing a life without Lucy could mean losing her forever.
OMG an absolutely fantastic read with brilliant characters. a moving and heartwrenching read. I really felt for the family and what they went through. Definitely worth more than 5*. netgalley and acorn publishing.

When I was in high school...or middle school, I forget which one, I came across a book by Omar Tyree called Flyy Girl. It was a favorite of mine growing up and to this day I still pull off the shelf or pull up on my reader, this book, ' Carry Me Home', Reminded me a lot of this book.

Carry Me Home is a book that gives you a glimpse into the gritty world of what can happen when you don't keep a close eye on your children. It is so easy to become lost when you are a teenager, especially when your parents suddenly split and you are thrust into a new environment.

Lucy (Guera) finds herself in situation after situation that pushes her down a dark path. She finds herself being initiated into a gang as she seeks acceptance and a false sense of belonging and familiarity.

I will warn that this book has a possibility for triggers. There are some graphic scene's that include rape, drugs and violence.

This book goes back and forth between the three women in the family. The Mother, Ruth and Lucy.
The author hints at the mothers gambling addiction and it starts off with the fathers drinking problems, and towards the end explains that it contributes to Lucy's addiction issues.
 
Growing up I wasn't as squeaky clean as most kids my age was. My parents were divorced, my mom worked a lot and a lot of responsibility was on my shoulders the same way they were Ruth's. I think that is why I enjoy these books, because of how relatable they are and a reminder that things can always go from bad to worse.