If you are looking for a light hearted and quick read, this is not the book for you. This book requires settling in and being ready to feel all the emotions, in the best way possible. A deeper read with heavier hitting moments. Would recommend to a friend.

This book was so well written. It is a touching story about family, grief and overcoming struggles that life throws at you.

This story is about Tobin Oliver, a high school junior whose father just got diagnosed with ALS. You watch her struggle with balancing her art and taking care of her father. When her father makes some decisions on how he wants his own life to end, Tobin learns that she must respect her father's decisions and just love him for his choices.

Don't forget the tissues! 

This book is bound to bring out emotion in its readers, especially if you are someone who may have experienced the loss of a family member or close friend from illness. 

At first, the writing style was a little on the lighter side. I didn't feel too connected to the characters, but then as I got more and more into the book, I noticed that I was becoming more emotionally invested. 

This is a book that slowly pulls you in and, eventually, has you completely sucked in without knowing it. The beginning was slower-paced, almost to the point where I was getting a little bored. There is a ton of emotions with the characters as they begin to uncover grief and suffering. 

I ended up giving this book 3 out of 5 stars. The ending is what saved the story for me. If you like slower-paced novels with heartfelt meaning, this book may interest you.

Thank you NetGalley for the digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Such a beautiful book about Family, loss, grief and hope.
Young Tobin is living with her father, who has been diagnosed with ALS. Her father has decided to control the disease and determine when he wants to die.

I lost my father, nearly 17 years ago to a massive heart attack, so while I couldn't related to the circumstances surrounding her father, I can relate to the pain a daughter feels when losing her father. This could be why the book hit me so hard, because it brought up so many emotions.

Wreck by Kirstin Cronin-Mills

Oh my god this book is so wonderfully written I am absolutely in love! It gave a real glimpse into the world of ALS. I cried so much with this book but I loved it!!!
5 stars

Someone said to me, ‘it’s easy to write intensely sad books. All that emotion – very easy to articulate’. And that’s true to a point, but it’s also easy to descend into cliché and predictability. Which is why Wreck is so on point.

The emotional arc of Tobin’s grief never feels trite or superficial. She has always kept a tight rein on her feelings, has always been a quiet, thoughtful child, so finding words difficult when she discovers her paramedic marathon-running father has Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS), isn’t out of character. She spurns a lot of people’s effort to engage her (bf, Gracie #hashtagmonster and Aunt Allison), but takes support from others (Great-Uncle Paul and shy violinist Sid). She starts to tank in school, and throws her heart (metaphorically) into her beloved Lake Superior. But she never cuts herself off from these decisions, always self-aware, and mostly honest with herself and others.

This exploration of grief is slow and detailed. We see the disease catch up with Steve too too quickly, forcing Tobin to adapt to a very new set of life circumstances. Ike her dad’s carer, eventually moves in and the three of them navigate Steve’s withering muscles, as well as his damaged brain. It does take half the book to get to the really awful part of Steve’s decline, but the first part is crucial, so that we see all that is going to be lost—the closeness of Tobin and Steve, the all-embracing life he lives, the absence of her mother, and most surprising of all, the history lesson about the town where they live, Duluth.

Tobin’s family were right there at the beginning of western settlement, and Cronn-Mills deals with the ‘invasion’ in a thoughtful and honest way. Tobin’s reflections on the way the settlers explored and survived in this harsh landscape, and the interactions with the first nations people are a break from the impending tragedy, but also reflect Tobin’s inner confusion and turmoil. Her ancestors paved the way for Tobin’s life, and her love of this place grounds her and gives the story a strong and layered tapestry.

There are moments of lightness: Steve’s dad jokes, Ike’s patience and eternal forgiveness, Tobin’s attempts to create her origin story mashing together X-men and Star Wars figurines, and the six story high duck. And while these serve to illuminate the obvious—life does indeed go on, and we all grieve in our own way—there is no preparing us for the end of Steve’s life. It’s messy, it’s unfair and ultimately heroic. I was a crying mess, basically.

I did love the way that mum doesn’t arrive to save the day, nor do we get a full-on romance. This is real life, and nothing will halt the viciousness of a terrible disease. But Tobin makes us proud, and we know she’ll always have her dad guiding her way.

Thanks to Netgalley and Sky Pony Press for this advanced copy. It has been out in the US for a couple of weeks now. Seek it out if you like strong narratives that don’t sugarcoat the world, that create authentic characters and situations, and that allow readers the space to explore grief in complex ways.

This book was so, so hard to read, but it was so worth it. I lost my dad nearly two years ago to cancer so I know exactly what the main character Tobin goes through. This book follows Tobin when she learns about her dad's diagnosis of ALS and the 6 months she has left with him.
This is such a heartwrenching but also heartwarming book about illness, suffering, grief, death and life carrying on after the loss of a loved one. It took me a long time to read and I had to put it down for quite a while multiple times because it was just SO REAL, and I praise the author for her novel. I had never read a book like this one, obviously we see films all the time about parents dying and everyone cries during these films because it's sad, but I have never felt so understood in a book. Even though it is a really hard book to read because of it's subject and ending, I think everybody should read it, whether you have lost no one or whether you have because for me it is an ode to life and how to deal with grief. The first half of the book was quite light and a bit lacking in emotion but it makes up for it in the second half, I think I cried my eyes out right up until the end because I saw myself and just wanted to tell Tobin that everything would be okay. Grief is a hard process, the pain and anger overwhelm you and it never goes away, but it gets easier to smile at people who ask you how you are and to say that you have lost someone, this book is the proof that life goes on.
I gave it 5 out of 5 stars because it was brilliant and I loved it, even though it really made me cry a lot.

Great read. The author wrote a story that was interesting and moved at a pace that kept me engaged. The characters were easy to invest in.

Wreck is a story about the worst day of Tobin's life - the day her dad tells her he has ALS and, soon, will die from it. Then ensues so many worse days, days Tobin never thought she would experience, as she has to put on a brave face, pretend she's okay, and worst of all, pretend she understands why her dad wants to take his own life - to be in control of one little thing that's happening to him and his body and his mind deteriorate with the disease.

I spent the first half of this novel thinking it seriously lacked emotion. As somebody with a dead dad, books about dead, or dying, dads always hit me hard. And while the premise of Wreck was sure to pull at the heartstrings... the execution left a lot to be desired. From the minute Tobin's dad told her about his diagnosis, to his carer moving in with them, to Tobin considering what part her dad would play in her origin story she has to make up for her photography portfolio for college, there was so much room for emotion. All of the emotions - anger, frustration, fear, grief, sadness - but the novel stayed pretty static. I could appreciate that Tobin was going through some stuff, but it never left the page and into my head that much.

And then we hit around 60%..

And that’s when I started to sob. I don’t know if the writing style changed, or if it was just the change in events, if it some external factor that made this whole situation seem more real to me, or if it was a change in the story itself, but something definitely shifted. I had to stop reading it for fear of crying on the bus, and it was only at this point I felt a connection to the story.

But I don’t think that makes up for the beginning of the novel, where I nearly gave up on it.

Some other points… Gracie was a bit of a non-character. As a best friend, she served very little purpose. I understood their distance, that Tobin found it hard to be around her, but the novel would have been very much the same without her. Actually… a lot of the characters were of little importance. They were flat, emotionless - Alison left a lot to be desired and Ike was the only real one who had some personality to him.

It also could have covered so much more. I’m not saying it needed to be a totally different book altogether, but you’re bringing up the topic of euthanasia, the right to die, absent mothers, illegal drugs, ALS - this could have been such a deeper book but it just brushed over a lot of topics.

And so, I give Wreck 3 out of 5 stars. The end emotion, for me, doesn’t make up for what else the book lacked, and I walked away feeling disappointed.