My Rating-5/5
Publishing Date-15 April 2023
Thanks to Netgalley for providing me the Advanced Reviewers Copy(ARC). All the views and opinions expressed are my own.
This book is a memoir which encapsulates the author's journey with psychiatric injury after suffering through several sexual assaults and various other traumas including the breaking up of her fifteen year old marriage.
This book explores the way after losing all her reasons to live, the author saw a light at the end of the tunnel and found a reason to keep holding onto dear life for a little while longer.
This book captures such raw emotions that it is bound to make the reader cry and bawl like a baby as it touches the heartstrings and you feel bad for the author.
This book should be read keeping in mind all the triggers as this book contain mention of rape and sexual assault. It's not an easy book to read and is bound to force the reader to put the book down to process what he/she has just read.
Hat's off to the author as it's difficult to even fathom how difficult must have been for the author to relive her past traumas for the sake of this book. This book reemphasizes the fact, when all the reasons of staying alive are lost, only one reason is enough to keep on going for a little while longer and try to keep one's head above the water.
Being a dog lover myself, I especially loved the relationship between the author and her pets. I also cried a little when Shadow passed away.
Despite being a difficult book to read, this book should be read by everyone as it reinstates the fact that even when our world is crumbling around us, our resilience can help us survive.
While reading this book, it's normal to feel angry at some people and the way they behaved with the author. I, myself felt some of the characters should be killed or put behind bars so that more people could be saved from enduring the plight the author went through.
In all, this book encapsulates the visceral experience of living with psychiatric injury, combined with the power of radical acceptance, sweetened by the healing quality of animal companionship and the joy of embracing self-love.
In the end, I would like to say this book deserves all the love and appreciation it might get in the near future as it must have taken great amount of courage to pen down one's inner thoughts and feelings while suffering through some of the most difficult circumstances, a person could ever go through.