Blue Rose By Sarah Daltry
Book Info:
Title: Blue Rose, a Flowering novel
Author: Sarah Daltry
Release Date: 2/1/2014
Publisher: SDE Press
Cover Design: Shoutlines Design
Blurb:
“Four. My life has been shaped by four people.
Four men, to be more specific. My father, my stepfather, my best friend, and my
boyfriend. The first two shaped it in horrible ways, but what I am, who I am,
is all because of four men.”
Alana Reardon has secrets. Some of them are
too dark to tell, but everyone already thinks they know anyhow. At 20, she
takes too many pills, hides the parts of her that she hates, and willingly
becomes the person that they think she is. A slut. A whore. Trash.
There have only been two guys who ever saw
Alana as more: Jack, the guy she can’t get over, and Dave, the one who never
got over her.
With the help of therapy, facing her past, and
the inevitable ways that life changes without your permission, can Alana learn
to stop blaming herself? Can she allow love into her life? Is she ready to move
on?
Warning: This book deals with topics of abuse
and may trigger reactions in people who have experienced those things in their
own lives.
Excerpt:
Later that day,
at lunch, I had just found a seat by the window when he sat across from me. I
was used to sitting alone. He didn’t say anything, and he had nothing to eat.
He looked up at me, though, after a few minutes, and his eyes did it again. I
hated my body, hated the way I looked, hated that somehow I owed my body and my
looks to everyone else. But when Jack looked at me, I wanted to let someone
touch me. I wanted him to hold me. He felt like safety.
It didn’t even
make sense. He was just a broken kid, like me. He always wore the same
threadbare hoodie. Most days, it covered his head. He was cute, but awkward.
His hair was too long and usually greasy. His Chucks were a little too big, so
they looked a little like clown shoes. Yet those gorgeous eyes were all I cared
about. I hadn’t considered guys at all. I didn’t find them attractive, and I
certainly couldn’t see the appeal of sex or of intimacy. With Jack, though, the
thought of him near me didn’t make me nauseous.
“Do you want my
orange?” I asked him.
“Are you sure?”
It wasn’t a
groundbreaking question. But it was how I knew that what I naturally felt for
Jack was right. Because no one had ever asked me that. No one had asked if I
minded, if I was sure, if something was okay. They just took things.
“Yeah.”
He took it and I
handed him my knife. It was flimsy plastic and wouldn’t even pierce the rind,
so I took the orange back and peeled it with my fingernails. Jack just watched
me and, when I handed him the orange, now peeled, he smiled. His upper lip
curled more than it should have and he looked silly, smiling at an orange. But
he drew the same smile from me.
“Thank you,” he
said, and he pulled two slices free from the whole and handed them back to me.
I didn’t eat them right away. I just watched him eat his part. He was messy and
he ended up covering himself in the juices. He unzipped his hoodie after the
orange squirted down the front. Underneath, he was wearing a washed out blue
T-shirt with a train on it. He looked ten.
“Nice shirt,” I
teased.
He looked down.
“I live with my grandmother. She has no concept of clothes.”
“It’s cute.”
He smiled again
and it was less awkward this time. “Do you live with your grandmother, too?”
I was wearing a
huge black sweater over baggy black pants. “No. I just… I don’t like people
looking at me.”
“Yeah. I get
that.”
He didn’t tell
me that I was too pretty to dress the way I did; he didn’t say my body was too
good to hide. He just went back to eating his orange, letting the juice spill
all over the train shirt. We were fourteen, but I already knew Jack would
always be the only thing that mattered in my future.
My Review
5 big stars
I've just finished reading this book after buying it this morning, some books you read and there good and then there are some books that stay with you forever. You finish them and can't quite put into words what they made you feel.
This is one of those books, the way Sarah writes Alana's story is breathtaking; she makes you feel so many emotions at once that you're not sure whether to laugh or cry. At some points you'll want to jump into the book and shake Alana, tell her what a mistake that would be but as Alana says
"Real life doesn’t have a happily ever after and, like I said, this is no fairy tale. But it’s a story and it’s my story..."
Sarah writes stories about real life, she doesn't candy coat them and that's what makes them so good, so real; real life has mistakes you'll regret and happy moments that will get you through the bad.
I would recommend this book and any of Sarah's other books to anyone, she really is a gifted author, I hope she carry's on with Alana's story as I'd love to read more about her and maybe you never know, happily ever after may just be possible after all...
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