What You Left Behind.
"I didn't take her life away from her. She took mine."
It's been really, really difficult for me to gather my thoughts about this book, because I needed personal insight to express what worked and didn't work for me in Ryden's story.
This book is about a cancer-stricken teenage girl who died sacrificing her life for her unborn baby and a teenage single father.
Ryden had a plan. Finish senior year and earn a soccer scholarship for college. After Meg, his girlfriend, announced the pregnancy, everything became confusing. It's only a matter of time until she stopped chemo treatments and wait for the baby to arrive. Months later, with Meg gone, and an infant in the picture, Ryden's plan to score soccer goals may have to change to full time parenting responsibilities. If only there was someone, or something, to help him be a better father to baby Hope, he would cling to it.
Joni, Ryden's quirky co-worker, made the story a little less intense. She's one of those girls you wish you were friends with. And Joni was the most likable character in the story. Their relationship, sadly, the romance didn't work for me, mostly for 2 reasons :
We don't quite get enough Joni time to care about her as a character and in my opinion their love-story is only sketched here and stays on a superficial level.
The lying : It took way too much time to Ryden to tell the truth, and I didn't like the fact that their whole relationship was built around a LIE. And what lie! She doesn't even know that he has a daughter during most of the book! Of course it induced unnecessary drama, and I have a thing : I loathe unnecessary drama, especially when it's created by miscommunications. It drives me crazy.
We don't quite get enough Joni time to care about her as a character and in my opinion their love-story is only sketched here and stays on a superficial level.
The lying : It took way too much time to Ryden to tell the truth, and I didn't like the fact that their whole relationship was built around a LIE. And what lie! She doesn't even know that he has a daughter during most of the book! Of course it induced unnecessary drama, and I have a thing : I loathe unnecessary drama, especially when it's created by miscommunications. It drives me crazy.
What You Left Behind was such a infuriating and heartbreaking young-adult story - I loved what I think the author was trying to say but I didn't enjoy the story.
Maybe it's just me, but the gripping emotions that I should have felt while reading the book wasn't enough for me to love the story. It was just okay. Yes, it is different, and I applaud the author for that. What irked me the most was Meg's reason for keeping the baby. It goes to show how truly immature she was, and that teenagers should never become young parents.
