Review: Me Since You by Laura Wiess

Me Since You

By: Laura Wiess

Pub. Date: February 18, 2014

Publisher: MTV Books

Pages: 368

Source: Edelweiss

Sixteen-year-old Rowan is still reeling from her father’s suicide four months ago, after he failed to stop a man from leaping off an overpass to his death. The only witness is Eli, a teenaged boy wrapped deep in mourning for his own father, killed in action in Afghanistan. When Rowan and Eli meet, they recognize kindred spirits, and begin to navigate grief and its aftermath together.

Rowan can’t understand how her father could choose to leave her, and acts out, pushing away friends and taking risks with her safety. Rowan’s mother, wracked with her own guilt and sorrow over failing to save her husband, stops going to work and collects stray cats for comfort. Grief, fractured and unpredictable, rules their lives now. Rowan is lost—and sinking. But Eli represents a lifeline for Rowan, and as they struggle to make sense of what’s gone and what is left behind, they begin to fall in love. Me Since You is Laura Wiess at her finest—a beautiful, gripping and painfully honest examination of adolescence.

 I received this galley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you Edelweiss and MTV books.

I have been reading a lot of books about loss lately, but I still decided to give this one a chance. It sounded similar to another book I read and enjoyed, The Beginning of After by Jennifer Castle. While there were some similarities, there was also many differences as well.

I thought the book was going to start with after her father's suicide. But that was not the case. This gave me a great sense of her life before her father died, but it also made me even sadder, knowing what was going to happen soon. The day starts off like a normal day, Rowan and her friends decide to skip class, but she is caught by her cop father. When a call comes in about a man threatening to commit suicide, her father runs to the scene but is unable to save the man or the man's son who also died. While it really isn't his fault, her father feels like it is and slowly falls into a deep depressing, eventually killing himself as well. While dealing with her pain and sadness, Rowan becomes friends Eli, whose father died in Afghanistan two years before and is the one who called 911 when the man was on the bridge. It was hard reading this book. But good.

The story is written beautifully and definitely pulls at your heart strings. Reading Rowan's pain was truly heartbreaking, but necessary. I definitely needed a light, fun reading after this one!