I received this book for free from Simon & Schuster in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Laura Wiess captures the visceral emotion of a girl’s journey from innocence to devastating loss and, ultimately, to a strange and unexpected kind of understanding—in this beautiful and painfully honest new novel.

Are there any answers when someone you love makes a tragic choice?

Before and After. That’s how Rowan Areno sees her life now. Before: she was a normal sixteen-year-old—a little too sheltered by her police officer father and her mother. After: everything she once believed has been destroyed in the wake of a shattering tragedy, and every day is there to be survived.

If she had known, on that Friday in March when she cut school, that a random stranger’s shocking crime would have traumatic consequences, she never would have left campus. If the crime video never went viral, maybe she could have saved her mother, grandmother — and herself — from the endless replay of heartache and grief.

Finding a soul mate in Eli, a witness to the crime who is haunted by losses of his own, Rowan begins to see there is no simple, straightforward path to healing wounded hearts. Can she learn to trust, hope, and believe in happiness again?

A sad but moving novel; Me Since You is a difficult, yet eye opening journey into the deep, dark abyss of grief.

It doesn’t start out as an emotional train wreck, though, which is something I really appreciated. We get introduced to Rowan as a normal teenager. We see her living a normal life, with the angst and risk that come with teenage antics. There’s also some romance involved that’s refreshingly cute and full of the new-relationship happiness and hope. The tragedy itself only occurs past a quarter through, giving us the opportunity to truly grasp the monumental change that happens to Rowan, the before and after. I loved that we got to know her as a person before she’s stricken by pain. This allows us time to connect with her in a way that makes us thoroughly feel and understand her pain.

Once the worst happens, Rowan finds herself in a pit of despair and drags us right along with her. We fight through the stages of grief, we battle what no one else seems to understand. Rowan’s friends and neighbors don’t get how she can’t just move on already, especially after months. This is not so we despise the people around her (even though I did, kinda), it’s so that we can see how a situation like this is looked at from the outside; how people really don’t know what it’s like unless they’ve been through it. It’s really an eye opener. We all know grief, but its impact is not truly accepted unless it’s yours.

This story also touches on the ripple effect of our decisions. Even if you’d give anything to change the past, every action, every regret, has some good come out of it. This book is not only sadness and misery. Don’t avoid reading it because you think it will be nothing but torture on your heart. Yes, there’s anguish, but it’s also about learning to move on, about finding light in the darkness. The character growth in itself is amazing. Then there are some great family bonding moments, new experiences, rekindling romance, even cats and dogs, all giving a bit of light to this bleakness, showing us that no matter how far down you’ve been pushed, there is always going to be a way up.

Me Since You is an incredible story about conquering grief. It makes you understand its consequences and power, and may even help you through your own dark times.

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