Review: Jade's journey was one hell of a roller coaster ride...
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 15, 2014
“Living a lie can kill you. It erases the very essence of who you are. Pretending to feel, masking your thoughts, faking your words day in and day out—these actions leave you with an excruciating pain in your chest, a heaviness in your heart, a loathing for the person that you are. It’s a slow and agonizing death. And I don’t know how long I can fight to stay alive.”Insipid focuses on the hard reality of how going through life without truly living and simply existing can change us into that person we no longer recognize.Welcome to Jade Richmond’s reality.I am just going to put it out there that Jade is not going to be everyone's cup of tea and quite frankly, another time, another place, she wouldn't be mine either. At points, it was hard to empathize with her choices. To say Jade is an enigma is an understatement. Our heroine is not all sunshine and bright smiles, nowhere even close. She is real. She is raw. She is flawed.Jade has learned in the most damaging of ways that life is not filled with peaches and cream. And while her actions and responses to the aftermath are not always going to be easily acceptable or understandable to us as a reader, that is OK, it doesn't have to be. All we have to understand is that even the hardest, most uncomfortable stories need to be told too.There will be many readers who will not understand her, who will hate her character with a passion, and then there will be those  who will see past the superficial faade she uses as a shield and completely get her. I am one of those who totally got her. Why…because Jade in a sense is me. Her story is my story. Jade's drowning reflected parts of my own personal drowning. It was easy to connect to her emptiness, indecision, and lack of self-worth while placing myself in her shoes to walk a mile in them. That is not to say that I did not feel absolute frustration with Jade or lack of understanding for the choices she made because believe me there were many times I wanted to throw my tablet. The bottom line though is at the end of the day, I loved Jade’s character.So yeah, as I stated above, Jade Richmond without a doubt will not be everyone's cup of tea, but that is the beauty of this story—she is not meant to be. As a reader, you will either love her or you will hate her; either way, I promise you will walk away passionately feeling something towards her.Jade’s journey towards peace and redemption was one hell of an emotional roller coaster ride. At around 53% in, Christine knocked me for a loop blind-siding me. I found myself having to walk away to collect my bearings. My heart ached so badly; it literally hurt to breathe. From this point on these characters completely wrecked me. The reality and morality behind Insipid had me taking a close look in the mirror. Upon this revelation the story became so much more to me. Each and every word left me feeling something.Christine Brae, in my opinion, has done it again. The only thing stopping me from giving Insipid a well-deserved five star review was a few writing technicalities.