Review: Rating is 5 out of 5 Skipped Stones
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 15, 2013
**ARC**This is a story that when you read, you can feel every emotion that JB felt when writing, you shed every tear that JB shed. Truly a book you will all love like many of us already have. This is a story about loss, love & lessons of the Heart.It is the summer of 1996 and Alex is on the way to see her grandparents in South Carolina. She has always enjoyed staying with them whenever she could. She has this special place in her heart for her Papa & Memaw. Her Papa though is the man who has always given her the love that she needed, at the right times in her life. When she would visit, or she needs to feel that sense of security, she sits on his lap. They have such cute banter in this book every time she does.“You know. One day I’m going to break your legs sitting on your lap.”He chuckles. “Oh no. I don’t think so.” He shakes his head. “You’ll never be too big or too old for your Papa’s lap.”And it is here in the beginning of the book that you just see how much Alex loves her grandparents. Her parents are on the way to Italy for a summer vacation and Alex chose to stay with her grandparents instead of going with her parents. She feels as if her time with her grandparents is dwindling since they are getting older.No one ever thought that this would be the last time they would get to say ‘I Love You’ to one another. That this family is getting ready to suffer one of the biggest loses it has ever had to deal with.Alex and her grandparents are sitting down to dinner after her parents leave for the airport. As they are enjoying the sense of feeling whole again, there is a terribly loud sound that rocked the whole town. As if knowing something was wrong, they go to see what has happened. Dread, Loss, Fear, Anger. These are all the emotions that Alex is feeling as they go the little ways to the end of the street. It doesn’t take them too far to be able see where all the noise came from.  Somehow in their hearts already knew… it was her parents.From dealing with all the grief that occurred with her parents’ accident and losing her father that day, and then burying him a few days later, she just needs an escape.The creek is my comfort zone. It’s the place where I know I can be all alone because right now those bricks are coming back, and I need to be able to breathe without feeling like I’m suffocating.Then she sees him, Drew Foster. There has never been anyone else at the creek when she was as she was growing up. She has to let the frustrations out that are weighing her down inside, she starts to throw rocks into the water. Drew just laughs only making her angrier. She doesn’t realize that she has been using his pile of Skipping Stones to throw into the water.“I’d like to share my pile of rocks with you. Skipping stones always helps me when I can’t talk about stuff, too.”I breathe a sigh of relief. That’s all I want to do. Well, except I can’t skip a stone for the life of me. I’m excellent at throwing them. “I can’t skip stones.”He bursts out laughing. “You can’t skip stones?”I shake my head. “Nope.” He stands up and reaches his hand out to help me up. “Well, let’s see what we can do about that, Alex.”And just like that she has forgotten about everything that has happened the last few days in her life. She has forgotten about her dad passing away, about her mom fighting for her life at the Hospital in the Burn Unit. She has become a teenage girl again with a boy who is flirting with her, and she is welcoming it.During the next few months since burying her parents, Alex and Drew have become close. He taught her how to Skip Stones, he showed her where his favorite place by the Creek is, an open field that Alex has never seen and he helped her forget about everything that has happened since arriving in South Carolina. But just as things are starting to feel normal for Alex, the World comes crashing down around her again, it is as if God is playing a cruel joke on Alex that only he is laughing at. Drew disappears from her life without a trace or even a letter to tell her where he went and why he left.The book than takes us from 1996 to 2011. Alex has Graduated High School and went off to college and it is there that she decides to join the Military to help pay for Medical School. She feels as if going to Med School helps to heal her wounded Heart from what happened to her parents. She loves saving people’s lives when no one thinks that it is going to be possible.She is headed back to South Carolina to see her Papa & Memaw before she leaves for the War that is going on in Iraq. She never thought that she would be heading to war when she signed up, but things have changed in the World and she is being deployed as Med First Responder in the field. There is one place she needs to go to before she goes to see her grandparents. She needs to go to the Creek once more.I needed some time alone first to soak in the scenery, to remember how I got in this position to begin with. Standing at this place is like being fifteen all over again. Except the pain I felt then wasn’t bearable. There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t think about my parents, or Drew for that matter. You’d think that after all of these years I’d be over him, but when he left that summer day, he walked away with a piece of my heart. I’ve never been able to get it back.Leaving her car at the Creek, she just wanted to walk through town once more while helping to clear her head and know that she made the best decision when she joined the Military.It’s nice to be home. I walk up the few small steps and into the living room. Papa is sitting in his chair watching Fox News. I’ve tried to tell him he needs to watch CNN, but he’s positive the people on Fox have a better grasp on the situation. “Hey, Pop.” I smile.He makes my heart feel warm and fuzzy. He pats his knee. “There’s Papa’s Girl. Come hug my neck, and fill me in.” I laugh because I know that I’ll never outgrow his lap.“Sure I won’t break those little bird legs of yours?”He shakes his head. “How many times do I have to tell you? You’ll never outgrow this old man’s lap.”“I’m glad.” I gently sit down and wrap my arms around his neck. I whisper, “I’ve missed you, Papa.”After her parents passed away, she had spent many nights sitting there with her arms wrapped around her Papa’s neck, talking to him about things in life. Alex has left the house that night and read the letters they gave to her to read while on the plane, they both write comforting words to her and what Papa has written explains so much about who he is and why he was a bit angry when she joined the Military. He wrote to her about his own experiences in War and how she needs to always protect herself and those around her.Alex is in the middle of War dealing with soldiers wounded while fighting. All of a sudden something seems different.This time the noises are different. There’s a high pitched whistling. It’s unique, and it’s something I’ve never heard before. Like the smell of burnt skin, I know it’s not a sound I’ll ever forget, though. In an instant, the officer who is bringing in the latest trauma victim yells while lunging at me. For a brief moment, I’m able to recognize those milk chocolate eyes. “Move, move,” I hear right as everything goes blank. It goes black…When Alex comes around she realizes that things are not what they seem. Will she ever find the one person who made her feel normal and who helped her through one of the most devistating times in her life?