Review: Great Novel from Ms. Berto
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 13, 2013
What would you do if one day you came home to find your husband's lifeless body on your bedroom floor?Four months after Paul's death, Katie finds solace in sleeping pills and Johnny Walker. Soon she is spiraling out of control and losing her grip on reality. She often dreams of the day she found Paul surrounded by his own blood and vomit, but is unaware is she is even awake or sleeping. She even goes as far as to blame herself for killing him. That first week after his death hasn't ended for her, and she feels a constant disconnect. Katie avoids anything that triggers the painful reminder of that day. She refuses to enter the master bedroom where she found Paul, only allowing herself to sleep in the spare bedroom. She has pushed away everyone in her life: her friends, family, and even her six-year-old daughter, Ella. She knows she hasn't been the best mom, but she refuses to let her parents take Ella away from her and puts on a mask that everything is fine.When Katie's mother, Rochelle, confronts her at a birthday party, Katie finds herself running away from her problems again and ends up at a party for her childhood friend's older brother, Brent. While there, she blacks out and wakes up the next morning in an unfamiliar bed, with her dress torn and an painful ache between her legs, but she is unable to piece together the events of what had happened the night before to lead up to this.Liam, Brent's brother and Katie's best friend, tries to help Katie confront her issues, but pushes her away even further when he expresses his true feelings for her. Liam refuses to let Katie run off again, and when he explains to her how he has coped with the loss of Paul, she realizes she is not the only one suffering and that her and Liam are not so different after all. Sometimes it is easier to admit you have a problem and seek help when someone close to you is dealing with the same issues.Katie finally begins to remember bits and pieces of what happened the night of the party, but will she be able to deal with the repercussions of what had happened and seek help or will she continue to spiral further, drowning into the issues that have been plaguing her and continue to push everyone away?*****I loved the synopsis for Pulling Me Under, and the storyline drew me in immediately. From the very beginning you could see that Katie has an inner battle with the way she's coping with her husband's death. Rebecca Berto did a great job of depicting how Katie's thought process jumped around and her struggle dealing with every day things in her life, including being a mom. At times I seriously just wanted to slap Katie for how she was behaving and scream at her to put her daughter first, but at the same time I felt for her and thought to myself, if I had been in the same situation I might have turned to the same outlets to deal with the pain as well.I didn't see the end coming at all. Throughout the book I was trying to guess who was responsible for what happened to Katie at the party. Every time Katie had any recollection of that night, I immediately went with her gut instinct of who might have been, but I was so far off. I like that it kept things suspenseful, even right up to the very end.There were a few things I didn't like about the book. There were a lot of parts that I felt were over-stretched and dragged on, and I found myself skimming over a few pages. I didn't really feel a connection between Katie and Liam, even after they grew closer. I wanted to so badly, and I knew he was the perfect one for her to lean on and help carry the burden, since they were both struggling, but for me, the feelings between them just weren't there. My biggest bugaboo was that the entire book was written in the first person from Katies's POV. . .EXCEPT part 2. Part 2 was written in the third person, and I just felt like it didn't flow with the rest of the book. I think it might have been better to to go back and forth between Katie and Brent's POV in the first person (but that's just my opinion).Overall, I did enjoy the book. It was emotional and drew on several heart-wrenching issues that I think a lot of readers can relate to. Kudos to Ms. Berto!