Review: Worth Reading
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 9, 2013
This book deals with traumatic PTSD brought on by a death and the results of such on a young girl whose father died by drowning while they were both on a fishing trip. Ever since then, the girl has nightmares and is completely afraid of water. She also has survivor's guilt and feels that she caused her father's death. Counseling and other therapies haven't helped and the nightmares haven't stopped.Against the teenager's wishes, her mother moves them to a new town and a new school. The girl stays closed off from others... protecting herself from ever being hurt... as she has done since her father's death. She doesn't want to make friends or socialize.In spite of her feelings... a few people make it through her tough shell. One young man who has had grief and loss in his own background looks up her background and the newspaper articles of the tragedy and decides to try to help her. He challenges her to learn to swim and then to swim in a swim challenge at the end of the year.This is the story of her learning to live again... while dealing with the nightmares and her other forms of grief.A YA who has suffered loss in some way would really relate to this well-written story.