Review: Emotional, realistic story
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 21, 2014
How We Lived is a very quick read, but Erin Butler packs an emotional punch within its pages. The book is a story of loss and a story of love. There’s a lot of self-hatred and blame going on among Kelsey’s family and friends after her brother, Kyle, is killed. People are dealing with the loss in unhealthy ways, or perhaps not really dealing with it at all. Kelsey’s whole family is closed off from one another, going through the motions of life, but not really living.I loved watching Kelsey and Chase reconnect and seeing how they began to move forward. Their relationship was so complicated, and it was interesting to see how both internal and external forces influenced how they felt.This book is sweet and sad and realistic. So many New Adult stories present painful pasts as a reason to make a character angsty, but that wasn’t at all the case here. How We Lived is an honest portrayal of grief, love, and life.