Review: I loved it!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 23, 2013
What a beautiful, amazing story.First I want to say it seems you can read this book here on Goodreads. I was given a copy to review, though, in exchange for an honest opinion.The book is quite long and there's a lot going on.I had a couple of concerns reading this. One, it seemed to have a lot of potential to be something more than your typical NA novel, but I feared (as is the case lately) it wouldn't own up to that potential.I'm glad to say it was so much more.The second bit that worried me was the religious talk in the beginning. I thought, for sure, it would be a preachy book.But it wasn't. It didn't bother me one bit, though it does play a huge role throughout the book.The characters in this book are very complex. I know not everyone will relate to the heroine, Mara, but you will definitely feel for her. You can tell that she's broken. She does a lot of things you won't approve of, but I was still rooting for her until the very end.Honestly, watching her so broken really hurt, I just wanted to reach into my kindle and hug her and tell her everything will be okay.I liked Jack's character a lot. However, I felt I didn't really get to know him that well.This is not a romance book. There are romantic elements to it, but honestly, it felt more like a coming of age story, a self-discovery of a very lost girl. Mara isn't healed through the power of love or whatever, she isn't healed at all until she decides to heal herself.Wow, I actually feel I'm not deep enough to talk about this book. It's a very powerful story about loving and accepting yourself. I don't know how else to explain it.Loved the way it was written. The story shifts between past and present and 1st and 3rd person POV and it worked very well, slowly uncovering the Mara before and why she is the way she is after.I did think the book was a bit over-Hoovered (if you've read a Colleen Hoover book, you'll know what I mean.) It's tragedy after tragedy after tragedy and the girl just can't catch a break. Just when you think things are finally looking good, BAM, something happens.There are a couple of mildly graphic sex scenes. It wasn't a smutty book, they're just sort of there and I thought they worked very well with the story.Overall, it's such a great and refreshingly beautiful book. The characters are flawed, the events that happen realistic. Nobody in this book is perfect. I definitely recommend The Truth About Dandelions.