Broken Girl by Gretchen de la OMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Final Score - 5 Oh My Aching Heart Stars!
*received ARC from author in exchange for an honest review*
I need to sleep on this one to gather my thoughts. Review to come in the a.m.
***EDITED TO ADD IN***
Wow! Just... wow! My mind is blown away by this book. Gritty, honest, in you face. That how I describe Rose. She's a warrior. Life has continually knocked her down, but she doesn't go down. She fights, but she's built walls that are impenetrable... because she's had to. Betrayed by the people who are supposed to love you unconditionally. God, the things she went thru, it was enough to make me cry, which happened continuously through out the book.
Rose wants what every one wants - to be accepted. To be believed. To be loved & cherished. To know that her life/death would mean something to someone.
That came in the form of Shane. I truly believe he came into her life at a time where he was necessary for her to not loose that last part of her that was human, capable of feeling. He's a balm to her wounded soul. You couldn't help but root for them - for Rose to come clean about her life and what had happened to her, for Shane to knock thru those carefully constructed walls, for life to just cut Rose a break and give her that desired out from the life she was living on the streets, but most of all, YOU wanted her to not feel like that broken 9 year girl, who was so brutally shattered into pieces, never to be put fully back together again.
This book was unlike any other I've read - I felt as if I was reading my own life in words. As a survivor of childhood sex abuse, while I was never raped, I understand Rose's thoughts and feelings - they were/are to a degree my own. I couldn't help but relate to her and what she needed to do in order to survive. And while my life parallels to her - to a degree - the similarities are both striking and haunting.
Normally, I would like to have seen an epilogue - but this book didn't need it. I like to see things tied up in a perfectly form HEA, but again - THIS BOOK DIDN'T NEED IT. I don't even care if her parent get redeemed, nor do I want to know! This book has the ending it was supposed to have, so very different from how it started and that to me was the most perfect HEA I could have ever asked for.
This book will DEFINITELY stay with me, both on my radar (to be re-read again at a later date) and also in my heart & mind, for a long time to come!
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