“Someone told me once that to create true art you must be willing to bleed and let others watch.”
This book is simply a work of art...
This review is hard for me. This book was so freaking AMAZEBALLS that I am having a hard time to really put into words just how incredible this book really was. I am going to try and do this book justice without giving anything away because I wouldn't want to ruin it for anyone.
Description:
Blue Echohawk doesn't know who she is. She doesn't know her real name or when she was born. Abandoned at two and raised by a drifter, she didn't attend school until she was ten years old. At nineteen, when most kids her age are attending college or moving on with life, she is just a senior in high school. With no mother, no father, no faith, and no future, Blue Echohawk is a difficult student, to say the least. Tough, hard and overtly sexy, she is the complete opposite of the young British teacher who decides he is up for the challenge, and takes the troublemaker under his wing.
This is the story of a nobody who becomes somebody. It is the story of an unlikely friendship, where hope fosters healing and redemption becomes love. But falling in love can be hard when you don't know who you are. Falling in love with someone who knows exactly who they are and exactly why they can't love you back might be impossible.
My Thoughts:
Have you ever had a book that completely left you raw with emotions and you came out on the other side of the book exposed and bleeding??
This book did that to me.
It left me raw and bleeding (in a good way).
In the beginning I was completely thrown off because I had no idea where this book was headed. It was like a big history lesson but it was taught in a way that added character to the book and eventually everything fit together and by the end you were sitting there saying
"Ahh Amy Harmon, I see what you did there".
I can't say more than that because it will give away the magic of the book.
Blue Echohawk had no past, she was living in the present with only distant memories of what happened to her when she was younger. She was placed with her "aunt" and all she knew of her mother was that she abandoned her when she was two and the only father figure that she knew was a drifter who raised her to the best of his ability. When her father was found dead she was sent to live with her aunt who let it slip that the drifter was not her real father and her "aunt" had no idea who her real family was.
Blue Echohawk was alone with no idea who she was.
SO when her entirely hot British teacher, Mr. Darcy Wilson (OH pride & Prejudice reference swwooonn), asks the class to write about their past for a year-long assignment she had no idea what to write because she didn't KNOW who she was, she didn't know her REAL name, she didn't even know her real birthdate. All she knew was what she had been told, so how could she write about a past that she has no clue about??
“Once upon a time . . . there was a little blackbird,” I wrote. I stared at the page. “. . . pushed out of the nest, unwanted.”
I could relate to Blue, I never knew my mother so there are things about my own past I am a little sketchy about but at least I knew my real name, birthday, and the name of both of my parents. But regardless of the knowledge that I know, there are questions that only a mother can answer and it sucks to not know who you are completely.
Probably why this book tore into my soul and exposed feelings that I long left buried inside..
Again.. I was bleeding and raw
As the book continues you see Blue open up a little bit, you see the real Blue inside the girl who puts on a mask around other people. She isn't this big slut that other people think she is. She is smart, sweet, caring, resilient and very artistic, especially when it comes to wood-carving. Her father taught her all about carving wood since she was able to hold the tools herself and she has been doing it ever since.
It's her escape and her therapy.
As the school year progresses Mr. Wilson and Blue form a friendship that develops throughout the year. He pushes Blue just enough to get her to respond and then leaves it up to Blue to figure it out on her own. You see her change, you see her WANT to change herself and her ways. By the end of the year Blue is a different person than she was in the beginning and Mr. Wilson is to thank for that, but she still had room to grow.
"But as the waves crashed over me, I was not consumed, I was swept up, washed, my soul blanketed with blessed relief. Hope rose within me like a buoy. And with the hope, came peace. And the peace calmed the waters and quieted the storm, until I sat, spent, bled out, done."
You think their friendship would end there but after Blue leaves school she is met with life obstacles that she has no idea what to do about them. From there you see Mr. Wilson become just Wilson, Blue's once teacher but now friend and companion. He offers her part of his home that she can live in for cheap and a place where she can do her wood carvings in solitude. Wilson becomes Blue's one friend that she never knew she needed. He continues to push her to find out who she is, where she came from, and to put the pieces of her life back together so she can be whole and know her whole story.
She goes on a journey figuring out who she is and what happened to her and her parents. This journey comes complete by the end of the story and you get a full-circle affect that you don't (or maybe you do) expect.
"Beneath my wounds I was still whole. Beneath my insecurities, beneath my pain, beneath my struggle, beneath it all, I was still whole".
While on this journey, you see the romance build with Wilson and Blue. I thought it was going to creep me out when Blue started to see Wilson as a romantic interest because he was her teacher to begin with but it was anything but creepy!! Their love is endearing, frustrating, hopeful, lustful, and enchanting. Their love is what true romance novels are all about. It wasn't rushed (it was almost painfully slow), it was heart breaking but oh so swoon-worthy. You are left in a puddle of pure DELIGHT just reading it.
"I was spent without compromise, sated without sacrifice, completely and totally head-over-heels in love. And it was delicious."
"He tasted like black licorice and snowflakes. Simultaneously forbidden and familiar. Hot and cold. Sinful and safe."
The other supporting characters were just as amazing as the main ones and they gave the book so much more depth. They were incredible.
There was one part of the book, in particular that left me a blubbering mess and that was when Blue was in the hospital after the hurricane and Wilson's sister and husband came to see her. By the end of that whole chapter I had to put the book away and get myself together because it was so beautifully raw, painful, heart-wrentching that I felt like I was there in that room. I felt Blue's emotions and I could only picture what that wood-carving she made afterwards looked like when she was done. Of course people who have read this book know what I am talking about and if you have not then when you do, you will understand.
There are books out there that rarely speak to my soul and this book did just that. It was amazing, brilliant, incredible. It pulled me in, told me stories like I was around a warm camp fire listening to nature and then gave me history lessons that left me thinking long after I finished the last page of the story. It made me FEEL and it made me want to become an even better person by the end.
I swear people search forever for a book that can make you feel the way this one made me feel, I don't think I will ever be the same.
I would also like to point out the phenomenal details that were added to this book. The Native American tales, the references to the Greeks, the poems, the history within the book added so much richness that it made the book so smooth to take in and adore. Amy Harmon did her research and you could tell that she put her whole heart and mind into this story.
I give this amazing book 5 fantastic/amazing STARS and if you have not read it by now, I suggest you do that RIGHT NOW!!!
Here is the link to it for Amazon and its on sale right now for 99PENNIES!! How freaking fantastic is that?? I would pay more so even if it raises in price, BUY IT ANYWAYS, it's totally worth it and YES this book is THAT GOOD!!..
