Book Review for A World Without You
Stars: 4 out of 5
Date Completed: 7/10/17
Review:
Okay, first let's start with what this book is and what this book isn't.
This book IS a great book that was a page turner and left me feeling, "What did I just read?!" This book ISN'T a universal book about the feelings and emotions that are typical for people to go through grief. Now, there is "no" typical way to have grief happen to you, of course, BUT the narrator (at least one of them) is THE MOST UNRELIABLE NARRATOR because that's what he is supposed to be.
I got this book because of judging the book by its (back) cover, which isn't a thing you should *technically* do. The back cover, as you can see in the picture above, doesn't include what the story is about. I judged it because of the question, "What would you do to bring back someone you love?" and because of Alexandra Bracken's and VOYA's reviews:
"A heartrending, beautifully complex look at mental illness, life, and loss."
"Revis's account of grief, loss, first love, and anguish, presented through a lens of mental illness, is a must-read."
I believe I skimmed the Goodreads description, too and latched on to seeing character is dealing with loss and time travel and somehow skimmed over the very important detail of, "But even the strength of their love isn't enough to help Sofia escape her deep depression. After she commits suicide, Bo is convinced she's not actually dead." Also missed the part where it says Bo has delusions he can time travel.
Not reading that and just diving into the story made it really confusing for the first 100 or so pages because I was sitting there reading and believing Bo that he could actually time travel and that maybe Sofia isn't really dead, which made it a bit frustrating because I was thinking this story was about grief, but with the possibility of her still being alive and stuck in time somewhere, I wasn't sure how this was an "account of grief, loss, first love, and anguish".
Around the 100 or so page mark, I opened the front cover and read the book synopsis and realized that she really did commit suicide and that Bo is delusional and this is how he IS dealing with his grief. I was a bit shocked that I missed these important details.
Once I realized that, I thoroughly enjoyed the story. There were some lines that would be worth discussing in a grief book club, but not enough for it to necessarily stand on its own. I think I would take the lines and perhaps present them as a bigger discussion and recommend the book to read because it's fascinating and a book that will stay with you anyway no matter what your life experiences with grief are.
At first, I also didn't like that every now and then the narrator would switch to Bo's sister, Phoebe. This was also when I was a little confused about where this story was heading and couldn't see how she fit in or why the author even bothered having her have her own chapters. But as I began reading it further in, Phoebe grew on me and saw that she was included to present how much Bo is an unreliable narrator.
