Everything Left Unsaid by Jessica Davidson

Title: Everything Left Unsaid
Author: Jessica Davidson

Release Date: 1st August 2012

My Rating: 5/5

Blurb:
Tai and Juliet have been best friends forever – since they met at kindy and decided to get married in first grade.

They understand each other in the way that only best friends can.


They love music, beach walks, energy drinks and, they are slowly discovering, each other.


As they dream of adventures beyond the HSC – a future free of homework, curfews and parents, a life together – their plans are suddenly and dramatically derailed.


For Tai is sick.


And not everything you wish for can come true.


A poignant story of first love, hope, grief, family, and the twistedness of life.


In A Nutshell:

Everything Left Unsaid beautifully shows the pain and confusion two people can feel when faced with losing the other through no fault of their own. This is an exceptional read that I highly recommend, although make sure you have a box of tissues within reach.

My Review:
In one word, this story is heartbreaking. Just thinking about it now, weeks after finishing the story, it still makes me sad. Even though I know it is just a work of fiction, I’m sure this kind of story is very real for many people.

Generally, we all love stories where the two people we want to get together eventually do. In this case, they get together at the beginning of the story. It is what happens next that changes the path their story takes.

Sickness and death are always sad. But when it happens to someone who is so young, it often hits us with our own morality and it somehow seems much harder to face. Young people still have their whole lives ahead of them and this is a key aspect of Tai and Juliet’s story.

Everything Left Unsaid is told from the alternating perspectives of Tai and Juliet. With these dual perspectives comes the different emotions, feelings, and thoughts about both themselves, and the other. It interestingly and effectively examines the dynamics of a relationship between two eighteen-year-olds who should be focused on finishing high school, getting their driver’s licenses, spending the summer doing who-knows-what before hopefully starting university. They should not have to worry about what happens when one of them gets sick and has a very real possibility of dying. It’s heartbreaking as Tai comes to grips with everything he will never get to do, and Juliet realises everything she and Tai planned to do together, she will now have to do without her best friend.

They’re losing me – but I’m losing everything.

Tai’s illness is portrayed realistically and his process of coming to terms with his imminent death is one of shock, disbelief, denial, anger, fear and isolation. He hides a lot of what he is feeling and experiencing in order to save his family and Juliet from seeing him in pain and frustration. In turn, Juliet struggles with her emotions; to show Tai how distraught she is feeling or to try and stay strong for him? Because when it comes down to it, it isn’t about her, it is about Tai and what he is going through.

Does she know how lonely I feel, even when I’m surrounded by people?

Everything Left Unsaid beautifully shows the pain and confusion both sides endure. This is an exceptional read that I highly recommend, although make sure you have a box of tissues within reach.

The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

Title: The Fault In Our Stars
Author: John Green

Release Date: 11th January 2012

My Rating: 5/5

Blurb:
Despite the tumour-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.

In A Nutshell:
Absolutely fantastic book. Read the whole review.

My Review:
I’m not sure I can remember ever reading another book that was so amazingly sad and wonderfully witty at the same time. The Fault in Our Stars had me chuckling and smiling to myself, then moments later in tears, and then back smiling again. Such is the writing power of John Green, who turns a seriously sad subject into one of love, pride, adventure, witty banter, bizarre topics and with characters who have seen so much and are wise and intelligent beyond their years.

John Green fans will not be disappointed with his latest release but should be cautioned to have a box of tissues close by. One of the many moments when they were needed was when Hazel declared she was a grenade. This, while heartbreaking, was also completely understandable from her point of view.

Augustus is funny and charming and has so much heart. He does his best to keep everyone around him upbeat, especially because everyone in the story is suffering with either health or emotional battles. But they also have to deal with everyday problems too, and these are ones Augustus can help with. For example, ‘Support Group Isaac’ goes through the trauma of losing his sight but spends most of the time being more concerned about his love life. Augustus helps Isaac through this with the help of some eggs and Hazel’s driving skills.

I’m not going to comment on the relationship between Hazel and Augustus, except to say that it is special and priceless, heartbreaking and heart-warming. “Okay”.

Hazel and Augustus often discuss their perception and views on their lives as cancer kids and the reality of their morality. Remarkably we don’t get buried in sadness as they are less conventional and clichéd and someone always has something light-hearted to say or a joke to make about their illness.

“I didn’t tell him that the diagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! You’re a woman. Now die.” Pg. 24

“Off topic, but: What a slut time is. She screws everybody.” Pg. 112

“…I had a moral opposition to eating before dawn on the grounds that I was not a nineteenth-century Russian peasant fortifying myself for a day in the fields.” Pg. 137

“My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.” Pg. 311

“You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you.” Pg. 313

This is the kind of book parents should want their teenagers to read. And it’s the kind of book teenagers will want to read.

A big thankyou to Penguin Books Australia for this review copy.

Flyaway by Lucy Christopher

Title: Flyaway
Author: Lucy Christopher

Release Date: 1st April 2010 (Australia)

My Rating: 3/5

One cold, winter morning, while Isla and her father are out waiting for the yearly migration of swans, Isla's father has a heart-attack and goes into hospital. While Isla is at the hospital waiting for news about his condition, she meets Harry, a boy her age who she is surprised to find out has Leukaemia. Harry is the first boy to understand her love of wild swans and is genuinely interested in hearing about them. From his hospital window they watch a wild swan on the lake outside as she tries, and fails, to fly. There is something different about her, truly different, almost magical. As both Harry and her father's health deteriorates, Isla is sure that if she can help the swan, maybe she can help her father and Harry at the same time, and so she embarks upon a breathtakingly magical (not the hocus-pocus kind of magic) journey of her own.

This is beautifully written and I love how Isla throws herself into her school project to help distract her from the reality of whether her father will live, but also in an attempt to make him feel better, and how her sullen grandfather also joins in on the project as a welcome distraction to his own troubles. Even through we are never told how old Isla is (this did somewhat annoy me), sometimes I feel she could only be 9 years old, other times 13 or 14, I feel that her reactions are age appropriate for her state of mind and the events affecting her; the angry outbursts at her brother, running away in the middle of the night and not being able to face the reality of what could happen to her family.

This is the touching story about family, friendship, hope, a young girl, a sick boy and a damaged wild swan. Ages 10+