I'll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios

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Reviewed by Bel

If seventeen-year-old Skylar Evans were a typical Creek View girl, her future would involve a double-wide trailer, a baby on her hip, and the graveyard shift at Taco Bell. But after graduation, the only thing standing between straightedge Skylar and art school are three minimum-wage months of summer. Skylar can taste the freedom—that is, until her mother loses her job and everything starts coming apart. Torn between her dreams and the people she loves, Skylar realizes everything she’s ever worked for is on the line.

Nineteen-year-old Josh Mitchell had a different ticket out of Creek View: the Marines. But after his leg is blown off in Afghanistan, he returns home, a shell of the cocksure boy he used to be. What brings Skylar and Josh together is working at the Paradise—a quirky motel off California’s dusty Highway 99. Despite their differences, their shared isolation turns into an unexpected friendship and soon, something deeper.

I’ll Meet You There struck a nerve with me on many levels beginning with Skylar, Sky to her friends, who wants more than anything to escape her small town for art school in San Francisco as soon as possible. Like yesterday. Here there's nothing to offer a young girl who has dreams of realizing her potential. In the meantime, she has to contend with one last summer at home, working at the motel, keeping an eye on her depressed mother and spending every last minute with her best friends before everything changes. She cannot have anticipated that Josh Mitchell’s return from Afghanistan would impact her summer.

Josh is home now but a different person from the partier and player that he was back in high school just a couple of years before. He lost his leg and has been learning to adapt to life with his remaining one. Away from the Marines, Josh is lost without the purpose it and his Marines family gave him. His nightmares prevent him from sleeping. He has phantom pains because of his missing limb, he’s riddled with guilt about the deaths he’s witnessed including that of his best friend. He’s a mess and the only person who doesn’t handle him with kids gloves is Sky who unknowingly beomes his calm in the center of the storm.

The two reacquaint with one another while working at the motel. Before you know it they’re flirting and forming a bond that they both need during this very uncertain period in their lives. Sky is considering putting her life on hold because she feels her mother is emotionally incapable of taking care of herself. Josh, whose PTSD is always in the background, freaks out at random times. Yet even with the obvious connection between them, they’re both hesitant to take it further for fear of being hurt or hurting the other person. 

The story is told mostly from Sky’s point of view though Josh has a few short passages in there. His were the most introspective because his turmoil came through. He feels too damaged to be of good to anyone, especially Sky. During one of his private thoughts, my tears welled up because of this:

“What am I supposed to do when I’m bad for the one good thing in my life?”

Reading Josh’s perspective reminded me of another book I’d read a few years before, Something Like Normal by Trish Doller. Like Josh, the protagonist in that one also suffered from PTSD and both struggled to fit back into this world that’s so far removed from the horrors of war and carnage that they've lived through. Josh may be alive, but it feels wrong to be thankful when so many of his friends are not. Everything feels like a lifetime ago but it's all so raw and unfair and overhwhelming.

Sky and Josh together are good but their relationship is challenged from the start by his emotional state and by her uncertainty over her future. Sky is a sweetheart who cares so much for everyone and Josh wants her to be happy, even if it means he has to stay away from her. They'll have to force the issue eventually on whether they’ll sink or swim together.

Heather Demetrios’ provocative story about two people who have experienced drastically different lives in their very young and formative years, counts as one of the best and most profound I’ve read so far this year!  

~ Bel

Something Like Normal by Trish Doller

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I just came home from Afghanistan.

My parents are splitting up.

My brother has stolen my girlfriend.

(He also stole my car.)

And I’m haunted by the ghost of my best friend.

Then I run into Harper.

(Technically, her fist runs into my face.)

She’s beautiful, smart, funny …

… and she wants nothing to do with the messed-up Marine who ruined her life.

Sometimes the best you can hope for is something like normal.

Sometimes what you get might be even better.

I chose to read Something Like Normal  because I wanted something contemporary. With all the baggage mentioned above, I was fully prepared for the story to spiral into depression. That never happened. Instead, I found myself very much drawn to Travis Stephenson, the 18 year-old Marine returning home to Fort Myers for a month’s leave.

What impressed me about Travis is his startling maturity. He profoundly honest about himself and his family. He accepts that things are far from ideal: his estranged relationship with his over-bearing, alpha-male Superbowl champion dad, his jealous, undermining younger brother and his eager-to-please mom. His dysfunctional relationships don’t stop there. There’s also his ex-girlfriend, Paige who sent him a “Dear John” letter while he was in Afghanistan. The postage had barely stuck to the envelope when she took up with his brother. Awkward! So you see, it’s not exactly a happy homecoming.

Throughout the story, Travis is haunted by the death of his best friend and fellow Marine, Charlie. Often he reminisces about his experience in Afghanistan but zeroes in on his close bond with Charlie. He’s riddled with guilt over his loss and has yet to process all the things he’s been through. It's a revelation to realize that he feels more at home with his Marine brotehrs in a war torn region than he does with his family in Florida. He feels like a fish out of water. His year away has given him perspective, allowing him to define his idea of what “family” is. And having been in the company of his brothers, knowing that they’d stick with each other through hell and worse, he’s not interested in mending fences with his father and brother.

When Travis runs into Harper, a girl who has been dogged by awful rumors that Travis himself started, he is spun around on his head. Initially she wants nothing to do with him and makes that clear after a swift punch to the face. Hey, a girl deserves her moment of revenge after going through high school hell, right? But they keep running into each other and Harper starts to loosen up even offering to help him with a family dinner.

Here’s where I came to like Travis. Travis hates himself and most everyone around him. He’s been disappointed by his family. He has no pretensions about himself and can be a real ass. He admits his flaws, acknowledges his mistakes and owns up to his jackass nature. Harper is a breath of fresh air, opposite of him and his ex-girlfriend. With Harper, he cares about what he says and does. He’s enamored by her and picks up on her little mannerisms that make him go weak:

 “ … she gives me a tiny bit-lip smile that knocks the wind out of my chest.”

And then there those moments when he shows his vulnerability:

“I want to tell her I won’t hurt her, but what proof does she have of that? Thing is, I don’t want to hurt her. Harper brings out something different in me than Paige. Something better. At least, I want to believe that.”

Every time he noticed Harper, I smiled because he was genuinely happy then. This was something good finally happening to him. Something worth protecting. With Harper’s sincerity and patience, he starts to come to grips with Charlie's death and the traumatic events he witnessed while in Afghanistan. He also steps up to be the kind of man his mom needs in the light of his father’s many transgressions.

Something Like Normal was engaging from start to finish. Travis’ drive to become a better person and work through is issues is admirable. He's the underdog you root for. The story leaves you feeling hopeful that each day gets better and brighter.

~ Bel

What We Keep Is Not Always What Will Stay by Amanda Cockrell

"Accept that the universe is an apparently random dance...

You'll love some of it and hate some of it." p. 225

This book piqued my interested when I stumbled upon a brief review in BookPage.  The title's a mouth full, isn't it?  Regardless, this story of a 15 year-old high school freshman girl who learns that her parents are divorcing and who confides all her thoughts to a statue is quite the sweet tale.

Angie is not your typical high school student.  In fact, she’s one of the more confident teenage girls I’ve read. Her steady world is rocked when her mother decides out of the blue to divorce her very cool step dad.  She doesn’t accept this easily and believes it’s just another phase her mom is going through.  So Angie confides to St. Felix, a statue she found accidentally in the basement of her church.  He's the ultimate listener (what statue isn't?) and she has revealed many of her personal secrets to him over the last few years.

One day, she discovers a homeless guy in the basement instead of the statue.  After a dubious start, she becomes convinced that he’s St. Felix and continues to confide in him.  Felix comes off as a soulful hippie who has obviously been through a lot in life (Vietnam War vet) and provides Angie with much-need perspectives about her parents’ relationship.  Their interactions are very entertaining and he becomes an unusual mentor and protector.

As if she doesn’t have enough going on, at the beginning of the school year she befriends Jesse, a 19 year old who has returned home from Afghanistan to finish out his senior year. Jesse is an amputee who also experiences bouts of post-traumatic stress syndrome.  The kids at school either look at him with awe or think he’s a freak.  Angie and her best friend, the delightful and self-assured Lily, “adopt” Jesse. 

Angie and Jesse eventually start secretly dating knowing that her family would disapprove of the age difference and the possibility that he may have some demons to fight. He comes to rely on her as his calming center and she genuinely feels that just the simple act of caring for him can help him heal.  As she gets to know him she also sees how fragile he is.  Her naivety initially leads her to think that she can help fix him.  But after a very tense and ugly encounter where lines are crossed, Angie reluctantly realizes that she’s ill-equipped to handle Jesse's distress.  

Angie’s struggles with the relationships around her are at times lighthearted and there were even moments that were laugh-out-loud funny for me.  She’s already a smart girl to begin with but her growing maturity is endearing.  She does quip at one point, “It is entirely possible that I am not at the center of the universe.”  She questions the ramifications of war and the effects on the people who go and fight in the name of God.  But don’t worry - the book doesn’t become a platform for pro or anti-war dialog even though she has those conversations with her family and Jesse. 

Then there are also those serious moments when she acknowledges that there is no quick fix to people’s troubles especially when you can’t begin to comprehend the circumstances.   “You have to let people be who they are, even when they’re damaged,” says Lily’s psychologist mother. 

What We Keep is a smartly written book.  Cockrell’s humor diffuses some of the more confusing moments.  She also does an amazing job of including Angie’s Hispanic and Jewish heritages to show how Angie draws her strengths from them.  And because of the supportive and inviting family that she has created for Angie, it’s easy to believe how she can so easily come to have compassion towards Felix and Jesse. 

I can see myself reading this book again at some point and I've already blabbed about it to anyone who'll listen.  So get a delicious beverage, find a quiet corner for yourself, get cozy and enjoy.

- Bel