Intense, Real, Heartbreaking // REVIEW: Girl In Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow

Title: Girl In Pieces
Author: Kathleen Glasgow
Publication Date: October 6th 2016
Publisher: Rock The Boat UK // Delacorte Press US
Part of a Series?: No, A Standalone
I Got A Copy Through: Rock The Boat UK (THANK YOU!)
Buy Links: Amazon US || Amazon UK || Barnes and Noble || Wordery || The Book Depository || Foyles || Waterstones || WHSmith || Kobo || Books A Million || Indigo || Google Books
Blurb Description: Charlotte Davis is in pieces. At seventeen she’s already lost more than most people lose in a lifetime. But she’s learned how to forget. The thick glass of a mason jar cuts deep, and the pain washes away the sorrow until there is nothing but calm. You don’t have to think about your father and the river. Your best friend, who is gone forever. Or your mother, who has nothing left to give you.
Every new scar hardens Charlie’s heart just a little more, yet it still hurts so much. It hurts enough to not care anymore, which is sometimes what has to happen before you can find your way back from the edge.
It’s hard to describe what a book this deep, dark and intense makes you feel. Truth be told, I’m nothing but a bundle of emotions right now that I’m just trying to shove down so I can write this review semi-coherently.

I’ve had an e-copy of Girl in Pieces for a while now, but for some reason, I could never quite focus on everything going on in this book through the screen of my iPad. And so, when I got my hands on a paperback, I dove right in.

This book is one of the most intense portrayals of a harsh life that I’ve ever seen, but always with a glimmer of hope in the background and I fell in love with it.
”Each aberration of my skin is a song. Press your mouth against me. You will hear so much singing.”
Girl in Pieces opens with a girl lying on the snow in front of a hospital, the red seeping out of her body and into the white underneath her. It will grip you right then, make you feel Charlie’s pain and understand it and leave you reeling.

Some opinions/ thoughts:

1.       Girl In Pieces is a deep, heavy and accurate description of what mental health problems feel like. While it is primarily about self-harm, it also deals with physical and sexual abuse, substance abuse and emotional abuse. It’s an intense book that I needed to keep putting on hold for hours before getting back to it.

2.       This book is authentic. It handles the ups and downs or the ‘good days’ and the ‘bad days’ of mental health and addiction with stark clarity. It also shows the below average standard of health care given to those who need it when they don’t have the financial ability to pay for it.

3.       Charlie Davis is a heart breaking character. She has had a less than ideal life, and my heart ached for all the four hundred pages I was in her head. I’ve never understood a character more, all I wanted was for her to find some kind of love and to be happy. She was unique, living a painstakingly real life in a harsh world and I only want the best for her.
Image result for girl in pieces kathleen glasgow quotes 
    4.       I didn’t get Riley and Charlie. It felt like a bad idea from the start, not to mention the ten year age difference and the fact that Charlie was a minor. I didn’t get it, but I understood where she was coming from. I hated it when, as she put it, made herself smaller for him to notice her. Even the book portrayed it as something that wouldn’t end well, but I did sort of understand why Charlie did it.

   5.       The middle got kind of slow. There’s a sort of lag in the middle when Charlie and Riley are together, when Mike is gone and Blue isn’t there and they’re forming this unhealthy routine between them when I found myself counting pages, waiting for something to happen.

6.       Mike was such a… filler character. I didn’t know what to think of him. I just didn’t. Also, BUNNY? A real name?

I don’t quite know what I’ve even said in this.

Image result for girl in pieces kathleen glasgow quotesThis book is a gorgeous and heart shattering rendering of what it is to find yourself and find your place when your biggest enemy is you.

I’ve never read a better, more intense, more real or more heart-breaking book on mental health and hard lives and I could not recommend it enough.

It was absolutely positively fucking angelic.  
Kathleen GlasgowKathleen Glasgow lives in Tucson, Arizona. She likes Tyrion and Shireen, musty old paperbacks from used bookstores that have cats wandering the aisles, cheesecake, coffee, and the Isle of Skye. Visit her on Twitter (@kathglasgow), Instagram (misskathleenglasgow), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/KathleenGlas...) or her website (www.kathleenglasgowbooks.com).
What are some of the best books on Mental Health that you've read?
Have you heard of or read Girl In Pieces? What did you think of it?
I can't WAIT to hear from all of you.

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