Ever Since

Once there were five princesses. No, I mean five witches. Actually, they were goddesses. Anyway, whatever they were, they were friends. This is the best YA contemporary I have read in years. A hard-hitting, compelling and awful story about a girl whose trauma causes a downward spiral that impacts......more

Perfection. Brilliant, painful, heartbreaking, and hopeful. It's not that I'm stingy with my 5-star reviews, it's just that for me, I save them for the books which (1) I wouldn't change a single thing and (2) I want to scream and shake people and bash them over the head in my desperate attempt to ge......more

A powerful young-adult novel about sexual violence and the silencing of survivors. I felt that Alena Bruzas did a great job of capturing the protagonist’s guilt, shame, and struggle to validate and regulate her own emotions. Bruzas portrays the toxic effects of victim-blaming and how people of vario......more

Incredible. This story realistically relates trauma from sexual abuse as a child, sexual assault, the difficulties these things bring to a teenage girl's life and her view of herself. I really felt this. As a survivor, I related so much with this main character. The division her trauma caused betwee......more

Thank you net galley for providing me with an advanced readers copy in exchange for a honest review. I had mixed feelings reading this. While the later chapters ( from chapter 14 to chapter 26) truly pulled at my heartstrings, the first chapters were extremely difficult to get through. I blame this due......more