OTHER BROKEN THINGS
Author: C. Desir
Source: ARC via the Publisher
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Publication Date: January 12, 2016
Rating: 4/5 stars
Summary:
Nat's not an alcoholic. She doesn't have a problem. Everybody parties, everybody does stupid things, like get in their car when they can barely see. Still, with six months of court-ordered AA meetings required, her days of vodka-filled water bottles are over.
Unfortunately her old friends want the party girl or nothing. Even her up-for-anything ex seems more interested in rehashing the past than actually helping Nat.
But then a recovering alcoholic named Joe inserts himself into Nat’s life and things start looking up. Joe is funny, smart, and calls her out in a way no one ever has.
He’s also older. A lot older.
Nat’s connection to Joe is overwhelming but so are her attempts to fit back into her old world, all while battling the constant urge to crack a bottle and blur that one thing she's been desperate to forget.
Now in order to make a different kind of life, Natalie must pull together her broken parts and learn to fight for herself.
Purchase:
I feel like a weight has been lifted from me because, it too, was really well done. I mean, it was a pretty tough fucking read. Natalie goes through some SHIT man. But it was also enlightening and I have a lot of feelings about how she figured her shit out because it wasn't pretty, it was actually pretty messy. But isn't that how life is? And I just want to say that it really rocks when authors don't try to make life, hard times, good times, etc. seem better than they are. That's so important! And this book is definitely not going to be for everyone, I get that. Hell, I wasn't sure it was for me. But it is so emotionally packing that I do recommend at least giving it a shot before writing it off completely.
The only thing for me was that I was really put off by Natalie's relationship with Joe. Not because he was older but because I could tell it wasn't a healthy one. She was an addict through and through and just replaced one addiction with another. She wasn't good at balancing, which is discussed in the book, and I don't think she realized that her relationship with Joe was the exact same thing. I think Desir did a good job at setting the stage by having Joe be so conflicted about it, but I just wasn't here for them being together.
I liked seeing how the addiction affected everyone in Natalie's life and not just her, at least her perspective on how it affected them. I think it brought depth to the story to see that other people were affected by it and didn't quite know how to handle it -- or Natalie -- but do their best to try anyway. I think the best example of this was Brent and the A's because Brent wanted to be with Nat "no matter what" but didn't really realize what this meant and the A's were just waiting for Nat to "be herself" again without realizing that Nat was being herself.
This one was really good. I liked Natalie's journey through AA and I liked seeing everything from her perspective. But I did feel a bit of a disconnect at some points. That mostly had to do with her relationship with Joe though. Which I wasn't a fan of. I think it ended up being handled well but I still idk I didn't like it.
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