REVIEW: I Liked My Life by Abby Fabiaschi @annmarienieves @stmartinspress @abbyfabiaschi
I Liked My Life
by Abby Fabiaschi
A big thank you to the author, GedRed PR and St. Martin's Griffin for copies of these for my Book Club! We are so excited to discuss this with the author. š
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Publish Date: May 8, 2018
Standalone
Paperback
288 Pages
Genres: Contemporary, Women's Fiction
Maddy is a devoted stay-at-home wife and mother, host of excellent parties, giver of thoughtful gifts, and bestower of a searingly perceptive piece of advice or two. She is the cornerstone of her family, a true matriarch...until she commits suicide, leaving her husband Brady and teenage daughter Eve heartbroken and reeling, wondering what happened. How could the exuberant, exacting woman they loved disappear so abruptly, seemingly without reason, from their lives? How they can possibly continue without her? As they sift through details of her last days, trying to understand the woman they thought they knew, Brady and Eve are forced to come to terms with unsettling truths.
Maddy, however, isn’t ready to leave her family forever. Watching from beyond, she tries to find the perfect replacement for herself. Along comes Rory: pretty, caring, and spontaneous, with just the right bit of edge...but who also harbors a tragedy of her own. Will the mystery of Maddy ever come to rest? And can her family make peace with their history and begin to heal?
Maddy, however, isn’t ready to leave her family forever. Watching from beyond, she tries to find the perfect replacement for herself. Along comes Rory: pretty, caring, and spontaneous, with just the right bit of edge...but who also harbors a tragedy of her own. Will the mystery of Maddy ever come to rest? And can her family make peace with their history and begin to heal?
My Review:
"Loving a person doesn't make them who you desire, it makes you vulnerable to their reality."
Sometimes you pick up a book at the exact perfect moment that you needed it in your life. This is what happened here. Maddy, Brady and Eve - wife, father, daughter. We get each of their POVs from the aftermath of Maddy's death. I absolutely loved getting Maddy's point of view and how she helped to ease their pain and point them in the right direction from beyond the grave. There are mounds and mounds and MOUNDS of quotable lines in this book.
My like for this book grew to love by the time I reached the final chapter. This is one of those books that just grows on you page by page, word by word, emotion by emotion. The synopsis doesn't do the book justice in terms of what you get out of this read. This is more a lesson on grief, appreciating the people in your life and letting them know... if not on a daily basis (because we're human, of course), then at least once in a while so they know they matter and that everything that they do, sacrifice, give and even take back, are noted and acknowledged. In this busy world we live in, this can get lost all too easily and then the bad outweighs the good. Try to take a left turn somewhere and balance this out.
I absolutely adore Maddy and how she viewed life and the advice that she gave to her sister, daughter, husband... the world. Brady is your typical husband who puts work before family and doesn't realize how good and easy he has it until it's stripped away from him. My favorite character, however, has to be Eve. To watch her grow. To see how she deals with this as a teenager who is doing teenage things, but yet the death of her mother forces her to mature beyond her years. As I hold a very special relationship with my own father, it was especially emotional to read about theirs.
I've written down some of the quotes but am quite sure I will be coming back to this book to take on some of Maddy's advice. As I deal with my own inner demons (as we all have them), I've taken to journaling again after reading this. Everyone needs an outlet.
The ending wasn't quite what I expected... and I like that I was surprised. Everyone's journey in life is difficult, wonderful and different. I am certainly not going to besmirch these character's journeys.
"At the end of each day, acknowledge the things you wish you'd done differently so that tomorrow you will."
"Give yourself a break, but not a free pass."
★★★★★
Sometimes you pick up a book at the exact perfect moment that you needed it in your life. This is what happened here. Maddy, Brady and Eve - wife, father, daughter. We get each of their POVs from the aftermath of Maddy's death. I absolutely loved getting Maddy's point of view and how she helped to ease their pain and point them in the right direction from beyond the grave. There are mounds and mounds and MOUNDS of quotable lines in this book.
My like for this book grew to love by the time I reached the final chapter. This is one of those books that just grows on you page by page, word by word, emotion by emotion. The synopsis doesn't do the book justice in terms of what you get out of this read. This is more a lesson on grief, appreciating the people in your life and letting them know... if not on a daily basis (because we're human, of course), then at least once in a while so they know they matter and that everything that they do, sacrifice, give and even take back, are noted and acknowledged. In this busy world we live in, this can get lost all too easily and then the bad outweighs the good. Try to take a left turn somewhere and balance this out.
I absolutely adore Maddy and how she viewed life and the advice that she gave to her sister, daughter, husband... the world. Brady is your typical husband who puts work before family and doesn't realize how good and easy he has it until it's stripped away from him. My favorite character, however, has to be Eve. To watch her grow. To see how she deals with this as a teenager who is doing teenage things, but yet the death of her mother forces her to mature beyond her years. As I hold a very special relationship with my own father, it was especially emotional to read about theirs.
I've written down some of the quotes but am quite sure I will be coming back to this book to take on some of Maddy's advice. As I deal with my own inner demons (as we all have them), I've taken to journaling again after reading this. Everyone needs an outlet.
The ending wasn't quite what I expected... and I like that I was surprised. Everyone's journey in life is difficult, wonderful and different. I am certainly not going to besmirch these character's journeys.
"At the end of each day, acknowledge the things you wish you'd done differently so that tomorrow you will."
"Give yourself a break, but not a free pass."
★★★★★
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