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Book Review | Release by Patrick Ness


Maybe hearts don't ever stop breaking once broken.


Seldom in your life will you come across a book that makes you feel something, after the longest time I finally connected and felt. Patrick Ness is a beautiful writer, his words have the power to make you ponder for the longest time.

A summary of the book -

Inspired by Mrs Dalloway and Judy Blume's Forever, Release is one day in the life of Adam Thorn, 17. It's a big day. Things go wrong. It's intense, and all the while, weirdness approaches...

Adam Thorn is having what will turn out to be the most unsettling, difficult day of his life, with relationships fracturing, a harrowing incident at work, and a showdown between this gay teen and his preacher father that changes everything. It's a day of confrontation, running, sex, love, heartbreak, and maybe, just maybe, hope. He won't come out of it unchanged. And all the while, lurking at the edges of the story, something extraordinary and unsettling is on a collision course. 

My initial thoughts on starting the book were, another story of a gay child unable to come out to his parents, a very done and dusted topic. Luckily, I was wrong. This book is about friendship and what a teenager feels he/she cannot live without, and the realization that life goes on and so does he. This book is about losing all emotional support and learning to supporting yourself.

As kids, a lot of us have been pressured by our parents and this one line from the book stayed with me -
They're your parents. They're meant to love you because. Never in spite.
Here is a guy trying to find his bearings, running to clear his head and desperate to be loved. Someone who is head over heels in love with the one who never loved him back and now he's become the one for someone else. It is complicated, it is messy and it is just one day in the life of a teenager.

Running parallel is another story that I don't much understand but it just adds up to the essence of the book. This is a beautiful story of losing everything to finally accept yourself. To get lost to find freedom, get broken to break the shackles.

Read this book with a clear mind and you just might fall in love.
It was so much easier to be loved than to have to do any of the desperate work of loving. 
That's all for today pretty people.
See you next time with another review.

xoxo
P.S.

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