Before we get into this, I want to put some trigger warnings here at the top. Though this book has romance in it, and there is a ‘happy for now’ ending, there were a lot of heavy themes:

• Abuse
• Drug addiction
• Depression with suicidal ideations

These are the ones that stuck out for me, and that I can remember at the top of my head. I won’t be going into heavy detail about these things and how they occurred in the book, but they will be mentioned below.

This is the second book in The Heartwood Trilogy by Mary VanAlstine, and we’re back with Micah and Andrew except things aren’t exactly going smoothly for them. Andrew’s mental health has plummeted, and he feels but there’s no choice except to go away and confront his past - alone. Micah, feeling abandoned, and alone is forced to confront parts of himself he has long since denied.

I’ve started this review many times in my head from the moment I finished reading. You know how in Friends, Rachel and Joey share each other’s books, and they each take turns putting the books into the freezer because it was too much emotionally? If I’d been reading a physical copy of this book, I probably would have done the same.

It wrecked me on more than one occasion: dysfunctional families, depression, suicidal ideations, helplessness… and they’re all depicted with such realness that I needed to sit with the emotions and memories the story drudged up. This isn’t a complaint, but rather a testament to Mary VanAlstine’s skill as a writer.

Right now, these are the pieces that stayed with me the most. There are glimmers which occurred in the book such as found family and that family expanding, personal growth and claiming one’s own personal power - literally and figuratively, and much more.

I know this doesn’t sound like a glowing review, but I truly loved it. It’s one of those books that will stay with me forever like That Was Then, This is Now by S.E. Hinton.