Merry Christmas!!! / Craciun Fericit!!!

I would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas filled with love and good wishes.

Vreau sa va urez tuturor un Craciun Fericit, plin de bucurii, alaturi de cei dragi voua!

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Send – Patty Blount (Review)

Paperback, 304 pages

Published August 1st 2012 by Sourcebooks Fire

Description

It’s been five years since I clicked Send.
Four years since I got out of juvie.
Three months since I changed my name.
Two minutes since I met Julie.
A second to change my life.

All Dan wants for his senior year is to be invisible. This is his last chance at a semi-normal life. Nobody here knows who he is. Or what he’s done. But on his first day at school, instead of turning away like everyone else, Dan breaks up a fight. Because Dan knows what it’s like to be terrorized by a bully—he used to be one.

Now the whole school thinks he’s some kind of hero—except Julie. She looks at him like she knows he has a secret. Like she knows his name isn’t really Daniel…

My thoughts

The main character of this book is Dan (real name: Kenneth), an 18-year-old boy who made a mistake when he was 13: he posted a photo of a boy in his underwear on the Internet, because he thought it was funny. Later, the boy commited suicide and, to be punished, Dan was sent to juvie for nine months. Because when he gets out everyone is judging him and is violent towards him, his family decides to try and give him a new life by changing town, school and even their identities. Dan feels like his life will be normal again, he meets Julie, whom he falls in love instantaneously, and Brandon who becomes his best friend. There is just one problem that will change everything: Julie has a big secret and Brandon is planning to kill himself, because he is bullied.

I liked the characters and I think they were developed pretty well. Even though Dan made a big mistake I couldn’t stay mad at him. You can see his pain and his struggle to redeem himself. He knows that he did something wrong, but he needs to learn to forgive his 13-year-old self and move on, something which happens but at the end of the book. His family is very loving and supportive and is willing to do everything to protect their son.

We don’t meet only Dan, but also Kenny, his 13-year-old version, whom Dan started seeing during detention. “They talk” daily, arguing and trying to find a way for Dan to forgive himself for what he did in the past. I wasn’t a big fan of this “character” and I think that I would have liked the book more if Kenny hadn’t been part of it, but in the end I became aware of his importance.

With Julie, I had a love-hate relationship. She was too moody, she kissed Dan, next she didn’t want to talk to him, she was happy, than she was angry. Also, she watched Brandon being bullied and she did nothing about it, even though her brother commited suicide because he had been bullied. Her life isn’t easy, her parents are divorced and she thinks her father started hating her after his son’s death. She also keeps a secret from Dan, a secret which is revealed nearly the end of the book.

Send is a quick read, it’s dramatic, deep, it has an important message and it will leave you thinking long after you finish reading it. I recommend it to everyone.

Thanks to Netgalley.com and Sourcebooks Fire for sending me this e-book.

My rating:  

 

When I look inside me for the voice, I see me but yet…not me, not exactly. More like a version of me, the me I used to be at thirteen. All gangly limbs, big feet, and bad skin. I call him Kenny and try to keep him bound to a dark, empty corner of my mind. If I could find a way to gag him too, I’d be psyched. As hard as I fight to forgive myself for what I did to Liam Murphy, Kenny fights as hard to make sure I can’t. I figure he’s just one more part of God’s Wrath Plan I’d put in motion five years earlier when I was thirteen.

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About the author:

Technical writer by day, fiction writer by night, Patty mines her day job for ideas to use in her novels. Her debut YA “Send” was born after a manager suggested she research social networks. Patty adores chocolate, her boys, and books, though not necessarily in that order.