Together We Will Go by J. Michael Straczynski
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
““The reason they’re morons is they spend years, decades, hell, their whole lives regretting or apologizing for things nobody else even remembers. They carry those things around like bags of sand that keep them from going to all the places they could’ve gone and would’ve gone if they hadn’t been so busy thinking about the goddamn sand.”
This is a unique book. The blurb mentions “Silver Linings Playbook” and “The Breakfast Club” and in fairness, I do see elements of both of them though thinking about either of them too much might take away from enjoying this book itself. I read the whole book in a single sitting. I loved the way it was diary entries mixed with dialogue and narration.
“Soldier didn’t need to show me all the time that he loved me. He knew it and I knew it and that’s that. What he was doing was giving me a safe place to put my own love. It’s like he was saying, I’m never going to leave you. I’ll wait for you. I want you to know that I’ll always wait for you, that it’s safe to love me, that you have a place to put all the feelings you can’t give to anybody else because it’s too dangerous, because you’re worried they won’t understand, and they won’t wait for you. I’m here. I love you. And I will wait for you. I’m not going anywhere.”
I loved each of the characters and I loved their unique perspective of life and why they had decided to be where they were and what they were grappling with. I loved that most of them seemed real to me and I loved how they were thrown together and the one thing they had in common was enough to bind them.
“And if you’re wondering why no always trumps yes, it’s because when you’re married it takes two to say yes but only one to say no. Besides, there’s no risk in saying no. No means everything stays the same, you’re in control, and you don’t feel like you’ve lost out on anything.”
This is a great story with some profound insight about life, how painful it can be and what it means to respect each others’ choices and what it means to love each other (and ourselves) just the way we are, with pain and all.
with gratitude to netgalley and Gallery Books for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review
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