I am really bad at crying, and books almost NEVER make me cry. Off the top of my head, the only books I can remember ever making me cry are Little Women, His Dark Materials (specifically the underworld scenes), The Return of the King, and A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. I’ll cry at movies and TV, but it’s hard for a book to make me cry. And to be fair, when I read this book, I was at the tail end of the first actual period I’ve had in two years (thanks, changing birth control methods!) so I may have been a little more primed to cry. But anyway, I finished this book right before leaving work, then spent half the bus ride with that feeling you have when you could cry but haven’t yet, and then for the second half of the bus ride I just cried quietly.
It’s a good book.
It’s also extremely timely. This is a book about a teenage girl trying desperately to get an abortion, without telling her parents. Her two friends help her by joining her on a road trip to get access to some form of abortion, and they deal with their friendships, trauma, and anger along the way. The book makes it clear just how difficult it can be for people to access needed health care, and it does not shy from getting political through it’s characters along the way. It perfectly balances touching and beautiful female friendships with rage that anyone, anywhere, is being put through this for a basic medical procedure that everyone should have the right to, on demand. If you’ve been as furious over the erosion of reproductive rights as I have, I highly recommend reading this.
But have tissues handy.