A Heart in a Body in the World by Deb Caletti
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Wow. This was a powerful book from cover to cover. It’s a slow burn that draws you in and once you get to the reveal you’re so invested you hate to put the book down. We start with a young woman who has experienced a recent trauma and is still putting her life back together from it. What starts out as a run away from her tragedy turns into a run that highlights violence against women. Starting in Seattle and ending in Washington, D.C. we run along with the character as she processes her grief, her trauma, her adolescence, and what it means to balance your pain and making others aware of how that pain is caused. I think that this is a great book for young adults to read in that it shows just how too many young men take their own trauma out of women in the form of gas lighting, possessive/jealous behavior, and violence. Because of the nature of the content, I would warn that this book could trigger readers if they have experienced this kind of trauma. I thought the author handled the content and character beautifully.