Title: This Close To Okay
Author: Leesa Cross-Smith
Thoughts: I didn’t think I liked this book. As I was reading it in my head I said “eh, I don’t think I like this” about every three pages. But then I read the last line and I burst out sobbing…so maybe I liked it more than I thought? I think this book does such a heartbreakingly beautiful job of describing sadness and grief—but I found so much of the actual plot unrealistic that it was hard to get past that.
This Close To Okay comes out in February but I was able to get an early copy thanks to my Book of the Month subscription!
Favorite Lines:
“He seemed to purposely flood himself with more gentleness as he thanked her again.” (p. 14)
“She bubbled with desire to get to know him better, to unravel whatever it was he had tightly wound around his heart.” (p. 18)
“Grief had swung open a door in his heart he hadn’t known was there, and it’d slammed closed behind him.” (p. 28)
“Depression was a vacuum that sucked out everything—leaving nothing behind except the burdening weight of nothingness.” (p. 69)
“Tallie had been treading water of her own, in that estuary where sadness spilled out into healing and joy.” (p. 137)
“Emmett remained increasingly optimistic about their forever, caught in the net of the blissful before, happy about the unexpected joy they’d been gifted and leaning deep into the wonder.” (p. 145)
“Tallie was the kind of person to make him believe in Monday morning.” (p. 174)
“How had he managed to think God had forgotten about him when he was kissing and holding Tallie like this as proof of hope?” (p. 206)
“The stabby math of grief would never add up.” (p. 302)
