Nick Lake

A remarkable story of strange beauty and self-discovery from Printz Award winner Nick Lake. Cassie is writing a letter to the boy whose heart she broke. She's trying to explain why. Why she pushed him away. Why her father got so angry when he saw them together. Why she disappears some nights. Why she won't let herself remember what happened that long-ago night on the boardwalk. Why she fell apart so completely. Desperate for his forgiveness, she's telling the whole story of the summer she nearly lost herself. She's hoping that love-love for your family, love for that person who makes your heart beat faster, and love for yourself-can save both of them after all. Awards for There Will Be Lies A Boston Globe Best YA Book of 2015 A Texas TAYSHAS Pick

Whisper to Me

'I love you. I'm sorry for what I did to you. I'm going to write it all down, explain everything that happened, why I broke your heart, and then I'm going to email it to you. I will be waiting for you at 5 p.m. Friday by the windmill hole at the crazy golf at the Pier where we played once. If you still want me then, when you're done reading this, come and get me. OK? Consider this the most screwed up love letter ever.'So begins Nick Lake's brilliant tour de force romance which introduces readers to Cassie, a New Jersey Shore teen who, over the course of one summer, experiences the exhilarating highs of new love, the frightening free falls of personal demons and family tragedy, and the bumps along the way to forgiveness, acceptance, and self-discovery. Told entirely through flashbacks, readers will savour every moment of Cassie's relationship with a boardwalk boy and race to the last page to discover how it all ends.

Eleanor Luhar

This book is fantastic. I know it sounds cheesy, but I literally could not put it down.

The plot isn't just one simple story line; it's twists and turns and ups and downs all over the place. Cass is writing to someone - who is never named, actually - recapping events. The style means that she can switch from talking about the past to describing her current situation and feelings, in the present. She's able to reflect on the past, add a whole new level to the story. I loved it. And when "you" are in the story, she describes you but also skips the mundane details that you would already know, keeping the story really interesting. It really sounded like she was writing to someone.

Cass's letter/email is an apology, an explanation, for hurting someone. She acknowledges this right from the start, but it takes a long, long time to get into what really happened. Not in a boring, dragged-out way, but in a suspenseful way. Constantly, I wanted to know what she was referring to, what had happened to require the writing of this email. 

So the plot is, as I said, not a straight line at all. But some important things are:

Cass starts to hear a voice. A voice that's not there, not really.
Cass meets "you" and the voice is quiet and everything is great. But things go wrong. Things go so, so wrong.
Cass's dad has issues - untreated PTSD from serving as a MARINE. 
Cass has some, uh, unacknowledged issues caused by the death of her mother.
Cass meets Paris. Paris is sunshine and love and happiness.
There's a serial killer on the loose.
As you can see, there is a lot going on in this book. I won't tell you how all the things link together, but it's so clever. And oh, so heartbreaking.

Let's just say that you know it's coming - you can tell by Cass's choice of language that something is going to happen - but you still hope for some miracle.

Leading on from that last point, the characters are fantastic. Paris is honestly just amazing; I really fell in love with her. Probably more than Cass's actual love interest. Oops. And Cass's dad is so complex, clearly struggling with some stuff, and although he does wrong and he gets angry and he scares Cass sometimes you don't hate him, not really, and neither does Cass. He's her dad and she loves him, and he's trying his best and I could really feel that.

Some books really do just click with you, and this was one of those for me. I made excuses to read for longer than planned, stayed up later. It was lovely to have that excitement back when reading, even if I do feel kind of sad and empty now it's finished.

Part of me wants some kind of follow-up, but I also know that that would kind of ruin the whole mysterious, imaginative element that the ending leaves. I don't know.

I would completely definitely certainly recommend it. It covers so much - mental illnesses and single parents and love and death and sex workers and just so many different aspects of life that you maybe wouldn't expect to find thrown together into one book. But Cass doesn't seem crazy, isn't made out to be some kind of mental patient. And no single theme dominates the story - this isn't just about love, or just about murder. It's about life.

Definitely 5 stars. I adored this book.

Ella Zegarra

Jocelyn Poh

my rating | 3.75 stars


  ”there are people who come into our lives, and then are gone. But there also people who come into lives and who we need to hang on to.”


all the knowledge I had of this book before starting it was contained in the blurb, and that’s what interested me enough to keep it on my tbr despite “cleaning” my tbr several times. i would say that i’m feeling so-so about my decision. 

in the beginning of the book, the premise was slightly creepy and not what I expected at all. then, we learnt more about the voice in cassie’s head, how it controlled her, then how she learned to control it, then... meh. i did learn more about this psychiatric condition tho so this book did provide some soul-searching on my part. apart from that I felt no connection to any of the characters whatsoever. 

the ending was really disappointing because we do not get to find out how certain events turn out to become. and because there isn’t a sequel, we will never get to know what happens either. nonetheless, i’m pretty indifferent about having read this book and I’ll probably forget about these minor details pretty soon.

Tiffany Engler

This book is not what I thought it would be. Nothing like how I thought it would go at all. I feel like the synopsis doesn't really quite cover what the book is actually about. It's not about a boy through the entire book but a girl who hears a voice who lets her know she's a crappy person.

We find out that the voice is one of herself, her self disappointment. She's lost her mind because she thinks she's the reason her mother was dead. 

This book is more along the lines of a self-discovery story instead of a romance book that the synopsis leads you to believe. 

I didn't quite like this book. It had it's good parts, but it had mostly boring parts. There was only two characters I liked and one ended up dead, the other was hardly even seen in the book and he was kind of a pushover. 

I was upset with how this book ended too. Cliffhangers with no sequels are a different kind of demon. Authors who do this should be put in the corner for timeout.

Epsita

This book is about Cassie, a teenager who hears voices in her head. I enjoyed reading the book, even though I skipped a few pages as I was more interested in reading about the interactions between the boy (to whom Cassie is writing the letter to) and Cassie. The book was well-paced, although I found the descriptions of sounds a bit annoying. There were unnecessary additions to Cassie's letter too, which should have been edited out, I feel. The book did a good job of portraying mental illness, although the ending was disappointing and frustrating too. All in all, it was a good read.

Milana Marie Waller

why didn’t i write a review for this ...
um

anyways read this i don’t remember many details but I LOVED THIS BOOK IK THAT AND OMG YHE COVER

Whisper to Me

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