This book is an absolute roller coaster. I first read it sometime in middle school; could’ve been sixth grade, could’ve been eighth. I don’t really remember. Point is, don’t read this book until you’re emotionally developed enough for it. This book is all sorts of f-ed up. It’s a story about Amelia “Gannon” Gannon, who lives a pretty shitty life with her three adopted brothers and her parents. Since her parents adopted the crazy, misbehaving boys off the streets of Guatemala, Gannon has noticed her father distancing himself from the family. She herself feels as though she’s become invisible, and the only people in her mother’s brain are her brothers.
This changes when she meets Michael “Brooks” Brooks. Michael’s a new kid at school who is known more by the rumors spread around than by anyone whose actually spoken to him. Immediately, Brooks becomes concerningly obsessed with Gannon. He’s showing up everywhere; next to her in the halls at school, at her work, and even… on her windowsill?
That’s right. One night, Gannon’s doing her nightly little routine (which consists of self-harm. Like I said, book’s f-ed up.) and she’s greeted by Brooks’ voice coming from the window where he was sat watching her cut herself. The story continues along with the same old shit; Gannon falls into a toxic, extremely co-dependent relationship with a toxic boy. She ends up in the hospital due to an accident and they see all the self-harm scars. She gets sent to a mental hospital, while Brooks is sent to juvie. Once they’re both out, they run away together and live in an absolute shithole of a house. Safe to say, the relationship continues to spiral downwards.
The epilogue of the book fast-forwards to three months later, where Gannon and Brooks are no longer together yet Gannon is still mentally destroyed from him. She sees him everywhere in crowds, even though she knows he’s not really there, and she thinks about him all the time