The Names They Gave Us - (Spoiler) Review

Title: The Names They Gave Us

Author: Emery Lord

Rating: 4*

Summary: When Lucy's mother finds out her cancer has returned, Lucy finds herself volunteering as a counselor at Daybreak, a camp for young children facing some sort of trauma in their lives, as her mother's wish. Half-guilted, thinking it may be her mother's last request of her, Lucy leaves her church camp and finds more than just herself at Daybreak, but belonging and friendship and what love really is.

***

Lucy is seventeen, a pastor's daughter, and thinks her life is perfect. She has a long-term boyfriend and both parents who love her, and is becoming captain of the swim team. Being a pastor's daughter, a lot of the book involved God and Lucy's belief. Upon hearing about her mother suffering with cancer again, Lucy's belief starts to become hazy and slippery. As someone who lost their faith in a similar situation, I found it hard to read so much about when she believed. But then she begins to lose it and some horrible part of me related to that incredibly. However, being the girl she is, Lucy is surrounded by others who believes absolutely and tries to sort of feed off that when she realises how angry she is at God, who hasn't given her mother a break, who hasn't looked down on their family. Only her mother seems to realise her turmoil, how she can't use the church camp as an excuse to try and get her belief back from being surrounded by it. If anything, it seemed to make her angrier that she was.

When asked to go to Daybreak, the camp a mile away from Holyoke (the church camp she usually goes to with her family every summer), she's reluctant but warms to the idea only because she worries that it will be the last thing asked of her by her mother. That if she denies her this then she'll be a bad daughter or never get to fulfill a request from her mother again. So she goes, under mostly unexplained circumstances from her parents as to why that camp. At first, Lucy figures it's because its so close to Holyoke and she can find solace there, dealing with her mother's diagnosis. But as she spends more and more time at Daybreak, Lucy uncovers a lot more than who she is. She uncovers who her mother is, or, rather, who her mother once was as a teenager who'd been in foster care.

At first, I was unfair to this book. Not even halfway through, I thought it repetitive and that was ghastly unfair of me as a reader (as well as a writer who thinks this many times of their own book). I'd just finished reading another book that featured a summer camp. Where that author passed her novel's time through the development of a relationship and focused on the romance aspect heavily, Emery Lord passed hers by days because it was important to the reader to know, by those days, what was happening. Quickly, I realised that I needed to respect the way it was done and soon found myself enjoying it that way because it gave more insight to Lucy's relationship with her parents, only seeing them once a week over the summer (those important Sundays that had to be specified), and it gave development to how long it took Lucy to relax at Daybreak and for the kids there to open up to her as their counselor.

At Daybreak, Lucy becomes surrounded by important people: Keely, Mohann, Anna and Henry. Each has their own story and reason as to why they're a part of the camp. Emery Lord brings so many feelings in relation to both the counselors, who've suffered for most of their lives, as well as helping the younger campers. Through their stories and past, Lucy learns that it's okay to be upset and that she can talk about how she feels and what her mother is dealing with, along with the rest of the family. Just before Daybreak, Lucy's boyfriend paused her and halfway through the book, after Lucy begins to realise what true affection for someone is, what truly having a crush on someone feels like, she completely breaks up (mutually) with Lukas. The quick shift in her love interest worked because of how utterly pliant and agreeing Lukas was with everything, agreeing with things, having very specific rules for his own life, and pausing with Lucy because he didn't know what to do with her, a girl whose mother was suffering with cancer.

With Henry, it's different. In him, Lucy finds true feelings and what it's like to share sadness but also unimaginable, immense happiness, even amidst the trauma of the occupants of Daybreak. In him, Lucy finds that people can live and get through sadness that seems like it can never get better. In him, Lucy realises that despite losing family, there is still hope and there is still everyone else, each a piece of life to help get through the harder times. The shift of this on the pages is beautiful and so freeing to read. It's so real and demands admiration for this break Lucy finally seems to get away from her pain.

Tara, a fourteen-year-old girl at camp, is pregnant. When she sees Lucy's mother (a nurse) when she begins experiencing pain, Lucy has already been advised not to judge her. When Tara leaves with Lucy, she says, "She told me about the birth and everything." This is taken as her mother reassuring a scared girl, telling her beforehand what giving birth may feel like. But then, when Lucy is pulled away from a camp leader, Bryan, and told that her mother's been taken to hospital, she finds pictures in his cabin. She finds out that her mum had a past she was not ready to share, bringing anger to Lucy's pain as well, towards her parents for lying to her. Her mum had been the pregnant teenager everyone whispered about from years before. It had been Bryan's, who hadn't made himself come out of the background much until now. They'd decided to put the baby girl up for adoption.

When she finally gets to hospital, she confronts her parents and quickly makes peace with them over the concealed past. Lucy finds all her camp friends waiting outside, too. They've come to support her in this horrible, dark time. Lucy's father, so usually calm and collected, goes out to his car when her mother is taken to another unit for her health and rages. Lucy watches in secret as he mouths swear words and falls apart in his own space, not wanting her to see him like that. It's never specified whether Lucy's mother dies but I think she does.

The Names They Gave Us ends with a reflection chapter, which is something I love seeing, assessing love and who can be there even when they're not. Overall, it's a wholesome, inspirational book that gives comfort and safety when the grip on those feelings slip. It's about belonging and finding yourself and what's best for you, and was a beautiful read throughout. Emery Lord brings an array of colour and feelings to her book. After enjoying When We Collided, reading this was entirely different. This book seemed to be about breaking constraints that were always unquestionable. It's anguish and love and belief all coming together in a beautiful, heart-achingly good story.