THE START OF ME AND YOU (Review)

Title: The Start of Me and You

Author: Emery Lord

Star Rating: 4* out of 5*

Would I Recommend It? ABSOLUTELY.

In all honesty, I was apprehensive about this book. The first book I read by Emery Lord was WHEN WE COLLIDED, and that still remains one of my all-time favourite contemporary books, even from back in 2016. I adored it. Late last year, I read THE NAMES THEY GAVE US and was a little disappointed, even though I really enjoyed most parts of the book. For me, it didn't live up to WHEN WE COLLIDED. But THE START OF ME AND YOU, a YA contemporary like her others, lifted my expectations right back up, and I adored every single page.

***

Paige starts a new year of school right after the loss of her short-term boyfriend, Aaron. After a summer of grieving him, suffering with anxiety and depression, she is determined to start a fresh year surrounded by friends and taking chances. The book opens with her talking with Ryan Chase, who understands her pain, but advises her that everyone has to go on, their life still exists to be lived. As her long-standing, recently single, crush, Paige hangs on his words. So, she devises a plan--to date, to take up an extracurricular activity, to participate and to socialise. Her dating plan is a very touch-and-go and guilt thing for Paige, after losing Aaron. The grief she feels is deep, despite only dating him for two months. For her, I think the grief was more about how young he was and whether he died with a smile on his face after jumping off a bridge with friends, more than the love lost.

Her plan interconnects so many things. Through her dating plan, she finds herself sitting near Ryan Chase in one of her classes. There's always that one class in high school based contemporaries that sets the timeline of the book, a trope I love. For this book, it was English Lit. By chance, Ryan is moved, and switched with his "nerdy" cousin, Max. Max is not only the gateway to Paige's other checklist item--an extracurricular activity--but also the rock she needs for her grief. Through Ryan, she meets Max. Through Max, she joins the QuizBowl team, an activity that really brings Paige out of her grief-formed shell. Through socialising, Paige attends a party where she realises that Max may actually be a great friend for her, and not just a way to get to Ryan.

Something I adore in this book is the constant support system. Not only are her friends there for her, but Paige has a deep bond and loyalty to her friends to always be there for them. When one of her friends goes through a breakup, they all go comfort her together. Outside of her friends, Paige has a grandmother whose dementia takes strong grips on her, but she writes down everything important that Paige speaks about. As her friendship group and support grows in this book, so does Paige's faith in life again.

Aaron died in a lake accident. He was messing around with his friends, jumping into the water, and so this brings symptoms of PTSD for Paige. But she's always liked swimming, and the aftermath of Aaron's death tries to overrule that. Another item on her list is to swim again, to conquer her fear of the water.

Over the course of the book, it comes to Paige's attention that Max isn't just a friend. He's there for her the most; the understanding character to every problem she has. Despite being surrounded by her group of three friends, Max is something else for her. An element that I loved about this book is Paige's home life. Her parents begin dating again after divorcing years before. This becomes a complicated thing, and as a child whose parents divorced when I was younger, I can confirm Paige's resentment and hostility towards the idea. It would be awful but it added so much more to the story. It added strength to the family when they went through their own hardships. It added different confidantes for Paige.

The book takes place roughly over a year, and during that time, Paige learns, little by little, that life really is worth living even after parts of what you know leave for good. As someone who suffers with a lack of motivation and anxiety, this is a book I needed to read. I got to see an incredible, realistic protagonist fear a lot but still try. I got to see the incredible support system that she has. Hope has a way of staying alive in this book.

My lack of five stars is down to the fact that there was little diversity in the characters, and how Ryan Chase is a very cliche name for the popular boy, and was quite cliche in his ways, even though he had his relatable side. I'd like to have seen more about Paige's interest in script-writing, too. There was a lot of backstory to how she got into it, but not so much of the interest happening in the present duration of the book. Otherwise, I would recommend THE START OF ME AND YOU to any contemporary reader. Emery Lord has a way of total immersion with her characters on the page, and it's impossible not to get lost in her stories.

An Itch You Can't Scratch (A Creative, or lack of, Process.)

I know a lot of writers post about their own creative processes and how they cope with deadlines/life stresses, and lately I've been feeling my own life obstacles when it comes to writing, and needed to vent it out.

First, a mini timeline:

In 2017, I had no job despite my endless trying but I somehow had depthless bouts of creativity. Over the span of twelve months, I drafted and edited three full-length novels. I then drafted another two, leaving them be. I read a lot more; I had all the time in the world to let my mind run absolutely free, even though I very rarely left the depressive comfort of my bedroom. 2017 in every other way but creatively, was an awful year. But I got at least five varied manuscripts out of it.

In the summer of 2017, I got told, "I can't wait for you to get a job so writing goes back to just being a hobby." This was said by someone who knows how desperately I want to make a career out of writing novels, and so stuck painfully with me. And oh, how they are the damning words.

In December 2017, I finally got a job after twelve failed interviews. I worked only eight hours every weekend, and had the entire week to myself, to still craft and create. I wrote another manuscript over the course of December/January.

Going back to those damning words, I'm now working full, late shifts three/four days a week, and am finding my brain has such less room and energy for writing. I've been told that's what I need: a distraction from striving so hard, but it's not. It's more a hindrance. Since the beginning of February, when my hours were upped, I've toyed with five different novel ideas, wrote scraps of where they could go, who my characters would be, a loose premise, but once I sit down to write them, everything that I creatively had in 2017 evaporates. (See title, ha.) This is life, right? We have to work--work comes first; that's what is making my money right now. Not writing.

But here's the thing: throughout the god-awful 2017, writing was my crutch, my anchor. I depend on creatively venting. I depend on completing and editing manuscripts because I need to write to keep striving for that career I want. So as a writer who needs to write but can't? I am literally in mental turmoil. I participated in Pit Mad this year and received no requests, which was overwhelmingly disheartening at the time. I still have those polished manuscripts, which I'm querying with. I feel like I'm putting my all into striving and getting nothing back, which also drains me mentally.

I read a Twitter post this morning about how although writing is a great release, it's also quite bad for mental health. That's been proven personally to me time and time again. My mind is an array of open tabs, filled with half-formed premises that won't come alive on the page. I'm trying to edit other stories but currently I'm putting in so much mental effort with work and trying with that, and enduring so many failing expectations regarding pretty much everything, my brain just isn't connecting with my writing. I don't want to stop working; I feel lazy for cutting any hours I currently do to get that time back for what I love more than anything, and other than that, I don't know where to go. I didn't realise that getting a job meant trading in my biggest love in life. I don't know quite how to make it any other way; how to balance both. My job is mentally demanding, leaving little thought for anything else, even once I'm away from it.

A break is good for the brain, and I suppose that's what I'm getting, but I'm also increasingly frustrated by my lack of ability these days. Writing was always my escape, a place I could build and work on, and create somewhere better, and do something I'm passionate about. Now I've sort of lost that, and it's a struggle.

If anyone has any tips at all--anything that isn't walking, listening to music, self-care (because I've tried all of this), come find me on Twitter at @ShaneDReid and yell advice at me, please.

Sincerely,
A Lost Writer.