Bully and victim.
Tormentor and tormented.
Villain and hero.
Ellie McCallum was a bully. No connection to anyone or anything. A sad and lonely existence for a young woman who had come to expect nothing more for herself. Her only happiness coming from making others miserable.
Particularly Freaky Flynn.
Flynn Hendrick lived a life completely disconnected even as he struggled to become something more than that boy with Asperger's. He was taunted and teased, bearing the brunt of systematic and calculated cruelty, ultimately culminating in a catastrophic turn of events that brought Ellie and Flynn's worlds crashing down.
But then Flynn and Ellie grew up.
And moved on.
Until years later when their paths unexpectedly cross again and the bully and the freak are face to face once more.
When labels come to define you, finding yourself feels impossible. Particularly for two people disconnected from the world who inexplicably find a connection in each other.
And out of the wreckage of their tragic beginnings, an unlikely love story unfolds.
But a painful past doesn't always want to let go. And old wounds are never truly healed...and sometimes the further you try to run from yourself the closer you come to who you really are.
BUY: Amazon
This book was really
hard for me.
My
heart hurt through most of the first half, and at some points I had to stop
reading to calm my nerves. It made me upset, and more than that, it made me see
red. Reading about someone being bullied is going to be difficult regardless,
but this particular story hit close to home for me.
My
younger cousin, Joseph, has Asperger’s and as I imagined would be the case, so
many of Flynn’s mannerisms reminded me of him, mainly his inability to think
something and not speak it (regardless of how rude it might come across), his
incredible ability to remember just about everything, and his temper. He can
tell you word-for-word a conversation that you had with him years ago, as well
as tell you what you were wearing that day. You can give him a random date and
he’ll tell you what day of the week it fell on within a matter of seconds.
Unfortunately, he’ll also tell you when you’ve gained weight since the last
time he saw you J He once got violently
angry because his brother accidentally bumped his arm while he was drawing a
picture for our Grammy and (in his opinion) ruined it.
But
here’s the bottom line: he’s such a special person to me, so when Ellie and her
friends were bullying Flynn for behaving the same way Joseph does, it made me incredibly angry. I was starting to
think this book was going to be a miss for me, because how in the hell could I
ever root for Ellie? Why would I ever want someone like Ellie to end up with someone
like Flynn? But then, A. Meredith Walters goes and proves once again why she is
one of my favorite authors…
She
replaced my anger with hope.
Hope
for not only Ellie, but for Ellie and Flynn.
Okay,
here’s a quick rundown for y’all: Flynn transfers to Ellie’s school. He is bullied
and teased and misunderstood simply because he has Asperger’s. Ellie and her
friends are trouble, plain and simple. They have a bad reputation around their
small town, and are the driving force behind making high school hell for Flynn.
When Ellie starts to spend more time with Flynn, she realizes how much she
enjoys his company but in order to save face with her friends, she continues to
bully him whenever they happen to be around. She wants to be “secret friends.”
After a tragic accident forces Flynn and his mother to move away, Ellie doesn’t
plan on ever seeing Flynn again…nor does she want to…because he ruined her
life. But as fate would have it, they are thrust back into each other’s lives
years later and as they begin to spend more and more time together, Ellie
starts to question everything, and everyone, in her life. Well…everyone except
Flynn.
Whew.
Like I said, the first half of this book was tough to handle, but the last 40
percent – that’s what makes this a 5 star book in my opinion. It’s during this
part of the book where I realized that Ellie truly isn’t a bad person. She has a good heart, but has allowed the negative
people around her to shape her into someone she’s not. With Flynn, it’s
different; he brings out the good in her and that’s one of the many reasons why
I found myself 100% rooting for this romance after initially being completely
against it.
The
innocence and fragility of Flynn and Ellie’s relationship was done wonderfully.
It never felt rushed or forced, it felt natural;
like these two were just destined to be together. While there are plenty of
adorable moments between them, there are just as many angst-driven twists that
made me feel for both of them. The
patience that Ellie had to maintain when Flynn had one of his episodes made my
heart not only thaw towards her, but warm completely. In those moments, it
showed just how much she was willing to really and truly do anything to be with
him. She redeemed herself in more ways than one, and that’s a testament to A.
Meredith Walters and her incredible writing ability. She managed to make me go from
hating a character to quite frankly, loving her. And Flynn…well…he was just
plain easy to love.
The
journey of Flynn and Ellie is far from pretty but once I reached the end, my
exact words were, “That was perfect.” Perfect
doesn’t have to be pretty, and A. Meredith Walters has given us a wonderful representation
of that in Reclaiming the Sand. As
much as this book made my hands shake and want to throw my iPad in a fit of
rage – it also made me laugh, shed more than a few happy tears, and is a beautiful
reminder that in almost everyone,
there is some good…sometimes we just can’t see it until the right person brings
it out.
5 STARS
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