I Stop Somewhere || T.E. Carter || 320 pages
Top 3 Genres: Young Adult / Contemporary / Feminism
Synopsis: Ellie Frias disappeared long before she vanished.
Tormented throughout middle school, Ellie begins her freshman year with a new look: she doesn't need to be popular; she just needs to blend in with the wallpaper.
But when the unthinkable happens, Ellie finds herself trapped after a brutal assault. She wasn't the first victim, and now she watches it happen again and again. She tries to hold on to her happier memories in order to get past the cold days, waiting for someone to find her.
The problem is, no one searches for a girl they never noticed in the first place.
Publication Date: February 2018. / Average Rating: 3.91. / Number of Ratings: ~3150.
I'm historically heartbroken
Drowning in my own emotions
One minute away from breaking down, down, down
I'm always leaving empty-handed
No one wants a heart that's damaged
Only know a love that lets me down, down, down, oh
▪ Lexi has a track record of leaving schools when the truth about her brother's crimes comes out and the people she thought she could trust turn on her. When the past reveals itself to her new friends, they're quick to abandon her and add to the rumor mill about what "damage" she herself may be harboring. Every school year ends with Lexi stabbed in the back by people she thought she could trust and spiraling into reinvention to prevent the same outcome for the next year. No one can accept the real her.
Staring contest with the walls
I'm giving into my intrusive thoughts
What if I never find anybody to love
Or I finally get the chance and I fuck it all up?
'Cause I can't get hurt if I'm the first one to leave
Whoa, what if I get to heaven, and it's not even real
And I die before telling you how I really feel?
'Cause it feels like hell and I just can't help but think
That maybe love's not for me
▪ Lexi has rituals she follows, such as only wearing certain colors on certain days, and she believes breaking these patterns will cause something to go wrong in with her fresh start. (This behavior is never explicitly labeled as OCD, but I consider these intrusive thoughts of hers to part of an OCD ritual.) Other times she volunteered information to her classmates about her brother, self-sabotaging her fresh start. Because she's so afraid of ruining any opportunity for a new life, she closes herself off completely, locking herself away until the next school year at the first sign of trouble (being “the first one to leave”). All the negative reactions to her past lead her to believe that relationships, romantic or platonic, just aren't for her.
If you don't look too closely
You can't even tell I'm lonely
Even though it keeps me up at night, night, night, night
Tryna keep myself distracted
But I get all these awful habits
Of listening to voices in my mind, mind, mind, oh
▪ Lexi is careful to keep up the facade of a "normal" girl with no trauma in front of others, but it's a complete one-eighty when she's alone with her thoughts and there's no one to perform for. She joins school activities and tries to build a new life to distract herself from the reality of her old one, but there's always the voices in her head when she's alone reminding her of her low record of how many days she's stayed in one place. She's her biggest critic, telling herself, "You ruin everything[.] There’s nothing you can keep safe."
I just finished I Stop Somewhere by T.E. Carter and oh my god. I have never read such an honest portrayal of this subject matter in my life so far. Ellie deserved to live (not a spoiler) and so do girls, guys and people like her too.
If you haven't read this and feel like it wont trigger you in anyway, then read it. But make sure to practice self care if you deal with mental health that could be triggered by descriptions of rape, violence against young girls, toxic relationships and talking about death.
Book Review: All We Could've Been by T.E. Carter (Blog Tour + Giveaway!)
Book Review: All We Could’ve Been by T.E. Carter (Blog Tour + Giveaway!)
Welcome! I am so excited for today’s post! I was so fortunate to be a part of this blog tour and to get the chance to read this book early! As soon as I saw the synopsis I knew I was adding it to my TBR! This post will be my review of the book + the chance to win a copy of the book yourself! Stick around until the end for more details on that!
