How She Died, How I Lived

Introduction

I have to put numerous trigger warnings here. This book deals bluntly with incredibly difficult and heavy subject matter, so please proceed with this book and this review with caution.

TW: Assault, excessive violence, miscarriage, rape, sexual assault, and suicide.

How She Died, How I Lived was written by Mary Crockett and published on November 13th, 2018, by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers publishing company. I found this book browsing at Barnes and Noble while looking for a new stand-alone to read and review, but I had no idea what I was getting into with this one. It was heavy, and hard to read at some points, but I felt like it also brought about a lot of personal reflection on the themes it was presenting. I’ll get more into that in the body of the review. All of this is to say, I loved this book, and I think young adult readers willing to bear the heavy subject would enjoy it too. If you haven’t read this book yet, I would start there, but the Spoiler-Free Thoughts section is for my more generalized opinions. Those who want deeper insights can turn to my Thoughts section. Those who would like to have further discussion about the book can comment on this post or can reach out to me through Instagram DM. 

For Help or Support

National Sexual Assault Hotline - 1-800-656-4673

Help for Rape Victims - https://www.healthyplace.com/abuse/rape/help-for-rape-victims-rape-victims-support#:~:text=More%20sources%20of%20online%20rape%20support%20include%3A%201,2%20Daily%20Strength%20%E2%80%93%20a%20rape%20support%20group

Suicide Crisis Hotline - 988 or 988lifeline.org

Emergency Hotline - 911

Help Resources - https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/resources/general-resources.html

Plot

Our narrator is one of five girls who received Kyle’s text the day Jamie died. She has lived every day since then knowing that it could have been her - not Jamie - who Kyle murdered that night.

Spoiler-Free Thoughts

The plot is incredibly fast-paced, and it jumps immediately into the tragedy this story centers around. I will put another warning here that not only is the subject material incredibly heavy and potentially difficult to read, but Crockett doesn’t mince words. The language is blunt and unapologetic as the narrator tells both Jamie’s story and her own. The storytelling is good, the wording is almost poetic, but it is in no way lighthearted. There is very little dialogue, but the inner monologue makes up for it and then some given the complicated themes it brings forth.

There is a lot of time spent on what ifs and whys, which makes sense given the narrator’s struggle with survivor’s guilt. In fact, there is only one minor mystery in this story that does get resolved, but I truly feel that if it had been taken out of the story, I wouldn’t have minded. I was interested just reading the story and immersing myself in the narrator’s constant internal dialogue. The ultimate outcome of this book did not shock me, I assumed it was going to turn out the way that it did, but I don’t think that’s what it was all about. It was about what all of it meant thematically for the characters and for us as readers.

This book is full of thematic importance that I will be going into in much deeper detail in the Thoughts section, but for those who are thinking of reading the book, this is what I will say. This book got me truly thinking about guilt, survival, forgiveness, and justice. It was a short and thought-provoking read that genuinely impacted me cover to cover. I would recommend this to any fan of young adult fiction who fully understands the severity of the trigger warnings I have included. This book is a 10/10 for me.

Thoughts

It took me a while to get used to the fact that there was no great mystery or conspiracy in this book. Charlie really was a good guy, and the flowers weren’t a threat so much as a gentle reminder. I have gotten so used to the books that approach these similar themes in more mysterious ways, but there is none of that here. I would normally feel as though that made a plot slower or duller than usual, but I truly felt the opposite here. The focus could remain solely on the themes, and there was no extra padding necessary, the tragedy of Jamie’s death was more than enough.

This section is going to largely focus on the themes presented in this book because that was what stood out to me most. The narrator states that she knows what happened to Jamie isn’t her fault, but she’s lying to us as the audience as much as she is to herself. Her guilt weighs heavily on her, and it’s not hard to understand why. It truly isn’t fair that Jamie was such a bright, kind soul, and it was that same light that ultimately brought about her death. That brings up the first theme of why. Why do things like this happen? In this case, we know it had something to do with Kyle - though we may not know the specifics - but can that ever be enough? Following up on that, who is to blame? Kyle is again the obvious answer here, but the narrator can’t help but blame herself for simply ignoring a text. The blame game can also be played in reverse. Was it Kyle’s home life and childhood that drove him to do what he did? Again, we just don’t know, and I think that it was incredibly well put when it was stated that “We’re all desperate for something so senseless to make sense.”

So then that begs the question, if we can’t pin down the why or even who is to blame, how do we go on? This is a question I have struggled to answer in my personal life, and I think that it’s the entire point of the book. How She Died, How I Lived, not How I Survived. Lived is the word used here, and intentionally so. It isn’t about just surviving, breathing in and out, following the daily routine. It’s about putting one foot in front of the other, finding a reason, and living more than the bare minimum of a life. We see it with Charlie, who was akin to a ghost for a long time after Jamie’s death, but we see him break out of that as the book goes on and he spends more time with the narrator. They help each other. But is there more we can do?

In this case, one might consider forgiveness - or at least justice - to be the next step, but this is where we run into another issue. In the U.S. - where this book is set - we are supposed to have a system to fairly and equally carry out justice for crimes like these, but what does that look like? The narrator bounces back and forth on whether or not the death penalty would be a fair punishment for Kyle, if taking his life could ever make up for him taking Jamie’s. She wonders if there can ever truly be justice in a case like this, as nothing can be done to Kyle to bring Jamie back. So what was the point of the pain, if there’s nothing we can gain from it? This is another hard question that this book poses, and it’s another one that I don’t know how to answer. I can say how the characters answer though.

Kyle is to blame for Jamie’s death, but no matter what happens to him, she isn’t coming back. Some forgiveness isn’t ours to give, but we can give what is ours if we choose to do so for our own sake. So that we no longer give the cause of our pain the attention it deserves. We can seek the beauty that remains in the world - regardless of whether or not we deserve to live somewhere so stunning - and try to find peace in it. We keep putting one foot in front of the other, taking the time we need to heal, and we keep going. Our narrator is nameless for a reason; I think we as readers are supposed to provide our own answers to the questions, and this book made me do exactly that. So, that is what I took away from this book. That is why, for me, this book is a 10/10. It wasn’t objectively perfect, I would say no book is, but I subjectively felt deeply impacted by this story.