All The Things We Didn't Say (2009) - Plot & Excerpts
If I could rate this more specifically, I would rate it a 3.5. Sara totally entered a new world with this book! The live of Summer Davis gets turned into knots when her mother leaves them and her father turns more and more down that dark road of depression. Clinic after clinic. It's all about the inside of Summer, how she wants someone to finally see her for once because it's always her taking care of someone else.As much as this book is fascinating AND refreshing, I do find it really annoying and unbearable to read. You just get so close with the book you get aggravated by the characters in it!Now finishing this book, I have high respect for Sarah Shepard as a writer. The way she can write as this person who hurts in all these ways inside, the mysteries, the horrors, the sorrow. It's nothing like any of her other books, it was her first adult novel. I recommend this book to someone with patience and understanding. This is a wonderful book about a girl and her father who struggle to deal with the events of their pasts. Her father struggles with the death of his girlfriend in high school, his wife leaving him and a long battle with mental illness while his daughter struggles with losing her mother, drifting away from her best friend, coping with her fathers mental illness and eventually the death of her great Aunt Stella. The book also looks at genetics of science and how we are really tied to our parents, our backgrounds, through both Summer and her fathers fascination. I think Summer herself deals with mental illness that is not addressed as directly as her fathers; she grows anxious and distant from her friends and family as the book goes on.
What do You think about All The Things We Didn't Say (2009)?
slow getting started. not a real page turner till about halfway thru then it got better.
—lizz_0607
I was expecting more of this book - it was slow reading for me and rather depressing...
—ricardo_96
a little depressing but the feelings are all real and credible
—Audrey13
Put on pause p. 80. Where's the plot?!
—nballesteros77