When I finished this book, I closed it, opened it, and immediately re-read it.I'll be honest. I'm a born skim-reader. When I reread a book, I usually find entire swathes of paragraphs which I've mindlessly skipped over.I didn't skim this one. Which is why it has shocked me that in the week following rereading it, I've read it again a total of 3 times. The most recent one is the one which sparked me to write this up.The death of a loved one is horrible. The death of a parent is terrifying. The death of a mother is scarring.You never recover from it. You muddle on, leaving the festering wound inside you untreated, hoping that eventually, everything will resemble what now passes for normal. But the hurt never stops. Neither does the love. Nor the guilt. Nor the jealousy. Nor the hate.The void left by their passing chokes up with questions and what-ifs. What did they think of, at that last moment? Could you have done something to save them? Where are they now? Weren't you strong, or loving, or caring enough to keep them in this world?Whenever you pass someone on the sidewalk who has what you can never have again - a mother hugging her child, an uncle taking his niece out for a walk, a brother and sister arguing, a father beaming proudly at his baby - you ache. You ache inside, and that ache turns to anger. Anger at them, and anger at yourself. Because they left. And you didn't.This book deals with the all-too-real aftershocks of a mother's death. It deals with depression, and doubt, and anxiety, and self loathing. But it deals with love.Mary Calmes may have a formula, but this book stood out from the rest of her collection. Because while the rest deal with two happy hotties dealing with complications in the land of hot and happy people, this deals with a complication that can never be solved. It can only be accepted.This isn't really a review. These are thoughts and feelings and revelations I've experienced, at various highs and lows in my life, which the book evoked from me. And I can't even put into words how much I wish for a Craig to my Eli.5/5. Thus one was really hard to rate. Most of the time in know exactly what I'm going to put it as when the book ends. Not thus one. I can't decide if it's 3 or 4 stars. So then I thought I'd just do 3.5. Compromise right? Yeah. I don't Know it's not really feeling like a 3.5 either. So, it May Calmes, old school Mary Calmes at that. But, it was bare bones that's killing me. I'm left with questions and feelings that were crazy enough not resolved. Why was no one mad at the mom? Seriously. Most importantly, where in the heck is the epilogue??
What do You think about What Can Be (2011)?
Mary Calmes has mastered the art of sweet story telling I adored this one too!
—Ranjith
First read: 3/7/12Second Read: 12/7/13Bumping it up to 5 stars
—booklover
