Title: Pieces of Me
Author: Carrigan Richards
Series: n/a
My Rating: 4 Stars
Good Reads Rating: 4.5 Stars (14 Ratings)
Genre: YA Contemporary/Romance
Pages: 342
Publisher: Createspace
Check it Out: Good Reads | Amazon | Barnes and Noble
I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.
Good Reads Summary:
One second. Seventeen-year-old Corinne has everything. Her life. Family. Friends. Boyfriend. But in that one second, she loses it all. Now she’s left with harrowing nightmares. Hallucinations. And panic attacks that seem to come out of nowhere. She tries everything to take the pain away, but there’s only one option she sees as a true way out. When Corinne is sent to live in a psychiatric institution, she doesn’t want to talk. It’s pointless. They can’t help her. But slowly Corinne opens up and wants to remember what it’s like to be happy so she begins reliving her past life to her doctor. She knows she can’t live in the past, but she sees no future and is faced with the hardest decision of her life.
This is one of those books that restores my faith in self-publishing.
This book deals with dark subject matter; there’s lots of talk of suicide, eating disorders, depression, etc. The setting is in a psychiatric institution, where the main character Corinne has to go to therapy every day. I’m don’t know if Richards has specific personal experience with Psychiatrists, but there was both a good and bad view of the doctors in the book. The ones at Corinne’s treatment center were great, very helpful, wanted her to get better, but other patients spoke of past doctor’s being terrible. It was an interesting juxtaposition, and one that I’m sure is quite accurate.
I really liked that the book moved back and forth between past and present. It broke up the dark tone of Corinne’s depression, and the past scenes were fun and sweet (romance with James was precious). You got to see all the steps leading up to her present, which was revealed in clever, well-timed manner. I never found myself bored or wanting to move past what I was reading.
Corinne’s friend Lisa is the worst friend on the face of the planet. I may be a horrible person for saying this, but I honestly didn’t even care that she was clinically bipolar. The way she treated people was absolutely unacceptable, and someone should have done something about it WAY before they did. I would have been like BYE YAH JERK.
Ok, that sounded horrible. I know there wasn’t anything she could do about it since it’s a medical issue, but still, someone should have been like “hey, maybe you should go talk to someone about your inhumanly horrible behavior.”
The writing is great; I’ve read some not so greatly written review requests recently, so it was so nice to read something that had obviously been meticulously edited by someone who knew what they were doing. (Or maybe Carrigan Richards is just that good haha). Pieces of Me reads like any book you could pull off the shelf at Barnes and Noble, if not better than those published by big houses. I was honestly surprised to see it was self-published. I’m very interested in reading more books from this author. Pieces of Me was a great read, quick, interesting, deep, and compassionate. I really enjoyed it.
