[Review] Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance - Alison Espach

Summary: The summer before Sally Holt starts the eighth grade begins as a gloriously uneventful one, full of family trips to the beach and long afternoons at the local pool with her older sister Kathy, which they mostly use as an excuse to ogle Billy Barnes, who works the concession stand there. A rising senior and local basketball star, Billy has been an unending source of intrigue for both girls since he jumped off the school roof in fifth grade, and their fascination with him is one of the few things the increasingly different sisters have in common. By summer’s end Billy and Kathy are an item—an unthinkable stroke of luck that ends in an even more unthinkable tragedy.

Set over the course of fifteen years, Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance is narrated by Sally as she addresses Kathy before, during and after Kathy’s death. We watch as Kathy’s absence creates a gaping hole that only Billy—now firmly off limits to Sally—understands and might possibly begin to fill. Charting years of their shared history and missed connections, Notes is both a breathtaking love story between two broken people who are unexplainably, inconveniently drawn to each other, and a wry, sharply observant coming of age story that looks at the ways the people we love the most continue to shape our lives long after they’re gone. (Pub Date: May 17 2022)

 

This is the kind of book that earned its rating from the beginning but didn't keep it up. And yet, the story got me so hard, I can't imagine it getting anything less than 4 stars. 

Sally has an older sister, or used to have one, but she never stopped loving Kathy. Now she writes her sister telling everything she couldn't really, even before she was gone.

I cried. This book has its big moments you could call tearjerkers but it is a book that gives you that knot the whole read. Of course you'll get to laugh, you get to feel angry, jealous, nostalgic, hopeful. But the feeling of something heavy on Sally's chest follows you. And that's what this is, her trying to get rid of this weight. Unfortunately, we have to carry it with her until the end. 

As I mentioned, I loved the beginning and then it wasn't so great. It wasn't bad, it was probably good but the first... third, maybe, of the book was so extremely good, it paled in comparison. So i'll recommnd this to people who enjoy books you'll see the character grow, you'll follow their story without expecting any big event—there are, but it's better not to have expectations. 

It is a beautiful story nonetheless. The way Kathy basically grows in front of our eyes, how her family needs to face that their other daughter isn't there anymore but one is still with them. This book is about grief and especially about people doing their best to overcome it.

I hope I can read more works Alison Espach, I loved her style her storytelling.

Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

Rating: 4 out of 5.