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Published: March 5th 2013
Publisher: Entangled Teen
**Ebook provided by the publisher in exchange of an honest review**
What if the last place you should fall in love is the first place that you do?
You’d think getting sent to Turning Pines Wilderness Camp for a month-long rehabilitation “retreat” and being forced to re-live it in this journal would be the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.
You’d be wrong.
There’s the reason I was sent to Turning Pines in the first place: I got arrested. On prom night. With my two best friends, who I haven’t talked to since and probably never will again. And then there’s the real reason I was sent here. The thing I can’t talk about with the guy I can’t even think about.
What if the moment you’ve closed yourself off is the moment you start to break open?
But there’s this guy here. Ben. And the more I swear he won’t—he can’t—the deeper under my skin he’s getting. After the thing that happened, I promised I’d never fall for another boy’s lies.
And yet I can’t help but wonder…what if?
Where do I start with this?
I fu**ing love it! And Cassie is probably one of my fav characters now. She's so real, so normal and at times, such a mess I can't help loving her.
This is the first Lisa Burstein book I read, I had Pretty Amy on my TBR pile since before it came out, I just haven't got the chance... But trust me after this, I'm so reading it!
Cassie got arrested on Prom night and instead of jail, she gets send to boot camp: no cell phones, no bathrooms, no internet and no earings. Absolute Hell.
But for her, getting arrested isn't the real reason she's there. There's something else, something worse that lead to boot camp.
What's even worse is that Lila run away and she was the one behind what got them arrested, and Amy ratted her out to avoid jail time.
There are many things I love about Dear Cassie:
The book is told in the form of diary entries, and through them we get to know Cassie in such a raw and basic level.
The secondary characters add to the story in a particular way each. Troyer is everything Cassie isn't and through her silence and notes she helps Cassie trust in someone again. I also like to how in her up front way, Cassie was just what Troyer needed. Nez is Cassie's other roommate and probably the bane of her existence but she knew just how to push Cassie's buttons.
And Ben... He slowly but surely makes you fall for him. He's everything Cassie doesn't want, what she's afraid of, but at the same time she can't stay away.
The relationship between Ben and Cassie is one of the best things of the book. Is slow, sweet, innocent and heartwarming. It has a first love feel to it and Ben is probably one of the most loveable male characters ever.
At first, I wasn't too happy with how easy to see what "the thing" was, but as I continued reading I saw this wasn't about "the thing" so much as it was about how Cassie was dealing with it. Denial is a powerful thing, and putting into word something painful can be one of the hardestthings to do, reading Cassie's entries as she tries to get through that and somehow live afterwards you learn to love her, all of her: the tough girl thiat curses non stop and the scare one who hides behind her.
The ending was a bit abrut maybe? I mean I knew that was the end, I just thought there would be a bit more to it. In a way it fitted Cassie's personally perfectly. She just ended that chapter of her life.
I Just want more of her... I need more of her.
Dear Cassie is a raw, emotional journey about lost friendship and heartbreak. Is about how sometimes we make desitions that later become too painful. Is story about forgiving yourself and lear to love yourself again. Is about finding love again.
About Lisa Burstein
Lisa Burstein is a tea seller by day and a writer by night. She received her MFA in Fiction from the Inland Northwest Center for Writers at Eastern Washington University and is glad to finally have it be worth more than the paper it was printed on. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her very patient husband, a neurotic dog and two cats. Pretty Amy is her first novel. She never went to her senior prom.
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