Kirkus style review

  

Now Is Everything

by Amy Giles

Ages 13 & up

Hadley walks away from the plane crash thinking, "no one walks away, I should be dead too."

Hadley comes from what looks like, on the outside, to be a perfect family. They are rich and live in a good neighborhood. Hadley is the captain of the lacrosse team and has a 4.34 GPA but that just from the outside. This book pulls at your heartstrings with all that Hadley has to put up with by her father. At 17, she is not allowed to date, her dad wakes her up at 4:30 am every day to go running, and beats her if she doesn’t do everything he says. This book is about a girl’s struggle to keep herself and her younger sister Lila out of the reach of her father’s abuse. With her new boyfriend Charlie, who her father doesn’t know about, and her two best friends Meaghan and Noah, she tries to live her life like nothing is wrong. Then one day, Charlie sees the bruises and she can’t hide the fact that her father beats her. She makes him promise that he will not tell anyone. It is a story that shows why it is so hard for children in an abusive family to reach out and get help. In Hadley’s case, her father telling her that he would kill her if she ever talked and the fears of what he will do to her sister if she ever does. He makes her believe that no one would believe her if she did tell anyone about it. The narrative goes back and forth from now, since the plane crash and after to then, about 2 months or so before the crash, which at times get frustrating because you just want to know what is happening with Hadley now. This writing style keeps you guessing until the end. You don’t learn about what truly happens with the plane crash until the end. This is a must-read for anyone who has ever been in or knows of anyone who has been in an abusive relationship to better understand why it is so hard for them to get help.