Review: Tara Sivec's "Watch over Me."

@TaraSivec
Review: Tara Sivec's "Watch Over Me."

~4 Hearts Review: Surj ~

Amazon UK:    http://amzn.to/1871VD9
Amazon.com:   http://amzn.to/160iFLI


Synopsis:

Addison Snow is your typical teenager. She has a family that loves her, friends that make her laugh, and she's wrapped up in the excitement of graduating high school and going off to college to pursue her dream of becoming an author. When her mother, who also happens to be Addison's best friend, dies unexpectedly, her world comes to a crashing halt.

Death changes everyone...

To make the pain go away, Addison and her father travel down separate, dark paths. She chooses to end her grief forever, while he drowns his sorrows in the bottom of a bottle. How do you learn to live again when the most important person in your life is gone?

Addison struggles to pick up the pieces of her life. Instead of getting back to being the carefree teenager she once was, she's stuck handling all of the responsibilities that should have been her father's. She has no time to grieve, no time for emotions, and no time for happiness...until Zander Reinhardt walks in. All it takes is one little handwritten note on a napkin to kick-start her back to life and help her realize that maybe there's more to that life than pain.

But can it really be that simple? Can she really trust this man who makes her feel alive again for the first time in a year?

Addison and Zander both have secrets they aren't ready to share. When the truth finally comes out, is it enough to tear them apart or has something bigger than themselves always been watching over them, pushing them together, making sure they both get their happily ever after?

Review: Surj Harvey

Tara Sivec's "Watch over Me" was such an emotional read. From the prologue, I knew I had to keep reading Addison's story. It wasn't a choice. Too much had already happened, the story line had already got me. I knew I'd wouldn't be happy until I got to the last page. Well, let's just say, this was a "one sitting" book where I switched off from the world and gave it my all (and I was not disappointed). 

The day Addison's mother (her best friend) died, her world was turned upside down. Unable to cope, her father removed all traces of her mother from the family home and turned to alcohol as a way of dealing with the pain. 

I was a senior in High School with my whole life ahead of me, and I had to check my father 

into his first stint in rehab a month after the funeral, take on the role of administrator for 

my mothers estate, and learn how to run a business- all in one day. 

I was suddenly the parent instead of the child. 

That was the day she lost all faith in human nature. Her family and friends had all but deserted her, and her parents, well they were all gone too:

The people closest to me let me down and left me to fend for myself. 

How can I possibly trust anyone with my story and my feelings when I know in the end, 

they'll just turn their backs on me? They always do. 

I completely understood her logic for why she needed to shut herself away from the world. It wasn't the right thing to do (it never is), but when you're let down time and time again, life suddenly becomes about self preservation. Addison's character was so fragile, so vulnerable, her words painful to read at times. I was desperate for her to find a way out of the dark cloud that was hanging over her but she needed to let go of the past and that was something she was struggling to do. Each private Facebook message she sent to her mother just crushed me. She couldn't even bring herself to delete her mothers profile. She knew what she was doing was unhealthy, she just didn't care anymore.   

So when would it all change? She couldn't carry on like this... could she? Well now, I'd say, the minute her eyes locked with Zander's, everything changed (not that Addison was about to admit it):

It's the guy from the coffee shop. The one I pretend to never notice but think about constantly. 

The one who always smiles at me and wrote me a note on a napkin. 

A napkin I swore I would throw away, but now it sits next to my laptop at home, 

smoothed out from the irritated crumple I gave it. 

Zander was such a beautiful character. From the moment he entered the bakery, my heart just swelled. The napkin note he left her put such a big grin on my face:

You're beautiful when you smile. You should do it more often. 

And as these notes continued, so did the butterflies in my stomach because I knew where this was heading. Zander was nothing but persistent in his pursuit of Addison and it was heart warming to read. He seemed to know exactly what she needed, whether it was just a hug, a shoulder to cry on or just plain and simple comfort:

"You can still pick up the pieces, Sugar. They fell apart for a little while, but it doesn't mean 

anything is damaged. Everything can be fixed. And you don't have to fix it alone. 

There's always someone who will help you rebuild."

His words of wisdom, the Lego house analogy.. perfect words just at the perfect time. 

And to top it off, Zander was funny. His witty charm definitely brought a smile to my face. But I knew there was something not quite right. There were little hints that were dropped throughout the story so I had an idea, but when the truth finally came out and the connection revealed, I knew how Addison would react. 

"Watch over Me" was told in the present with snippets of the past giving us a glimpse of Addison's life when her mother was still alive, when she was happy, when she was carefree and life was good. It allowed me to understand the relationship she had with her mother and exactly how much she actually lost the day her mother died. Each chapter also started with her therapy session with Dr Thompson, the only person she shared her thoughts with. I loved those weekly tasks she was set. 

And mags.... The girl  who put on such a brave face but was barely surviving emotionally. Her own past was eating away at her but again, despite forging a friendship with Addison, neither girls shared their past or  their inner feelings because if they did, everything would become all the more real and that was something neither was ready to deal with:

"Silly Addy, we don't tell each other things," she slurs with a smile. 

"Everything will is just hunky dory if we don't talk."

This book definitely took me on an emotional rollercoaster of a ride but the ending was perfect... beautiful even. The epilogue bought tears to my eyes. If you're looking for an emotional, heart breaking but heart warming story too, I'd definitely recommend this one. 
I rated Tara Sivec's "Watch over Me" 4 very emotional Hearts.