Review: Whitney Barbetti's "Ten below Zero."

4 Hearts Review: Whitney Barbetti's "Ten below Zero."

Amazon UK:    http://amzn.to/1B40FA6

Amazon.com:   http://amzn.to/1rmpiHe

Synopsis:

“In here,” he said, pushing on the skin above my heart, “you're ten below zero. And you’re closer to death than I am.”

My name is Parker. My body is marked with scars from an attack I don’t remember. I don’t want to remember. I choose to live my life by observation, not through experience. While people are laughing and kissing and connecting, I’m in the corner. Watching them live. I’m indifferent to everything, everyone. The only emotion I feel with any kind of depth is annoyance, and I feel it often.

A text message sent to the wrong number proves to be my undoing.

His name is Everett, but I call him rude. He’s pushy, he’s arrogant, he crowds my personal space, and worst of all: he makes me feel.

He chooses to wear all black, all the time, as if he’s waiting to attend a funeral. Probably because he is.

Everett is dying. And he’s spending his final days living, truly living. In doing so, he’s forcing me to feel, to heal. To come face to face with the demons I suppressed in my memory.

He hurts me, he fulfills me, he completes me. And still, he's dying.

Review: Kirsty Lander

UGH. After finishing I have conflicting feelings. I loved the book. I was hooked pretty much throughout the whole thing, but at the end I was just left kind of deflated. I saw the end coming pretty much from the beginning, so I wish, if anything, that that had been different.

Anyway, on to the book..

“In here,” he said, pushing on the skin above my heart, 

“you're ten below zero. And you’re closer to death than I am.”

Parker is a girl who is merely existing, not living. After surviving a brutal attack which has left her both mentally and physically scarred, she doesn't put herself in to any situations that cause her to feel. She just exists in her own world. She makes no attachments to people. That way she can't be hurt.. until she meets Everett.

I loved Everett. He is dying and all he wants to do is spend his last few months happy, living life to the fullest.. After sending a text to a wrong number, he meets Parker, and makes it his mission to get her feeling again, to get her living her life again. He sees the pain she tries so hard to hide and takes it upon himself to help her. The two of them embark on a road trip together, both facing their own demons, as well as falling in love with one and other.

"I see you, Parker. You're broken. Not all broken things can be fixed. And that's okay, 

don't you know that? It was your brokenness that drew me to you, because I saw in 

you the same things I saw in me. It was our brokenness that connected us. 

So I can't wish away those broken pieces in me, because without them I wouldn't have seen you."

I really enjoyed the story, but I do think it could have had more of an emotional impact. There were times that I felt myself tearing up, but it wasn't really until the end. I had worked out which way it was going to end, but I still enjoyed discovering how exactly it would happen.

On the whole this was a great read. I have never read anything by this author but after reading this particular book I would definitely be interesting in finding more books by her. Just the quotes alone are enough to make me want to read more. I could have highlighted the whole book. She was a beautiful way with words. And they really do make you feel/.

"I don't need a thousand people to know I existed. I just want someone to know I lived."

I rated "Ten below Zero" 4 Hearts