This is a story is about Eden, your typical girl-next-door in high school that is learning how one action can have a big impact on your whole life. When Eden is assaulted by her brothers best friend, she struggles to come to terms with what happened to her. She doesn’t feel as if there is anyone she can confide in with this news.

The book dives right into what someone that has been sexually assaulted would feel; denial, anger, fear, depression, and shame. Eden realizes that this assault has sent her into a spiral where she doesn’t even know who she is anymore. Eden’s story is divided into four sections, which follow her through each of her four years in high school. As you read through each chapter, you get a firsthand look at how the aftermath of the assault is affecting her life as a whole.

Freshman year where you begin Eden’s story, and the time of the assault.. Eden begins to go through the first stages of trauma, denial, and anger. She initially wakes up after the assault and is trying to place the incident, questioning if it was a dream. Once she realizes that she wasn’t waking up from a nightmare, she starts to start building upon anger. She starts to notice she’s changed since the incident; holding grudges against her best friend, feeling extreme annoyance towards new people, she even lashes out at her parents.

Sophomore year is when Eden decides she’s going to be a different person. She’s made the conscious effort to not be invisible, meaning she’s completely changed her appearance to defect how she’s actually feeling inside. Ditching her glasses for contacts, wearing makeup, changing her clothing styles, and trading some of her “less popular friends” for others who are more popular are just some of the changes Eden has decided will help her plan to transform herself. She meets a new guy, who could potentially help her trust men again, that is if she lets him past her walls. Will she let her anger and her need to appear unbothered get in the way of her being with someone who actually cares for her, or will she accept her true self once again and allow herself happiness?

Junior year rolls around and Eden has become a different version of herself completely. It’s actually really hard to read how much she’s changed and how hard she is trying to prove to everyone else (including herself) that even the shell of who she used to be is no longer there. She has this cold outlook towards her peers and friends. It’s concerning how little she cares about the consequences of any of her actions, even when her friends voice concern. I thought this book would show Eden’s progress through each of the stages of trauma as she entered her later years in school. That’s what we’d hope for her right? That she would find her way to acceptance and rediscover who she is again? If that’s what you’re searching for, this is not the story for you. This story is very real in the sense that not everybody gets the happy ending they deserve. Not everyone is able to pull themselves out of the hole they dug themself in.

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The Way I Used to Be - Likewise Book Reviews

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