Elly reviews WORDS WE DON'T SAY by K.J. Reilly

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of K.J.Reilly's forthcoming young adult novel,
Words We Don't Say, hitting bookstores in OctoberI rated this 4/5 Stars...More like 3.5 stars, but I’ll round up this time because Joel’s struggle and character development worked for me. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure I was going to love this book but I felt compelled to see it through and I am glad it did. I appreciated Joel’s evolution from having so much inside him that he couldn’t share...so very like many young people I know and work with. The author’s use of saved text messages brought this age old struggle beautifully into the present. I loved  the PTSD/veteran storyline but I will confess that I didn’t love the darkness that the gun brought to the story. That alone will give me pause in recommending this to students. Otherwise, it was a powerful commentary on the curse of PTSD that taught me much about a problem that needs to be better addressed in our society.

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