Author: Jennifer MillikinDate Released: November 10, 2016
Genre: Romance
Rating: 4 Stars⭐⭐⭐⭐
I really enjoyed
this story. It was real, emotional and raw. The main characters were well
developed and the author's descriptive writing was on point. I felt like I was with Katie while she was
grieving and while she was struggling to get her life together. I absolutely
love second chance romances and this book was a great example of how great they
can be. The
Day He Went Away is about a young lady named Katie who, ten years
later, discovers that she is in love with her best friend, Ethan. While their relationship starts to bloom,
Ethan's life is, unfortunately, cut short while he is deployed overseas. Finding it incredibly hard to cope with her
best friend's death, Katie goes into a deep depression and loses herself in
alcohol. Ethan's soldier in arms friend,
Nick, has been assigned the duty of taking care of Katie in the event of
Ethan's death. I liked Kate, but her friend was a class a bitch and a horrible
friend. The things that her friend said
was harsh and I was happy when Katie came to her senses.
Okay….Okay enough of
the summarizing because I want to get to the good part of this review. The book…This book was G-O-O-D. From the moment that Ethan is introduced and
up until the moment of his untimely death, I loved his character. Ethan has been in love with Katie for ten
years and even though Katie did not return that love in the way that Ethan
wanted, he waited for her. So sweet,
right? Ethan's last goodbye to Sarah when he was going back overseas was so
emotional. The author wrote this scene
with passion and finesse and I cried like a baby while I was reading it. Usually I do not like to read about death
because it simply kills my moods, but reading about the death of Ethan gave the
story depth and character. I was really sad because I knew that Ethan was going
to die because it was in the blurb. The
author handled his death with grace and emotion and she wrote it so well. I also appreciate that at the beginning of
book, the book's POV jumped from Ethan's to Katie's, but it did not tell the
story from Nick's POV. The author made
it clear that this book was all about Katie and her journey to accept that it
okay to grieve and love again.
The pacing was a
little off for me because the author took a lot of time with Katie's grief. The
other parts of the story's pacing was satisfactory, but Katie's grief was
dragged along. Katie's grieving process
was stretched and the author began to become very repetitive. in the book she is grieving for Ethan and her
way of thinking turns me off. Okay here
is the scenario, after discovering that alcohol numbs her and allows her to see
Ethan alive in her dreams, she becomes an alcoholic. She believes that Ethan is alive and pushes
everyone away. She says that "she
can't take the risk of losing Ethan again." I understand that she was grieving but her
way of thinking makes no sense at all. She
has already lost him in the worst possible way and I just do not know
why the author will use this as an excuse. The fact that their birthdays fall
on the same day was too coincidental for me, but it added that closeness of
their relationship and it also make their relationship that much sweeter. I was
so glad when Nick and Katie's relationship start to bloom because their
relationship was beautiful. I loved Nick
for Katie and he was a good friend to Ethan.
Overall this book was emotional, compelling and definitely a book to add
to your wish list.
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