Surviving Haley by Brenda Baker

Title: Surviving Haley
Author: Brenda Baker
Page length: 204 (kindle edition)
Date published: Nov 2015
Publisher: Pelican Book Group
Source: Netgalley
My rating: 2.5 stars out of 5


Summary (from Goodreads):

Lauren Werthman struggles with guilt and depression. Even moving to another state and into a new home doesn't help her overcome the life-altering aftermath of losing her sister. Memories of the tragic accident reverberate through her life as her family tries to cope, but Lauren's life spirals out of control. Her mother criticizes her choices every day, her father continues to work later and later, and people at her new school seem to know the family secret. Lauren binge-eats, has nightmares, and doubts the existence of a God Who didn't intervene to prevent the senseless tragedy. As Lauren's family and friends work through the pain and guilt, will they find that even though the void will always remain, the power of forgiveness brings peace and hope and a bright future, or will Lauren forever be lost to the pain and guilt?


This book is a quick and easy read. I finished it within a day. Surprisingly, this book hooked me. I started reading and couldn't stop. There is just something about a book that centers around grief and loss that captivates me. I don't wish the death of a loved one on anyone but the raw emotions that come from it are so heartbreaking that it wraps me in as the reader. Surviving Haley is one of those books. It kept me interested long enough to finish the book. If it weren't for the depressing aspects of this book I don't think I would have finished it.

Several reasons why:

• The main character, Lauren. Lauren is a ninth grade girl who just lost her five-year-old sister two  months ago. She's moved to a different state with her parents in order to escape the memories. Even so, the pain isn't so easily shaken. Lauren has a lot of issues to deal with. She binge-eats chocolate. If she feels stressed, she goes to chocolate for comfort. She can't be near swimming pools, blames herself for her sisters death, and she hates God. All of these are valid problems that can occur after losing a loved one. This I was okay with. But what I wasn't okay with? The way she acted. She was just so rude to every one. She treated everyone as if she had a chip on her shoulder. She would blow up on someone for no real reason at all. Maybe this is supposed to show the torment inside of a person when dealing with grief but I just didn't see it that way. Losing someone you love does not give you the right to treat everyone else like a pile of crap. Lauren was constantly freaking out on someone that was just trying to help her and it got old, people. There's a time when I stop sympathizing for someone and that's when they hurt others. 

• The characters. I literally did not care about any of these characters or find them even remotely interesting besides Lauren's mom. Lauren makes a few friends and enemies at her new high school and they should play a big part in this book. I think this is what the author was aiming for. However, the supporting characters were dull and had no sense of personality. We've got Jazz, the book smart but also quiet soccer player, Jonah (I think that's his name LOL), the repenting Christian, Lauren's dad, who is struggling to keep his marriage alive, Lauren's mom, who barely talks to Lauren and spends all of her time drinking, and Tiffany, the popular girl with an attitude and an eating disorder. All of these characters should be awesome, right? They should have intricate personalities and character growth. Heck, they should at least have some kind of importance to the plot and the main character. But honestly? Not so much. Besides Lauren's mom, all of them were plot fillers.

• The romance. It was awful. I'm talking cringe-worthy awful. Obviously God-hating Lauren falls "in love" with God-loving Jonah. This is a match made in heaven, right? (No pun intended) I put 'in love' in quotation marks because their relationship is claimed as love but couldn't be further from the truth. Lauren spends 90% of the book treating Jonah awfully and then magically falls head over heels for him at the end. Ooooookay. What makes me mad is that Jonah takes this crap from Lauren over and over again. We all get it that she has a troubled past and needs help but there comes a time when you just gotta cut loose from someone. I don't understand why Jonah kept trying to get with her. And he obviously doesn't know how to be patient with people because you don't just go up to a person who lives without Christ and say, "God will forgive you because he loves you". Religion is something that must be gradually taken into account and not forced upon anyone. Jonah immediately starts speaking about God right when he meets Lauren. That's just something you shouldn't do, in my opinion. Give a person time to come around before preaching to someone else. You don't know a person's background or what they've been through. Preaching any kind of religion without knowing a person could offend. That's just my two cents. Anyways, Jonah continued to do this over and over again, knowing how Lauren feels about God at the moment. So they fight and fight and fight. They go on like this for 75% of the book. It got tedious. By then I didn't care about their relationship or whether they got together or didn't.

• The writing style. Baker's style felt choppy and immature. As Surviving Haley is her debut, I expect her to grow as she gains more experience. The writing wasn't awful, it just didn't flow very well at times. 

Now that I've listed all of the things that I didn't like, I feel like I should explain why I gave this two and a half stars versus one star. Like I said before, I like reading about books laced with grief and loss. This is no exception. I loved the heartbreaking truthfulness that was held within this book. It was raw, powerful, and tragic. It held my attention. I also enjoyed the relationship between Lauren and her mother and her mother herself. The relationship was strained, rocky, and sad. After Haley's passing, the mom just shuts down. She barely speaks to Lauren and when she does it's just to criticize. She neglects Lauren. She neglects her marriage. She uses alcohol as a coping device for the passing over her youngest daughter. This puts more strain on the already-stressed family. It was captivating to read about their relationship and how it progresses. It was the only relationship that I cared about. Hence the reasoning behind my 2.5 star rating. 

Overall thoughts: The overall theme was beautifully tragic and interesting to read about. The lack of personality in the characters and awful romance was what did it in for me. 

What did you think of Surviving Haley? Comment below!

Until next time,