Confession – I don’t read anymore. Not physical books, not even e-books. My latest obsession is audio books. I know, I know – I used to scoff and make fun of people who listen to audio books – “that’s cheating! You call that reading?!” And yet – here I am. I listen to books and craft – that’s my thing, for now, at least. And I have to admit – listening to a book being read adds a whole new dimension to reading.
But I digress.
Kindergarten teacher Lily Gallo is a happily married mother of three who considers her life perfect… until the day she’s brutally assaulted while out on a run. When the town’s high school football hero is arrested for the attack, Lily’s family suffers retaliation from local sports fans.
Recovering from her injuries, Lily wraps herself in an opioid cloud. Later, a barely avoided tragedy motivates her to flush the narcotics. But her return to sobriety is overshadowed by unnerving memory lapses and her husband’s growing mistrust.
As unremembered events become more disturbing, Lily is convinced that she’s being stalked. Though her attacker started the destruction of her life, someone else is determined to finish it.
A Life Unraveled by Jill Hannah Anderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Story Recap
Lily was out for a run, on a trail that she used every day, and ran by a person she saw nearly every time she ran. Yet, for some reason, out of the blue, this person brutally attacked her and left her for dead. Fortunately, a couple, walking their police dog, with a nose trained to find people, sniffed her out and she was rescued.
She was pretty beat up: a broken jaw, a brain bleed so they had to shave her head in order to do surgery, broken fingers, leg and ribs. She was nearly unrecognizable.
She wasn’t only physically beaten, she was also emotionally damaged.
The road to recovery was long and tedious.
To compensate for her physical pain and the mental flashbacks and panic attacks, Lily starts relying more and more on pain killers. It soon becomes a problem and she’s hiding medication around the house to hide the fact that she has developed a problem to her family.
Months go by and Lily starts to lose track of time and her memory is spotty. When her behavior starts to endanger her family, it serves as a wake-up call that she has a problem and needs help.
Her “perfect” relationship with her husband is strained and their bond starts to unravel.
In the meantime, the person who attacked her is eventually identified and sent to jail. But his sentence is light and he is soon released one year after the attack. Lily has gotten control of her opioid addiction by the time her attacker is released, or so she thinks, as strange things continue to happen to her. Even though Lily is fairly sure she isn’t taking medication anymore, her behavior is so odd and uncharacteristic that she doubts herself and her family doesn’t trust her.
When tragedy again strikes her family, her husband finally believes her about not taking medication and instead realizes that something strange is happening to them. Lily and her husband join forces and together, they try and piece together what is happening.
My Thoughts
This story was told in first person. I’m not the biggest fan of first person – I get bored being in one person’s head all the time. And this story was no exception. Even though it was important to the story that the reader KNOW and FEEL what Lily was going through, how she slowly lost control of herself and then fought to find herself again, only to struggle with possibly losing herself again, I would have liked to be inside her husband’s head to get his perspective on Lily’s behavior. I found myself getting a little bored and impatient with Lily and just wanted her to snap out of it, stop being such a wuss, though I’ll be fair and give the author credit for taking me to the very edge of frustration only to pull me back from the brink. It’s like the author knew she was pushing her readers’ patience and decided she needed to inject some strength back into her character to keep her readers from giving up on her.
I wanted to get inside the husband’s head because their relationship was strong and his love and trust in her took quite a beating – it rocked their foundation. I appreciated reading about a normal couple with strong love ties to one another not only weathering the chaos but working together and coming through the ordeal even stronger. It was refreshing to see a couple that works together instead of against each other.
I knew, about 2/3 through the book how it would end. It wasn’t super obvious but there were a few times I felt the author let the cat out of the bag a little too soon. Though I knew what was happening and who was responsible for it, I ultimately didn’t see who the actual “bad” person was, so that was as surprise.
I also really enjoyed the tug o’ war relationship between Lily and her teenage daughter. I thought that relationship was beautifully written and pretty realistic.
I didn’t roll my eyes once.
The relationship between Lily and her brother was interesting and it felt a little out-of-place in the story overall. That side story felt almost like an afterthought. I think the reason the author chose to include the brother/sister relationship in the story was to inject some humility into Lily when it came to judging people who develop addictions. Her brother started drinking shortly before he graduated from high school and that splintered her family. She never knew why her brother started drinking but she harshly judged him and in fact, they were estranged for ten years. It took her addiction to pain meds to force her to understand that addiction happens for a variety of reasons and that people who have addiction need help, not shunned. Her understanding eventually healed their relationship.
Goodreads Comments
This book was my first by this writer, and l really have mixed feelings about it. The beginning was good as was the end, but the middle was painfully long. In fact, so much was jammed into the end that it felt rushed.
I have to agree – the middle did drag. That’s why I think the brother/sister aspect of the story came into play – the author needed something more to fill the pages – Lily’s emotional self-exploration and self-centered attitude got old, fast.
Entertaining, but would have benefited from more development of the relationship between the characters. Some were so nondescript I needed to go back to remember where they were first introduced.
Agreed! In fact, when the villain of the story was revealed, I didn’t even remember who it was or what sort of relationship this person had with Lily. I think it might have worked better if the author had taken out the brother/sister part of this story and had flushed out her relationship with the villain more – I think it would have made the reveal more impactful.
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