The Ghosts We Keep - Mason Deaver (Blog Tour & Review)

Date of Reading: 30/05/2021

Author: Mason Deaver

Publisher: Scholastic

Publication Date: June 1, 2021

Source: Edelweiss+

Rating: 5/5

(This review is part of the blog tour organised by Hear Our Voices Book Tours)

About the book:

Perfect for fans of Adam Silvera and Becky Albertalli, this book will rip your heart out before showing you how to heal from tragedy and celebrate life in the process.

When Liam Cooper's older brother Ethan is killed in a hit-and-run, Liam has to not only learn to face the world without one of the people he loved the most, but also face the fading relationship with their two best friends.

Feeling more alone and isolated than ever, Liam finds themself sharing time with Marcus, Ethan's best friend, and through Marcus, Liam finds the one person that seems to know exactly what they're going through, for the better and the worse.

This book is about grief. But it's also about why we live. Why we have to keep moving on, and why we should.

Review:

        After reading 'I Wish You All the Best', I was as anxious as the author about this latest release. Will this live up to the fame garnered by the first one or become a disappointment? Well, I found mixed reviews on this, but for me, this was even better than the former work.

        There is no plot as such to speak of. This is more or less a record of how Liam and their family cope with the grief of losing the eldest son of the family. A word of warning, Liam is not an easy character to like. As the book asserts, grief can always make you do complicated, messy and ugly things and considering Liam's age, it does create a lot of complications. They lash against the parents, withdraw from friends and practically shuts the whole world off and drowns in grief. I won't blame them.

            Part of this reaction comes from a feeling of guilt, thinking of the time lost and gone forever. Along with that comes the burden of the only son left now, the one who needs to take the vacant position of the family's golden son. They don't have anyone to turn to, neither can they acknowledge that they need professional help.

        Yes, it's a total mess. As expected of Mason Deaver, the words are honest and raw and each page adds another spear to your heart. There are no miracles or surprises, but the book delivers what is intended just like a teacher who doesn't have to raise his voice to keep the class in control. I was glad it didn't pursue Marcus' point of view. That would have broken me completely.

Favourite quotes:

"I didn't know how I was feeling; I couldn't feel anything except numbness. Simple, reliable concepts like time moving forward, or even the space around me, didn't feel real. It felt more like a dream that I'd wake up from soon"

"Because grief is a complicated, ugly, messy thing. And it makes you do complicated, ugly, messy things"

"Sometimes poetry is more about the feeling the words give you, the emotion, the placement, and not necessarily the words themselves"

"What I wanted was to disappear. To blink out of existence, to be forgotten by everyone who ever knew me. I didn't want to be here anymore, to have to think, to have to feel. What was the point anyway? The older I got, the more people would vanish"

"I'd still love him, whether he was here or not. Because he'd always be here with me, no matter what happened. He was a ghost I'd keep with me for the rest of my life"

Meet the author:

Born and raised in a small North Carolina town, Mason Deaver is an award-nominated, bestselling author and designer living in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Besides writing, they’re an active fan of horror movies and video games. As you can see from the photo above, they’re a big fan of plants as well.