Seventeen-year-old Amelia Gannon (just “Gannon” to her friends) is invisible to almost everyone in her life. To her parents, to her teachers-even her best friend, who is more interested in bumming cigarettes than bonding. Some days the only way Gannon knows she is real is by carving bloody lines into the flesh of her stomach.
Then she meets Michael Brooks, and for the first time, she feels like she is being seen to the core of her being. Obnoxious, controlling, damaged, and addictive, he inserts himself into her life until all her scars are exposed. Each moment together is a passionate, painful relief.
But as the relationship deepens, Gannon starts to feel as if she’s standing at the foot of a dam about to burst. She’s given up everything and everyone in her life for him, but somehow nothing is enough for Brooks-until he poses the ultimate test.
Bleed Like Me is a piercing, intimate portrayal of the danger of a love so obsessive it becomes its own biggest threat.
I’m a YA author who loves dark contemporary books. Novels include: FAULT LINE (Oct 2013), BLEED LIKE ME (Oct 2014), LOVE BLIND (fall 2015).
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Bleed Like Me by Christa Desir is one of those books that I couldn’t put down. If you have read Fault Line by Desir, you already know that she doesn’t pull any punches and this is especially true in her newest book. I found myself unable to put this down until I finished and while it moves quickly, it is in no way what I would consider a light and easy read but please don’t let that deter you from reading.
Gannon is seventeen and has spent the last five years being invisible. Ever since her parents adopted 3 Guatemalan boys, she has taken a back seat to everything going on in her family and the only way she could ever feel anything was when she was cutting herself. All of this changes the day she meets Brooks. He jumps into her life and slowly takes over everything because he sees past the walls she has put up to everyone around her. Eventually Gannon trades one addiction (cutting) for another (Brooks) and her life blows completely out of control.
I don’t know how she does it but Desir knows exactly how to create these beautifully damaged characters that make me want to crawl into the pages and just hug them until all their problems go away. In the case of these two characters, they become severely co-dependent and create a situation that as a reader, I knew wouldn’t end in a great way. Despite that, I was rooting for them the entire book because they both got dealt a really crappy hand in life and could have used something good to happen to them.
I loved the secondary characters in this story. Dennis and Ricardo were the family that Gannon didn’t really realize she had and they initially were a source of stabilization for her. Despite coming from a family that had a mom and a dad, Gannon never really had parents that had time to focus on her because of the situation with her brothers and I loved that Dennis and Ricardo never really gave up on her.
Ali was another character that made things interesting as I got the feeling she thought she and Gannon were closer friends that perhaps Gannon did…at least at first. She was always pushing Gannon to talk and share information whereas Gannon always held pieces of herself back.
The only people in Brooks’ life were those tied to him through his foster home or through drugs and it became very clear that other than Gannon, he didn’t really have anyone in his life he could lean on. This made it extra hard to see him struggle because his biggest fear was losing Gannon because he wouldn’t be able to make her happy.
As their relationship changes, it is very clear these two are obsessed with each other and it creates a very tenuous situation. I don’t think this book will be for everyone but if you feel like you can handle it, definitely check this one out when you can as it is well worth it. Kudos to Desir for taking several sensitive topics and creating a story that I was unable to put down and even now has me thinking of the characters. While this review probably does the story no justice, take my word for it. You should add this to your to read list if you haven’t already.
Thank you to Edelweiss and Simon Pulse for the review copy.
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