What You Left Behind
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4.8 • 11 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Jessica Verdi, the author of My Life After Now and The Summer I Wasn’t Me, returns with a heartbreaking and poignant novel of grief and guilt that reads like Nicholas Sparks for teens.
It’s all Ryden’s fault. If he hadn’t gotten Meg pregnant, she would have never stopped her chemo treatments and would still be alive. Instead he’s failing fatherhood one dirty diaper at a time. And it’s not like he’s had time to grieve while struggling to care for their infant daughter, start his senior year, and earn the soccer scholarship he needs to go to college.
The one person who makes Ryden feel like his old self is Joni. She’s fun and energetic—and doesn’t know he has a baby. But the more time they spend together, the harder it becomes to keep his two worlds separate. Finding one of Meg’s journals only stirs up old emotions. Ryden’s convinced Meg left other notebooks for him to find, some message to help his new life make sense. But how is he going to have a future if he can’t let go of the past?
“Ryden’s story is a moving illustration of how sometimes you have to let go of the life you planned to embrace the life you’ve been given. A strong, character-driven story that teen readers will love.”—Carrie Arcos, National Book Award Finalist for Out of Reach
Customer Reviews
I love it! 😍
One of the best book I've read, seriously I love it from the begging, super romantic and sweet and mind blowing! I loved to know more about it!
Worth Checking Out
I can appreciate this book. Did I love it? No, but I can appreciate it. The first thing it has going for it is that it's from a guy's perspective--that was really refreshing. I also liked the twist at the end, because it drew the book out of the cliche. I'm not sure how I feel about Ryden's sex drive, though. I mean, I guess that's realistic and everything, but I wish Verdi kept the focus on how he was dealing with being a single dad and all that baggage. He could even have kept the love interest, but I wish Verdi hadn't gone further than that. I mean, being interested in someone else with so much going on was enough drama for me, I didn't care about how he wanted to get laid.
GREAT YA and for adults as well.
I really, really liked this book. It started a little slow to begin with, but it didn't me long to really feel something for the characters in this book. The story seems very genuine and is narrated by a 17 year old boy looking at a future in soccer. Then his girlfriend gets pregnant. She also has pretty advanced cancer. Leaving him without his girlfriend with a baby to raise. He's mad at the world with this new situation, but he's determined to do the right thing. Unfortunately what he really wants to do and what he has to do are two totally different things.
I love all the emotion put into this book and loved the characters. I'm hoping for a sequel so we can find out how Ryden and Hope end up getting along. This one is a GREAT YA book and I even enjoyed it myself. Warning: you may just tear up a few times.
Thanks Sourcebooks and Net Galley for providing me with this free e-galley in exchange for an honest review. I thoroughly enjoyed it.