*based on an ARC edition
I have to admit that when I got this ARC I mistakenly thought it was another author who wrote it; I was wrong, but after reading And We Stay I have become a faithful fan for life of Ms. Hubbard's. The copy for the book was slightly misleading, as was the dedication (in my opinion), as I thought it was about a girlfriend who survived after her boyfriend shot up their school- similar to the story in Hate List by Jennifer Brown. As this subject has been done before, I was pleasantly surprised by And We Stay. While the protagonist's boyfriend did in fact bring a gun into school there was so much more to the story than just that fact, and it was illustrated beautifully. It was about one moment, and another moment, and another moment...all of which contained a crossroad, and all of which turned the wrong way, which culminated in one last horrific moment. Emily Beam is sent to an all-girl's school (after her boyfriend commits suicide in their high school library) which at one time had educated Emily Dickinson. Our Emily is a poet and throughout the novel we can experience what she experiences by way of the beautiful poems that buttress the prose. And it is these poems that are the highlight of the book; while there is nothing I can find fault with in this book, it is the poems that will stay with me for a very long time. Typically I shelve my ARCs and may not visit them again, but with And We Stay I know I will go back again and again.
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