Review: Watch Over Me by Tara Sivec

My Thoughts

Personal and poignant.
An intimate view into one girl’s heart-breaking journey as she learns to live with loss and searches for a reason to happy again.

• Buy Watch Over Me:  Amazon

Synopsis

Addison Snow is your typical teenager. She has a family that loves her, friends that make her laugh, and she’s wrapped up in the excitement of graduating high school and going off to college to pursue her dream of becoming an author. When her mother, who also happens to be Addison’s best friend, dies unexpectedly, her world comes to a crashing halt.

Death changes everyone…

To make the pain go away, Addison and her father travel down separate, dark paths. She chooses to end her grief forever, while he drowns his sorrows in the bottom of a bottle. How do you learn to live again when the most important person in your life is gone?

Addison struggles to pick up the pieces of her life. Instead of getting back to being the carefree teenager she once was, she’s stuck handling all of the responsibilities that should have been her father’s. She has no time to grieve, no time for emotions, and no time for happiness…until Zander Reinhardt walks in. All it takes is one little handwritten note on a napkin to kick-start her back to life and help her realize that maybe there’s more to that life than pain.

But can it really be that simple? Can she really trust this man who makes her feel alive again for the first time in a year?

Addison and Zander both have secrets they aren’t ready to share. When the truth finally comes out, is it enough to tear them apart or has something bigger than themselves always been watching over them, pushing them together, making sure they both get their happily ever after?

My Review

“Death changes everyone. It changes the way you think, the way you feel, and the way you live your life.”

This was a really poignant read… it felt personal and intimate. To me, it almost felt like I was reading a diary. There were a multitude of emotions poured onto the page… authentic and palpable and really moving. It’s almost a quiet book, but really, it’s more accurately slowly simmering with a rage of intense emotion waiting to erupt just below the surface.

A year after the death of her mother, Addison is a shell… bereft of any real emotion in efforts to bury the pain and survive. She’s closed off and can’t depend on anyone. She misses her mother so much, so deeply that it’s hard for her to breathe.

A senior in high school, Addison should be having fun being a teenager, hanging out with her friends and enjoying her youth… instead, she works at her mother’s bakery — a place she both loves and hates — and watches over her alcoholic father who is in and out of rehab. Both Addison and her father have dealt with the loss differently, but both were crushed when it happened.

“He crumbled when she died. Just…faded away. It was like I lost both parents in one day. It was too much.”

My heart really broke for Addison. She’s been through so much and the sense of loneliness is overwhelming. It’s as if she has a large, gaping hole in her heart that only her mother was able to fill and with pre-conceived thoughts that everyone will let her down, she doesn’t even try to connect with those around her. Her mother was everything to her.

“Most people probably wouldn’t understand the bond my mother and I shared. Daughters typically hat their mothers through most of their teenage years and sometimes into early adulthood, but I never did. Maybe it was because I was her only child, or maybe it was because it was so difficult for her to get pregnant with me. Whatever the reason, we had a relationship that many envied. Our bond was forged through years of it just being the two of us.”

One day, however, she finally takes notice of a good-looking guy that has been coming into the bakery for coffee for weeks. He starts leaving her notes on napkins in efforts to make her smile. Her defenses are up and she pushes him away, but his thoughtfulness and dimply smile wear her down. kind of 🙂

Addison has been seeing a therapist, who reminds her so much of her mother, but who encourages her to live, to be strong, to take chances. And with Zander in her life, Addison finally begins to let herself feel and be vulnerable again. But with the pain from her mother’s loss, her choices, her father’s choices and the hurt she feels, well, it’s almost too much for Addison. How does she begin to pick up all the pieces?

As Zander shows her day after day the love he feels for her, the fog slowly begins to lift. Zander is amazing. He’s so in tune with her feeling and needs… he’s affectionate and loving and incredibly supportive. I just loved him! Their connection is eerily strong and grows quickly.

There are twists in the story that I don’t want to allude to in anyway, but ultimately, this is a moving story about a girl trying to deal with a large amount of tragedy and pain, finding strength within herself to live again. It’s about love, loss, forgiveness and courage.  Watch Over Me is captivating story that I read in almost one sitting. There’s an especially touching part at the end that had me in tears! It’s a beautiful story and I definitely recommend you pick this one up! And it does have a HEA! ♥

“It’s the bumps and the bruises, the pain and the fear; it’s messy and it’s real and it’s not some perfect little story that can be tied up in a bow.”

About Tara

T.E. Sivec is the pen name for Tara Sivec. Under T.E. Sivec, she delves into a more serious genre that is her absolute favorite to read ­ romantic suspense. She loves reading a book and feeling her heart speed up with anticipation and wanted to be able to give that feeling to her fans.
T.E. lives in Ohio with her husband and two children, living the dream of being a full­-time writer.

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