Review: The Half Life of Molly Pierce

 

The Half Life of Molly Pierce
Author:  Katrina Leno 

Publication Date:  July 8th 2014    
Publisher: Harper Teen
~A copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review~

You take it for granted. Waking up. Going to school, talking to your friends. Watching a show on television or reading a book or going out to lunch.

You take for granted going to sleep at night, getting up the next day, and remembering everything that happened to you before you closed your eyes.

You live and you remember.

Me, I live and I forget.

But now—now I am remembering.

For all of her seventeen years, Molly feels like she’s missed bits and pieces of her life. Now, she’s figuring out why. Now, she’s remembering her own secrets. And in doing so, Molly uncovers the separate life she seems to have led…and the love that she can’t let go.

The Half Life of Molly Pierce is a suspenseful, evocative psychological mystery about uncovering the secrets of our pasts, facing the unknowns of our futures, and accepting our whole selves.

 

 

It took me a while to write this, after finishing the novel I waited because I wanted it to sink in properly, I didn't even write notes and I still don't know what to say about it. It's always like that, those books that mean something. I felt like this after reading We Were Liars and I have the same feeling now with The Half Life of Molly Pierce, it's so different and out there and I want to keep it to myself while simultaneously wanting everybody to read it.

The Half Life of Molly Pierce is a special book. It's honest, and unique and it's stretching the bounds of YA. By the synopsis and title, if you know anything about the disorder, what it's about is pretty obvious, and it's the reason I wanted to read it. And though The Half Life of Molly Pierce doesn't pave the usual road to that disorder, what follows through the same. I'd love to go into it because it's something I've been researching about for the past two years, but spoilers.

The psychology behind it though is just one of the best things about it,  and in The Half Life of Molly Pierce, it's subtle, it's not overly obvious because the story is the symptoms, the outcome, the psychology parts are exactly what you're reading, whether you know it or not. Which is great, because Molly's story is not clogged down by the terminology and it's not lagged down by information. It's an account. And it's a heart-breaking one. And as she starts discovering and remembering, you can feel her life unravelling around her, we learn with her and see what she see's and how everything comes across with the people she meets. She starts discovering a different life. I loved Molly, and maybe though not everyone will relate to her- I related to her, and a lot of other  people will relate to her too because it's something we don't talk a lot about to people. But, you can recognise it.

Like I said earlier, the path isn't exactly the traditional one with how it usually happens, but it's open up to interpretation, and it doesn't have to be something physical that causes it. It's an end of a pressure point and it's your brains way of coping- especially when you're young. Whether you know it or not.  I would've loved a little bit more of reason, or explored the reason a little more, but as it was slowly revealed and we get those bits and pieces that tie the story up nicely, you can understand it.  And while I would've liked that little more, I did love it the way it was, too.

The interactions between the other characters too, was interesting in how they got around Molly, to help her, to let her come to the conclusion herself, and Molly didn't quite understand at the time, but nobody meant to hurt her, they had their own part to play. Sayer more than others, and you guys, Sayer. I want a Sayer okay? I want a Sayer.

The Half Life of Molly Pierce is an emotional and effective story about two different lives and their connection to one another.  I didn't expect it to get to me so much, but it's such a beautiful and heart-breaking account, but by the end of it, you do get some sort of closure over it.

 

 Rating: 5/5

 

 

 

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