Romie's Reviews > Solitaire

Just because someone smiles doesn’t mean that they’re happy.

This isn’t a book about happy people. I don’t even think this book was made for happy people, they would dislike it, say everything inside this book is utter bullshit. But it isn’t. It’s the absolute truth.

This book broke me, I think I’m reading it at the exact right moment in my life. 16-year-old me wouldn’t have liked it all that much, she would have sympathised with the characters, but she wouldn’t have understood them like 21-year-old me did.

This is the story of sad & introvert Tori Spring. Nothing about being sad or introvert is wrong. That’s just the way she is. And yet people judge her for being like this. This say she doesn’t try enough to make friends, or to care about anything, and maybe it’s true, it probably is, but they’re not her. They don’t understand what’s going on inside her head. They don’t know how much she actually cares about her brother Charlie, the best person in the entire world, or how the things that happened to him broke her because he’s her little brother and nothing bad should happen to him. They don’t know that she’s sad 95% of the time but can do nothing about it because this isn’t just her deciding to be sad, this is her experiencing her life. Tori Spring was born in a world in which you should smile all the time and answer ‘I’m fine’ to every ‘How are you?’ Tori Spring was born into an extrovert and fake happy world, but why should she bend to the world’s will and be like that as well? This isn’t her.

One day she meets angry boy Michael Holden. Angry at the world for expecting him to be someone he’s not. Angry at people for thinking him weird and not worthy of their attention and respect when he’s just being himself. Angry all the time. But hiding it. Hiding it because people would judge him even more, they would make him feel even more lonely than he is now. Michael Holden is the softest boy you will ever meet. He’s angry but that doesn’t he isn’t trying to make Tori happy, really happy, not fake. He’s not trying to save her, she doesn’t need to be saved, she needs to see she’s not alone in this world, that people like her exist. Michael Holden doesn’t want to save her, and he doesn’t need to be saved either. They just both need someone to help them. And their this person for each other.

Ultimately this is a book about family and friendship. The family dynamic between the Spring siblings is one of the best I’ve read about. They’re a bunch of precious human beings who deserve for good things to happen to them. They’re trying to make their way through this world the best way they can, sometimes they fail, but they got each other to help them get up when they fall.

This book isn’t perfect, but it was perfectly real, and I needed it.

There comes a point, though, when you can’t keep looking after other people any more. You have to start looking after yourself.

4.75