Skylight Confessions by Alice Hoffman

I finished this one very quickly. I was pulled into the story so read my review and find out why. :)

The journey of the book starts with Arlyn after she loses her father. She decides that the next man who comes to her house is the one she is supposed to marry. John Moody enters the scene but then leaves her three days later. She tracks him down and so starts their life together. They have a son Sam and then later on she gives birth to a daughter she names Blanca. They all go through a rough patch and Sam and Blanca are left wondering what will happen next. Sam and Blanca wonder if they will be okay.

Alice Hoffman writes with so much emotion you are left feeling along with the characters. There is despair with no hope in sight. Struggles made are seldom overcome and life is just plain hard. But hope is there in the shadows trying to make its way out. She has a style like I have never seen with pictures painted with words on every page so it seems you are right there watching it unfold in front of you. She writes believable stories because in this day and age anything is possible.

I felt the most for Sam, he had to watch his world fall all around him. And then he was willing to use anything to help him forget the pain. He didn’t care about the consequences because the pain he had was too much to bear. His sister Blanca tried to help him but she only got so far. She was willing to be around him no matter what his behavior was since she was trying to find some normalcy in her world. She even disobeyed her father and went to go visit Same while he was in rehab. He was that important to her. She felt so much but it was too much at times.

This book impacted me a lot because my family has had an estrangement with my brother. I really could relate to Blanca in that aspect. I did escape at times but I always came back. The last paragraph in the front cover really explains the book well. “Here is a family so real , so tragic, so devoted, it is as if they have written their own riveting history---a quest for love and truth. Glass breaks, love hurts, and families make their own rules. No one who reads this book will ever forget it or look at their own family in quite the same way. Skylight Confessions is a luminous and elegant work of true originality.”

I give this book a 5/5 because it not only touched my heart but it grabbed at my soul. It was almost scary at times how much I related to this book. My life is at times a little different than it but the relationship between the brother and sister was very real to me. I recommend this book because it is so well written and it is a book that will have an impact on you for a long time. I know it will for me.

Well now onto a short story to review called If we Listened by Jenn Bailey-Burke. :) Then the next one which I will probably start after that will be The Book of Fate by Brad Meltzer.