Review: Faithful by Alice Hoffman

Title: Faithful

Author: Alice Hoffman

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Publication date: November 2016

Stars: 5

Where to buy: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Indie Bound

Summary: Growing up on Long Island, Shelby Richmond is an ordinary girl until one night an extraordinary tragedy changes her fate. Her best friend’s future is destroyed in an accident, while Shelby walks away with the burden of guilt.

What happens when a life is turned inside out? When love is something so distant it may as well be a star in the sky? Faithful is the story of a survivor, filled with emotion—from dark suffering to true happiness—a moving portrait of a young woman finding her way in the modern world. A fan of Chinese food, dogs, bookstores, and men she should stay away from, Shelby has to fight her way back to her own future. In New York City she finds a circle of lost and found souls—including an angel who’s been watching over her ever since that fateful icy night.
Here is a character you will fall in love with, so believable and real and endearing, that she captures both the ache of loneliness and the joy of finding yourself at last. For anyone who’s ever been a hurt teenager, for every mother of a daughter who has lost her way,Faithful is a roadmap.

Review: I started this book because a friend of mine had been killed recently. I am having a hard time dealing with that. So I thought maybe this might help me. I will say I absolutely love the story. I love Shelby. I love who she becomes and that she is slowly learning to love things even though she doesn’t realize it at first. She is slowly releasing herself to be able to be happy once more. What I don’t like is how the time is set up in this story. Like at one point it goes we’ve been dating for 4 years. Wait, how like three chapters previously you were 18 and just started dating. I wish that the time had been placed a little better. I would like to be able to associate her age with the events that are happening at the time. That is the one thing I don’t like about this story. I love her love of dogs. Her need to rescue them. To shelter them. Then her mother. She is lucky to have such a supportive loving force in her life. Honestly this is a really great story! I am happy I chose to read it! Best decision of my life. I am torn between wanting to see how it ends and to not let it end! Back to the point of the time frame. The upside to that is we are getting a large part of her life after the accident. I love that. In a lot of books you get that where you feel unsatisfied. Where you want to know what happens in their life. You don't need to want you get it. All the heart ache she continues to go through. All of the things that continue to make her a stronger woman.