Before I Let Go Book review

I wasn’t quite sure which book to do this about at first. I tend to find one author that I enjoy and I read any books that they might have that sound interesting. Deciding what type of genre I want to read is also difficult for me; there are so many different books that I like to read and write. One genre I always wanted to read was a mystery, specifically with some sort of death tied into it. I found that in Before I let go by Marieke Nijkamp. This book is the second book of this author, and I haven’t read any of her other books that are out now. This book came out in 2018 and is a story of a girl who loses her best friend days before she was supposed to go visit her. The mystery behind what happened to her friend combined with flashbacks and the main character coming back to her hometown with a not-so-great welcoming party made it a must-read for me. I’ve always found the mystery elements to be very interesting in a story and my hope for this book is to inspire me to add a little bit of that mystery into my stories. 

A few years back, I was looking for something new to read. I came across Marieke Nijkamp and one of the books that she had written at the time. Now after a few years, she has two books out and two more books coming out in September, on top of that she also wrote a graphic novel for DC Comics. I was very excited to get a chance to read something from her. She was originally from the Netherlands, and her works some to pretty go seeing as her first two books have been on the 1# New York bestseller. One thing that I originally loved about this writer was that she is part of the LGBT+ community, and tends to have characters in her books that showcase different sexualities and gender identities accurately. On top of that, she is also the editor of Unbroken, an anthology of 13 stories starring disabled teens, written by disabled authors. Overall, this author seemed to have a lot of knowledge about different types of perspectives having been part of writing books related to some of the same themes in this book, even if she doesn’t relate to all of them personally.

The story itself of Before I let go is what originally interested me. The summary talked about how this girl, Corey, had moved away from her small town in Lost Creek, Alaska. In this town, she left behind memories, family, and her best friend Kyra. her relationship with the town and her best friend had always been good, at least she thought it was. Days before heading back to the town to see Kyra, she gets a call from her mother saying that Kyra had drowned herself in the lake next to their town. Within the first few chapters, you discover that her childhood friend would always have manic episodes and was diagnosed with bipolar. They live in a small town and once everyone found out, they began to treat her friend differently. Going to her old town, she was surprised to see how much things had changed, all the townspeople who once accepted her and hated her friend had done a complete one-eighty and treated her like an outsider instead. What confuses Corey, even more, is the timing of her friend’s death, they had always promised to wait for each other. This combined with the fact she keeps seeing what she believes to be her friend’s ghost, she starts to feel like the secrets in this town are dangerous. 

For her other book, This Is Where It Ends, she notes on her website that “For every hour I spent writing, I spent another (at least) researching.”. For that book, she had to look through news stories and social media for research regarding the main plot of that book, school shootings. Now there isn’t anything about the research she did for Before I Let go, but I can tell that there was a great deal of research involved in the writing for it. The main two characters live in a small town in Alaska and while the author was born in the Netherlands, she does note that she likes to travel for some of her research now. On top of that, the secondary character, Kyra whose death is what the main plot is about, has bipolar and depression disorder. In the book, there are plenty of flashback moments with Corey and Kyra together and Corey speaks of the manic episodes that her friend keeps having and how that is affecting both of them and their relationship with each other and the town they live in. while there is a possibility that she could be speaking through experience, as most authors that I’ve noticed that tend to write about this type of subject have some personal experiences with mental illness. I think another way to get research is to ask people who have had experience with those disorders and feelings for more accurate writing about it. She is very active on Twitter and I can tell that maybe she found some of that information from people on there. Nevertheless, I feel like a big part of her writing this book needed research to keep it accurate. 

One thing that I noticed throughout the book, and when I looked up the reviews for the book people had always said this, is the switching back and forth between the present day for Corey and two years ago or 9 months ago. It happened quite often in the book, mainly for what I can tell, for the reader to get to know Corey and her friend Kyra which story is about her death. Many reviews said that they didn’t enjoy this part of the book, they felt there were too many times where this happened in the book. In my opinion, this part worked somewhat for the story, it gave the readers a chance to get to know this other character, Kyra, even though she is dead through most of the story. It also helped to define and understand where the main character, Corey, was coming from and how close she was to Kyra to see why her death affected Corey so much. However, there were several times while reading this book that I felt that these parts needed to be in different parts of the book that they were placed in. Not that they shouldn’t have been in the book, but the author should have written it differently for a different part of the book. 

Most of the book is in Corey’s POV, which wasn’t something that I was expecting from a mystery novel. It made the description of each scene fit more with the mood of the book. Everything being told is through Corey's POV, so everything is how she sees things. We don’t get to see, as the reader, what other people in the story notice or feel about the scene. There were only a few times in the book where the POV switches to being a third party perspective, these parts seem to be written like a script for a play of a tv show. It only happens a few times at the end of the book, but it was a  fascinating choice to suddenly switch to that. I feel that these parts weren’t completely necessary to have. For example, the first time it happened was during the memorial service for her friend, Kyra. It completely took the reader out of the perspective of Corey’s mind during this part, which I wasn’t a fan of. The story up until this point had almost been leading up to this memorial service, seeing how the townspeople would be reacting to the death of this girl, and how Corey would be feeling towards the people of the town for treating her friend so badly for most of her life. I think having taken away this importance by adding from a different perspective during a significant part that I as the reader was looking forward to wasn’t given the chance to read the main character. It took me out of the experience of reading. 

One of the things I enjoyed about reading this book was the mystery behind it. While reading it, I was coming up with different ideas of what exactly happened to her friend. It was what was keeping me engaged with the story and wanting to continue reading it. There were different parts in the story that just adding on to the story, like how she kept seeing the ghost of her friend or how some of the characters would say something that made it seem like her friend might have been murder. All of these questions were somewhat answered while also leaving other parts of the story out in the open. I felt like it was a mix for a mystery. I don’t plan on writing a story about a mysterious death; I would like to be able to have some things left out in the open. However, parts of me didn’t entirely like how this book ended, it felt like it was missing something extra. So my hopes with my own story are to have a perfect amount of answered questions to the mystery and some that are left to wonder what might have happened. 

Overall, this book wasn’t a bad read. Some parts made it not as enjoyable as I would have liked. The pacing seemed a bit off and the jumping for different POVs was out of the blue and was unnecessary. However, I could tell that the author put a great deal of emphasis on the representation of mental health and the LGBT+ community. On top of that, the story had a clear mystery vibe that the author was going with that worked well for the plot and the characters. As this was Marieke Nijkamp’s second published book; I can understand how some of these mistakes might have happened, and she continues to write for stories that will be coming out soon. I’ll keep a lookout for one that piques my interest. It would be interesting to see how much her writing style might change just with a couple more examples of writing.