You won't like me.
I am not the nice girl. I am not your friend.
I don't care about you, but most of all, I don't care about me.
Go ahead, hate me.
We all have secrets.
I have them as well—dark, terrible secrets.
The only time I can breathe is when I forget.
I need to be numb. You don't want to know how.
But as long as I can breathe, the past cannot smother me.
Review
Smother is not what I expected it to be. And at the same time, it was.
We were warned beforehand that we wouldn't like Reese at the beginning, but I strangely did not dislike her. I felt pity and sympathy for her, but I didn't hate or dislike her. I don't have a specific reason, except that everyone deals with pain differently. And I don't mean to sound corny or cheesy, but that's what Reese was in. Pain. Pain from a horrendous past that haunts her every waking moment. And even those moments when she isn't awake. I can't hate someone for being in emotional pain, or any kind of pain.
Leo was an enigma. I empathized with Reese in this case because he was one tough guy to read and figure out. I related a lot to how Reese felt, always trying to see what his thoughts are because Leo is like a changing combination safe. You may get the combination right one time and get him to open up, but when you go to try the same combination again, you find it's been changed and have to try to figure it out again. That's my description of Leo.
I think Reese is someone who pretends to be strong and tough to keep people from finding out how fragile and broken she is. But she is also a fighter, and we see her fix herself all on her own. Smother is different from other stories involving abuse because we see the dark, dirty, and gritty aspects of the effects of abuse that are not present in other books I've read dealing with the subject. We see Reese in the downward spiral she is in, and then we see her redeem herself so she can live her life, and not just go through life merely existing.
Lindy totally outdid herself with this one. Her style of writing sucks you in until you can't help but love the characters you read about. Smother gets all 5/5 Platypires.