The lovely young lady gets raped by the best friend of his brother. Thirteen years old. How a brief period of time—just five minutes—can completely alter your personality and transform you into someone you never would have imagined becoming. I can hear him breathing on the other side of the door,breathing oddly,like,unevenly. But,no,it's not him just breathing,I realize slowly. He's crying. And I kneel there on the other side of the door that might as well be the other side of the galaxy,feeling so empty,so dead inside.”

just like josh, mara definitely did her best. there were times that i wish she would just notice that eden was struggling and ask her about it. overall though, i thought she was a really supportive friend.i loved reading this book. even after putting it down after the first chapter i couldn't help myself but think about continuing. and so it went on: i woke up in the morning and basically flew to this book. 🙃 But even though the writing was clearly heartfelt, it ended up being a double-edged sword. Eden was a very frustrating character, to say the least. She was extremely difficult to like and very easy to dislike. The way she talked to others, the way she treated the people who genuinely cared about her, her attitude in general, rankled me and got on my nerves several times. The book became a little repetitive - something happens and it triggers Eden, she lashes out at the people around her, they try to ask what's wrong and she shuts them out. And then goes into an even bigger spiral of self-hatred because she can't bring herself to say anything about why she's not okay. And this went on for at least 90% of the book. It wasn't an easy feat to stomach Eden's character for that long, because to put it quite frankly - she was a bitch to everyone she knew, even her own best friend. The fact that Eden’s story was told in four parts—one for each year of high school—allowed the reader to see that nothing goes away. Trauma and pain and anger and regret and sadness don’t just retreat to be buried by other feelings. They simmer right under the surface like a second pulse. What happened to Eden doesn’t fade as she gets older. It takes on new shapes, ones with sharp edges, ones that cut and flay and destroy any sense of confidence she might have had. I'm mad. Really mad. The book is Eden's downward spiral into a girl who sleeps around trying to forget the trauma of her rape and replace that touch with someone else's touch. I have no problems with that and I am 100% there for Eden as someone who has been the victim of a sexual crime (mine was abuse instead of assault, though). I know how hard it can be in the aftermath of your brother's best friend violating you. It's hard to tell anyone, especially your family because they love him so much. Never once did I dislike Eden and I still want to take her to my bosom and make everything better for her. She's why the book gets one star instead of no stars at all.

As the novel continues through Eden’s 4 years of high school, it subtly (and not so subtly) shows how the rape changed her forever. Now, obviously, anyone would be a different person after such a traumatic event. That being said, it doesn’t mean I have to like the changed person afterwards. My example being: Eden. I thought she was fine in the beginning, but the person she turned into was terrible and heartbreaking. I didn’t like her at all. Not only that, but alongside her terrible character, I noticed that some of the chapters were not nearly as good as the others—noticeably so. I feel as if the best way to describe this book is the unforgettable experience I had listening to the last 3 hours of the audiobook at 1:30 in the morning in the pitch dark while bawling my eyes out and completely unable to breathe. It was THAT amazing.

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By the time I get out of the shower—still dirty, after scrubbing my body raw, thinking I could maybe wash the bruises off—there he is. Sitting at my kitchen table in my dining room with my brother, my father, my mother, sipping my orange juice from my glass—his mouth on a glass I would have to use someday. On a fork that would soon be undifferentiated from all the other forks. His fingerprints not only all over every inch of me, but all over everything: this house, my life, the world—infected with him.

Joshua!!!! He is too good for her. TOO GOOD. When he entered her life, I had some hope that she might tell him something cz how he did actually opened to her and everything. She claims to be that "Heartless bitch" but she actually did him filthy and dirty. She literally uses that phrase in a very incorrect manner; I did not wanted her to unintentionally do harm to others. Even with those qualms, I still appreciated what this story had to offer. I still think this is a narrative worth perusing because it shows some hard fought battles and an eye to horrifying experiences that happen far more often than not with experiences with rape/SA. But I would also argue that it's important for people (teens and adults) to realize that survivors of rape are not all-encompassed by the terms "broken" or "damaged" - nor are their shaped by that experience alone. This is something that I feel many YA and NA books need to recognize and expand upon, and I feel like "The Way I Used to Be" could've had further expansion to make it hit home that much more. This story also touches on other important aspects of sexual violence: how it affects more than the people directly involved, how it changes the way you relate to everyone around you, and how it perpetuates until it is stopped. And perhaps most importantly, stories like these are a reminder that we rarely know what's happened in other people's lives, and what has driven them to drink, to sleep around, or to betray friendships. I hope boys especially are encouraged to read this, and that the book helps to reshape the dialogue about trying to understand--and being compassionate about--those around us, even if and especially when they're behaving in ways that are hard to understand. (Eden endures a shit ton of slut-shaming, both casual and threatening.) Anger, acting out, promiscuity, and changes in behavior are often triggered by traumatic events, and seeing the warning signs and trying to act upon them might help someone in desperate need of kindness. I would have to say that if you have been raped, this book will either destroy you or make you feel less alone, but it may be a trigger so please read at your own risk.I'll echo the author's resource note at the end and include the free hotline for the Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network: 1-800-656-HOPE. If you need someone, please know help is available and confidential. there are just little things that smith adds to her writing that just seems to make this story that much more real. for example, eden barely ever says the name of the boy who raped her. whether it is out of denial or just genuine fear, i dont know. but i do know that it was a great way of subtly expressing her trauma. The things that she did and her way of coping was annoyingly painful. I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and tell her to speak up, tell them. But i just watched her suffer and hurt everyone around her until she was left all alone💔 Come on, Minnie,” Dad says to me, using my pet name. Minnie as in Mouse, because I was so quiet. He gestured at the food on the table. “Sit down. Everything’s getting cold.”

Thank you thank you Cara bby for reading this with me! God I'm so glad I reached out to you couldn't have done this without you. I always have so much fun reading with you.💖💖--

I really needed an emotional read like this one! THIS WAS THE BOOK I WAS LOOKING FOR TO MAKE ME CRY, SOB, GET ANGRY, AND THEN FEEL EMPTY AFTER READING!! Eden is such an incredibly complex character. It was completely agonizing to see her go through what she does. How what happened to her changed her from the way she used to be. How she becomes increasingly full of hatred for Kevin and the world because no one noticed 🤧