Allyson has never been the adventurous type. She is content to sit back and let her parents guide her along the ride and tell her what will maker happy. But when she is given the chance to open the door, step through as someone else, Lulu, not Allyson, her whole world changes. After Lulu, Allyson isn't sure anymore who she is. Lulu? Allyson? Someone else entirely? All she does know is that the answers she seeks lay back in Paris where it all started, just one day, one year ago.
I don't know what I had expected from this novel. The inside cover intrigued me. I have read Forman's other YA series If I Stay and the sequel Where She Went, but it has been three or four years. I remember them both being enthralling, and very emotional, but somehow I forgot what it was really like reading Forman's novels.
It's like a roller coaster ride you can't get off. Her stories suck the reader in seamlessly. I was not reading about Allyson, I was her. I felt her story and her pain. I was on this journey too. I started this book and when it got going I just could not stop. I was up until 4:30 am reading it, and I was thanking God that my work was cancelled for the next day because of weather or I don't know what I would have done, because there was no stopping.
The most wonderful part about it was that the excitement and adventure weren't what kept me reading. It was Allyson. The rich feeling that came from her, the perfect way that Forman relayed her struggle without it seeming whiney or overdramatic. I was a freshman in collage again, feeling empty and left out because I didn't fit into the college experience like I was supposed to. I was feeling that deep sense of loss and humiliation that comes with being duped by someone you thought cared, or even the pure relief that comes with things working themselves out again even after it feels like you messed up beyond all return. Somehow between all those pages and inked words Forman found a conduit to the human experience and relays it with a clarity and truthfulness that leaves the reader breathless and wanting more.
Perhaps my background with travel and study abroad made a difference in how close I felt to Allyson's experience, but I feel that Forman has given the reader something we can all identify with. We have all been lost I think, we have all lost things we didn't think we could get back. And whether or not we recovered or ever righted our footing, or our world, I think we can imagine what it would be like to find ourselves and even what we thought irredeemably lost. The relief, the freedom, the joy of life: that was what I found in these pages.
I highly recommend this novel, and any of Forman's work really, to any and all readers. This novel doesn't just reveal Allyson's story, but shows that it is never ever too late to try and live.
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