Before I Let Go Hardcover – Picture Book, January 2, 2018

Thank you Sourcebooks for the arc via Edelweiss. I really did not know how this was going to end. I enjoyed the characters and the theme of death and conquering fear. At times i felt like i was watching a scary movie. I look forward to reading other works of the author.

The concept is really good, though the back & forth structure of the storytelling gets annoying. There’s a nice depth to the characters of Corey and Kyra. None of the other characters are given enough attention to be very believable. The mental illness storyline is very interesting, but the ever-present supernatural, other-worldly backdrop detracts from that. As an older, more experienced reader, I’m looking for more. However, I do think this would be an appealing read to many of today’s teen girls.

The short chapters make this book easy to fly through. I have read better thrillers but this book kept my attention and that is not something I can say about all thrillers. I would recommend if you want a quick read.

At times sad, at others creepy. I can imagine an isolated town losing its collective sanity like what happens in this book. No winners here, only survivors.

The setting is one of the best parts of this book. The physical places -- natural and human-made -- really come through, and they're important. They're sometimes beautiful, sometimes peaceful, sometimes terrifying, sometimes confusing.Corey and Kyra's friendship felt so real and important and somehow both strong and fragile, like a Prince Rupert's drop. I've had a friendship like that (though it looked different), so I appreciated seeing that tension on page.I really appreciated Eileen, Roshan, Sam, and Aaron as side characters. And of all the other people in Lost, I found Piper in particular to be the creepiest.I do wish we knew more about Corey. I feel like I know her voice really well as a reader, and her relationship with Kyra over the past few years, but I only know a few other facts or stories about her. But ultimately, this feels like a book about Kyra and Corey-and-Kyra more than one about Corey, so maybe that's okay.I liked the asexual representation, but I wished Corey's questioning about her romantic orientation came through more clearly.

Good book. Daughter enjoyed it.

Creepy good book! Enjoyable read.

Before I Let Go is a dark novel about one town that pretty much loses its collective mind. Fitting then that the town happens to be called Lost. What Corey finds upon her return to this remote Alaskan community is anything but normal and difficult to believe. Set during early spring in northern Alaska, when the sun returns but only briefly, the entire tone of the novel is disturbing as the answers Corey seeks prove to be dangerous to find.It takes a lot to rattle me, but rattle me Before I Let Go did. The townspeople's actions towards Corey are not just discomforting but downright sinister. It is difficult to envision an entire town ganging up on one of their own, making threats, and going out of their way to cause as many problems for the returnee as possible, and yet this is what happens to Corey. The unbelievability of it all as well as the sinister undertones make for damn uncomfortable reading.Corey adds to your discomfiture by being a rather whiny character. She is completely unable to accept the truth until it is almost too late, long after you have already figured out what happened. Her unwillingness to see what is right in front of her is frustrating, especially as it causes her to make some poor choices. She also spends a lot of time contemplating her friendship and what it means to be a friend. We do get some good insight out of this, especially as it pertains to someone with a mental illness. However, the rest of the novel does not fit with this more internalized story. It is as if in Corey, the author tried to create a story within a story even though the two clash more than blend.My overall problem with Before I Let Go is that I have no idea what it is meant to be. Is it a cautionary tale about friendship? Is it a thriller? Is it supposed to be realistic? Is it just supposed to be entertaining? Throwing me off even more is the introspection Corey does as she tries to learn more about what happened to Kyra. Does this make it a coming-of-age story? I just do not know, and this bothers me. I usually enjoy stories that cross multiple genres at once, but this leaves me perplexed. The two stories - why/how did Kyra die and how Corey is handling it - are not tightly woven together but appear as separate and distinct. Add in the creepy and highly unrealistic town transformation and you have a novel that is as confusing as it is disturbing.The townspeople and their actions are so creepy and the story is so dark that I finished Before I Let Go with a sigh of relief and thankful to be able to put it behind me. This is not because the story is shocking. The answers, when you finally obtain them, are not much of a surprise even if they are as odd as you suspect they will be. I suspect my relief was more due to the fact that I was done with this weirdly unrealistic novel masking as contemporary fiction and could move on to more pleasant reading, which is not how you should ever want to feel finishing any story.