Ten Below Zero
Title: Ten Below ZeroAuthor: Whitney Barbetti
Published Date: August 28th 2014
Rating: 4 / 5 Stars
Synopsis: “In here,” he said, pushing on the skin above my heart, “you're ten below zero. And you’re closer to death than I am.”
My name is Parker. My body is marked with scars from an attack I don’t remember. I don’t want to remember. I choose to live my life by observation, not through experience. While people are laughing and kissing and connecting, I’m in the corner. Watching them live. I’m indifferent to everything, everyone. The only emotion I feel with any kind of depth is annoyance, and I feel it often.
A text message sent to the wrong number proves to be my undoing.
His name is Everett, but I call him rude. He’s pushy, he’s arrogant, he crowds my personal space, and worst of all: he makes me feel.
He chooses to wear all black, all the time, as if he’s waiting to attend a funeral. Probably because he is.
Everett is dying. And he’s spending his final days living, truly living. In doing so, he’s forcing me to feel, to heal. To come face to face with the demons I suppressed in my memory.
He hurts me, he fulfills me, he completes me. And still, he's dying.
Review: I'm going to be honest... I wasn't planning on reviewing this book. While reading, I thought "eh", I felt that there wasn't any real importance for this book. Throughout the book I thought "meh, this is a two star book, maybe a three." I had that mind set until the last few chapters, where Barbetti slapped me in the face.
The story over all was slow. I'd read 50 pages, but it felt like I didn't grow with the characters and we were in the same spot as where we started. But you see, this book is sneaky, or at least to me it was. I knew this was going to be a tear jerker, but reading the majority of the book I thought I wasn't connected to the characters enough to have me cry when the time came. And thinking about it, at the end, I probably wasn't that connected either. What made me cry was what Barbetti was telling me.
In Ten Below Zero, you have character that has stopped trying and pretty much goes through the motions. She doesn't let anything faze her. You have another character that takes everything in and for the most part turns it positive, despite what he's gone through. Put them together and fireworks are bound to appear. They're both trying to save each other.
As I said before, the ending was where the situation got emotion as well as the meaning of this story really came into play.
What I got from TBZ was: embrace you're life as if you're dying. You know "Carpe Diem". Words are going to hurt, actions are going to hurt, this world is out to get us, but by us taking in that pain and somehow, in our own way, making it heal us, making us stronger, making us feel, we don't let the world win.
With more books to be read
-Vangie
2 Corinthians 12:10
