Books Under the Blanket (with a flashlight)

No life is without obstacles, and the lessons we take from navigating those obstacles shape the people we become. It is said we learn more from failure and setbacks than we do from success.

Corinne is in the process of applying for college starting next fall. While school has always come easy for her, life has thrown her some curveballs. One of the requirements for her application is an essay from a prompt. She had seven choices and her decision was easy.

She wrote her essay while I was in the middle of the book reviewed below, and it was a natural fit for this post. The book tells the story of a mother and daughter navigating life after a significant family loss. After Corinne shared her essay with me, I asked if I could share it here.

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Essay Prompt: “The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?”

2020 was a monumental year for people across the world. COVID-19 caused a global pandemic that wasn’t officially declared over until May of 2023. 2020 is the year I remember most, but it’s not just because of the pandemic. After a battle that lasted a year and a half, my father passed away from cancer in September of that year. My family and I had seen this day coming for months, but it still happened quicker than any of us expected. At any age, this is a life-altering event, but it was especially hard since it happened shortly after starting my virtual freshman year of high school.

My father’s passing affected me in many ways. He was always focused on my academics and wanted me to do well in my classes. Before he died, he specifically told me that I needed to keep my grades up if anything happened to him. I always had his voice in the back of my mind, and it created a lot of additional stress for me. I wanted to keep my grades up for him, but I was also grieving his death. It was very difficult for me to find motivation to complete all my assignments.

I powered through all the stress just to keep my grades up, but that only made things worse. His death on top of the pandemic caused a lot of mental health problems for me. 2020 was the worst my mental health had ever been, and it was because of those two factors. I struggled with a deep depression and crippling anxiety after his death. I started going to therapy, which helped a little, but not as much as I needed it to.

I lost weight from not eating, and I became unhealthily skinny. My mind spiraled very frequently, and it made my daily tasks difficult. With all the stress I already had with school, my mental health issues made things worse. I had to find ways to cope with the anxiety and ways to find motivation through the depression, and this was very difficult to do.

However, things did eventually improve for me. I continued through the grief process, and it became easier to find joy in things when COVID restrictions eased up. I went back to in-person school my sophomore year, and I was able to participate in extracurriculars and see my friends again. I continued with weekly therapy, and I started taking an antidepressant. These two things made a drastic change in my mental health. I was no longer crippled with anxiety or held down by depression.

I realized that the feelings towards his death never go away, but it does get easier. Life moves on, and I had to move with it. I came to accept his death, and he still has an impact on my life. I still think about him daily, and I imagine how he’d react to the things I’m doing today. I’ve learned a lot about myself in the three years since he’s been gone. I’ve learned how to move past very difficult situations, even if they never completely go away. I’ve learned how to deal with my mental health and how challenges affect me. Most importantly, I’ve learned that challenges bring growth. My father passing away was a huge, life-altering event, and it’s made me who I am today.

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Book Review

⭐⭐⭐½
3.5 Stars for When the Rain Ends by Mary Ellen Taylor

334 pages
Publisher: Montlake
Publication Date: May 1, 2023
This title was an Amazon First Reads selection.

Publisher’s Description

When artist Dani Manchester learns she’s slowly losing her vision, she becomes unmoored. Her ex-husband died only months before, leaving Dani and her preteen daughter grief stricken. Suddenly, the life Dani built for her family on the Outer Banks feels like a painful reminder of all they’ve lost.

On a whim, Dani sells her waterfront home and buys an old farm inland near the Virginia state line. But Dani’s daughter recoils at the sudden, drastic change. The Outer Banks’ sun-swept beaches, pink dawns, and savage storms are all she’s ever known.

But Dani is resolute, and the pair move to Virginia to embark on a challenging renovation. That summer, their efforts to turn a run-down silo into an art studio bring forth new friends, new loves, and new challenges.

As mother and daughter navigate the fiercest storm of their lives, they learn that instead of waiting for the skies to clear, they can withstand the wind and rain, so long as they do it together.

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Main Characters:

• Dani Manchester – 30-year-old single mom, moving and opening an art gallery in a new town, diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, which will slowly cause her to lose her sight
• Bella Peterson – 12 years old, her father was killed in a car accident four months prior, not excited about the move, always thought her parents would get back together, doesn’t know about her mom’s vision
• Jackson Cross – divorced, contractor who is converting farm silos into Dani’s art gallery, also builds and sails boats, has been secretly dating Dani for about five months
• Juniper Jones – Dani’s realtor who helped her buy the new property, Jackson’s sister-in-law on his ex-wife’s side, also running a grief camp for kids who have lost a family member

As the widowed mother of a daughter who lost her father, I felt drawn to this book from the description, which is why I selected it as an Amazon First Read. The author really captured how people can respond to grief, and it resonated with me.

I’m not losing my sight or anything, but like Dani, I made a lot of changes around our home after my husband passed. And my daughter was angry and not ready to talk about what she was feeling, much like Bella. Like Dani and Bella, my daughter and I experienced some tense moments and difficult conversations.

For Bella, it wasn’t just grief though. They moved, she knows her mother is hiding something and that Dani’s own mother died young, and Dani is making Bella attend a grief camp. As readers, we also know that things won’t go well when Bella finds out Dani is dating.

The book takes place over the course of about three weeks in the summer and alternates points of view between Dani and Bella. Dani is busy getting the gallery ready to open, and for two of those weeks, Bella is attending grief camp. She’s ok with the activities but hesitates when it comes to sharing her feelings…until Dani agrees to do all the “emotional” activities with her. So in addition to dealing with the gallery, her eyesight, and her new relationship, Dani has suddenly agreed to write a letter to her own mother, who she lost when she was eight.

The story here is a bit predictable. We know at some point Bella will find out about Jackson and that both Bella and Jackson will find out about Dani’s eyesight…and that it won’t go well. Things dragged a bit, but I knew things would work out in the end.

Of all the characters, I think Juniper was my favorite. She’s very down-to-earth, and we discover that she’s lost a lot in her life…more than you would think for someone so young and so upbeat.

There’s a paranormal element that I don’t think was necessary. The plot elements introduced with that story line could have been introduced in a different way. All in all, though, this is an easy read with a nice ending.

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