I didn’t agree with most of the things they did and I disagreed with about 96% of the decisions they made. I didn’t actually like them at all. Kerry and Tim are best mates, destined to be doctors. Out celebrating New Years Eve with the rest of their classmates just before they take their exams, suddenly their class mate Joel goes into cardiac arrest. The promising footballer and Kerry's secret crush, is just lying there while his friends panic. Kerry immediately dives into action and begins to perform CPR for 18 minutes, whilst Tim is frozen to the spot. What the three teenagers don't realise, is the impact those crucial 18 minutes will have on the rest of their lives.

I was hooked from the first chapter. I barely stopped myself from rushing to the ending. I seriously couldn't stop reading it. I didn't feel, to me, like a work of fiction at all! It was more like reading a memoir. I'm just in awe of the AMAZING character development, and the writing, that was SO fluid it felt like it was written by 3 different people.How To Save A Life weaves together the dual narration of Jill, grieving for her father, and Mandy, a pregnant teen seeking a better life for her unborn child. Their lives converge when Jill’s mother makes the decision to adopt a child – with life changing repercussions for all involved. This story doesn't have tons of angst, yet I didn't want to put it down. It captivated me with its honesty and realistic dialogue and narrations. There are some sad aspects, but the story is ultimately sweet and uplifting.

Where Jill came from a regular home with loving parents and a group of chatty friends, Mandy never knew her father and was unfamiliar with the concept of friends. I’m not just a Grey’s Anatomy fan, I’m a super fan. I own every episode of the show on iTunes, own a playlist of over 300 of the show’s most iconic songs, I’ve seen the entire series over a dozen times, probably closer to twenty times. A tip of the hat to Sara Zarr. She took a ridiculous premise and made me forget it. A woman and her high school daughter have just lost their husband/dad to a car accident and seek to complete his joint wish to adopt. Only instead of getting a baby from the adoption agency, they get the teen mom-to-be in the last weeks of her pregnancy. She's expected to have the baby, hand it over, then leave. Who does that? No one that I've ever heard of (not that I'm savvy on adoption practices). But I overlooked it. Or eventually forgot it. This was so good! It was mostly oral history style and it worked so well. It reminded me of reading Daisy Jones and the Six, it was so interesting to hear all these different opinions on the same event by the people who were there behind the scenes. The story follows Jill as how she opens up again and gains acceptance of her father's death. Of how she finally learns to let go. How she begins to hope and live again. She discovers that its alright to be wrong once in a while.

Customer reviews

No one measures a life in weeks and days. You measure life in years and by the things that happen to you.” I was completely swept away by How to Save a Life, which truly is a salve for the soul. It’s a beautiful book, full of drama, passion, and truth: You’ll remember Joel, Kerry, and Tim long after you finish reading their story.” —Rowan Coleman, author of The Day We Met It is so obvious that raw, brutal emotions are Ms Zarr’s speciality. I know a lot of people will have problems with the ending and, like I said before, it is a little predictable but it never strayed into the overly-saccharine territories that it could so easily have done. A lot happens between this description and the very early events in the novel. What will happen to the three as they move into their post school days and life does not (always) cooperate?

All in all I couldn’t recommend this book more. I cared, I laughed and read the last few chapters with baited breath. Brilliant read. My thoughts on How to Save a Life remind me a lot of the way I felt about Please Ignore Vera Dietz. In fact, there's one thing I can pretty much quote directly from the review I wrote, about how there are two subjects in young adult books that would normally make me run a mile:It’s the quietness of Sara Zarr’s writing that completely undoes me. There’s a quality of stillness about it that lends her stories a kind of gravity. The language is clear and uncluttered, yet sometimes devastating in its emotional honesty. Zarr writes about the kind of things that feel almost seismic to us internally, while making barely a ripple in the world at large. She builds stories around relatable sentiments and all too common events – lives fragmented by pain, grief, abuse, and held together with fragile threads of hope and redemption.

Atunci când o să am nouăzeci de ani și o să fiu cu un picior în groapă, cineva o să trebuiască să oprească aparatul ăsta sau o să-mi tot aplice șocuri să mă readucă la viață." Theres a lot of important topics raised in this book and Eva manages them all with such compassion and care, I always think you can tell when an author takes the time to write tough subjects sensitively and this is defintely the case here. I really loved the theme of recovery, not just physically but mentally too that runs throughout the plot.Although it was not what I expected, I really enjoyed the read. My expectation was an insider look but it was really a compilation of quotes for past and present cast and crew members. It was very interesting to see which cast member participated in the book, and who did not. I was a bit concerned that there might be other things left out when I realized that there were vital cast members not included in the list at the beginning, but Lynette Rice did a really good job at balancing a lot of different information and it did not feel like anything vital was left out. I don't remember how I ended up buying this book. And it's been almost a year sitting on my to-read shelf. So when I decided to finally read this book, I was so glad that it wasn't a let down at all. Jill's first line hooked me already and it went enjoyable all along. I loved the inside stories and tidbits of information that I didn’t know. The only character/actress I disliked showed me my thoughts were warranted although I think I’d I liked the person I could have found reasons to confirm that as well. The reasons I dislike her are the same reasons others like her. One actor was redeemed in my mind.