Dear Cassie
Lisa Burstein
4 Stars: A Great Read
Paperback: 352 Pages
Publication: March 5, 2013 by Entangled Teen
What if the last place you should fall in love is the first place that you do?
You’d think getting sent to Turning Pines Wilderness Camp for a month-long rehabilitation “retreat” and being forced to re-live it in this journal would be the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.
You’d be wrong.
There’s the reason I was sent to Turning Pines in the first place: I got arrested. On prom night. With my two best friends, who I haven’t talked to since and probably never will again. And then there’s the real reason I was sent here. The thing I can’t talk about with the guy I can’t even think about.
What if the moment you’ve closed yourself off is the moment you start to break open?
But there’s this guy here. Ben. And the more I swear he won’t—he can’t—the deeper under my skin he’s getting. After the thing that happened, I promised I’d never fall for another boy’s lies.
And yet I can’t help but wonder…what if?
Dear Cassie follows Cassie at camp as she struggles with what happened to her. Though we know about events at a surface level, we also know that there is something deeper hapening to Cassie. And that is what we are here to explore.
The most powerful thing about this novel is how filled it is with raw emotion. Cassie is one of those broken characters that we want to hug and comfort. (At least, once I got over my initial shock over her colorful use of language and saw the vulnerable girl underneath.) At the same time, we want to pry her secrets out of her. We learn more about her through diary entries, but the most important thing is always kept from us, teasing us like bait on a line. It made me wonder “just what is she hiding from us?” What I love most about is is, though she’s gone through a lot, she still has a lot of courage and pluck, and she has the strength to keep moving on in life. She’s a tough girl.
My favorite character, other than that love-hate interest we have to love in the end, has to be Cassie’s brother. I’m a family girl at heart, and I love when a character’s relationship with family is strong. Cassie’s brother really understands us and is a strong support for her. There are other people at camp who are so very fun to read about. There are lots of crazy personalities to find at camp!
At it’s heart though, this is about Cassie’s personal journey to find herself. A deeply moving, gritty contemporary novel, Dear Cassie about the bad things that happen in life and the consequences that we must learn to deal with. It is about forgivness and accepting both the good and bad sides of life. It is about stepping up to deal with it all. Cassie is a deeply flawed and human character. She’s been through things most of us will, hopefully, never have to go through, and she goes through so much more maturing along the healing process.
A copy was provided through Rockstar Book Tours for review.
Lisa Burstein is a tea seller by day and a writer by night. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from the Inland Northwest Center for Writers at Eastern Washington University and is glad to finally have it be worth more than the paper it was printed on. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her very patient husband, a neurotic dog and two cats. Dear Cassie is her third novel.
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Author: Crystal
A story girl at heart, Crystal is a bibliophile who can easily spend the day immersed in a good read. She writes under the name Kristy Wang. You can follow her writing adventures on X and Instagram @_kristywang.
Sam says
I would really, really love to read Dear Cassie because it sounds amazing :O
iLuvReadingTooMuch says
I'm really looking forward to it– I've read Pretty Amy so this one should be good! Thanks for the amazing giveaway 🙂
Rabiah
Victoria Zumbrum says
Yes I am really looking forward to reading this book. It sounds very good. Thanks for the giveaway. Please enter me. Tore923@aol.com