Seventeen-year-old Chloe had a plan: work hard, get good grades, and attend a top-tier college. But after she collapses during cross-country practice and is told that she needs a new heart, all her careful preparations are laid to waste.
Eight months after her transplant, everything is different. Stuck in summer school with the underachievers, all she wants to do now is grab her surfboard and hit the waves—which is strange, because she wasn’t interested in surfing before her transplant. (It doesn’t hurt that her instructor, Kai, is seriously good-looking.)
And that’s not all that’s strange. There’s also the vivid recurring nightmare about crashing a motorcycle in a tunnel and memories of people and places she doesn’t recognize.
Is there something wrong with her head now, too, or is there another explanation for what she’s experiencing?
As she searches for answers, and as her attraction to Kai intensifies, what she learns will lead her to question everything she thought she knew—about life, death, love, identity, and the true nature of reality.
My Review
Everything I Thought I Knew centers around a 17 years-old Chloe who's about to finish her senior year with calculated plans ahead that she will enroll in a prestigious university--and on her way to pave a path for her dreamy job; a scientist. Little did she know, all plans she has invested since she first started schooling have gone down the drain when she is diagnosed with a heart defect; Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Dysplasia (ARVD).
Since the defect is killing her slowly, she needs to find a heart donor as soon as possible but luck seems on her side when she's been granted one via a heart transplant surgery. Going through a phase of recovery that has taken her months, ultimately, her big examination is delayed and there's no graduation held for her--the only option for her to continue her studies is by continuing in a summer school, a place that's normally for dropouts. Things change drastically to her dismay.
At this point, I think I can relate with Chloe especially when she's already planned her journey but things won't go in her way. Written from the first point of view, Chloe's contemplation in dealing with obstacles is crafted very well, almost falls into a typical young adult character but that's the truth anyway; you can't expect a girl whose plans have been fallen out suddenly regains back the strength to pursue what she's been dreaming of. It takes time, honestly, and during this healing time, she's been experiencing recurring dreams, the same dreams as if she's living in someone's life before. Curiosity is what leads her to do the surfing.
I'm not gonna lie that I love this book so much particularly when she has met a surfing instructor named Kai, no last name revealed but that's what the author intends to. A big plot twist can be detected from here on and I wished it's the opposite way. Their love is so innocent, not like a fling kind of love, and that's what I like about this book. A little bit of magical realism sprinkled in the last 30% of the story - which confuses me about how the story is executed and I understand most readers would find the ending unlikeable because it's ended in vague with some plot holes. However, to me, I like how it's ended. The impact of its ending stays with me, wired with melancholia and almost tangible enough to feel the perseverance, the void, and the reconciliation experienced by the protagonist itself. Overall, this is a good read. Bonus: if you're a Physic person you'll love this book to the core of how the author interweaves some words/situations with physics' concepts.
Thank you Netgalley for this arc.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shannon Takaoka is a young adult fiction author who wrote her first book at age 12, when she blatantly ripped off C.S. Lewis with an epic fantasy inspired by THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE. (Well, maybe it wasn’t that epic — do 10 pages count?) Madeline L’Engle, Charlotte Brontë, Neil Gaiman and a host of other authors inspired her lifelong love of reading, and she’s especially into all things gothic, weird and nerdy. If a story involves time travel, strange science-y stuff or alternate realities, she’s in.
Originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Shannon now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, two children and one very needy dog, who is probably leaning on her right now as she’s pecking away on her keyboard. Her debut novel, EVERYTHING I THOUGHT I KNEW, about a 17-year-old girl questioning everything about who she is and who she wants to be following a heart transplant, is out now from Candlewick Press. She promises that it’s a little weird — but in a good way.
Comments
Post a Comment