Heather Rayner
This story came alive in my imagination, like few others have ever done. I understand shame. I related, I cried, I laughed, I felt so much! This evening, as I was considering my day, I wanted to check in with the characters. It took me a minute or a few to remember I was relating to a well told book, not a friend I'd lost touch with. Heather, thank you for this story. I particularly loved the restoration of the girl on the fire damaged mural. The detail, the painstaking process, the allegory of the process of restoration we can also work in ourselves. On so many levels. Just, Thank You.
Mareli Thalwitzer
Life and Other Complications is a unique book written from Aly's first person perspective. Her sometimes matter-of-fact and tongue-in-the-cheek opinions on the situation she finds herself in, gives this book a unique voice filled with empathy. "I have HIV, a virus that attacks your immune system. It literally targets the body's defenses. Which is kind of brilliant and kind of wrong all at the same time. Machiavelli would have loved it. Personally, I'm not a fan." Aly is in foster care and her only "family" is the support group for kids with terminal illness. We tend to consider cancer as the alpha of all terminal illness that those 'who shouldn't die so young', suffer from. We tend to forget that there are numerous diseases and medical conditions that ail so many children out there and label them as "terminal". I absolutely loved the honesty and lets just throw it out there, approach of this group of friends and how they handled life and other complications. Not forget to mention death, an occurrence that are all to real for these kids. "According to the speeches made at funerals, all terminal kids are selfless angels, who never feel sorry for themselves and face death without fear. Which is ridiculous. Some terminal kids are nice, some aren't. All of us feel sorry for ourselves at some point. And we're terrified of dying. We just get over it. Because we don't have another choice." But this is Aly's story and hers is one of those unspeakable tragedies that we tend to shy away from. Why is it so much easier to speak about a child who suffers from cancer than about a child who suffered through terrible abuse, but end up with the same life sentence as the terminally ill, "innocent" cancer patient? Life and Other Complications do not shy away from talking about this and it opened my eyes to realize how quickly we do just that. Unintentionally or not. Thank you, Heather Mullaly, for giving this story a voice and for not giving up on writing it. I'm sure it will reach its mark, you've aimed the arrow in the right direction. *Note: Although Life and Other Complications deal with some seriously heavy stuff, it's not a heavy read at all.
Celeste Cruz
Wow. This story is very emotional. It talks about the complicated relationship that individuals have with dealing with HIV. Their experience when others know they have and the protagonist trauma. She needed to tell the truth and face the one who did that to her to protect others from suffering the same consequences as her. The author did a great job writing about all these different obstacles a teenager or anyone who suffers from this stigma. This story does have a strong female protagonist wanting to overcome her trauma. This was a very different type of story and it talked about a sensitive topic I was happy to be able to read this story.
