I’m gonna start out with this: this is a reread for me. The first time I read this book was nearly a decade ago. It has been in my top three novels ever since then. I was really (really) worried that revisiting this story would make it less special to me or that I’d find flaws since I’ve grown and matured a lot. However, with the growing popularity of this novel, I knew that I had to pick my hardcover copy up and start reading. Guess what? This book was just as powerful, heartbreaking, and emotionally taxing this read as it was the first time I read it. Nothing has changed and it is still in my top three novels ever (it may have just taken the number one spot). 

So, why is this novel so important to me and my favorite novel of all time? Well, there’s a myriad of reasons. First, sexual assault has always been something that ways heavily on my heart. Not that every other crime in humanity doesn’t hurt me deeply, it’s just that rape, for me, hurts my heart the most. Why? Because you leave a person with nothing. You leave them without a single place to hide because even their body isn’t their own. It is the most heinous crime that can be committed to a human being and it’s absolutely despicable. 

So, that brings us back to the question: why is this book—a book about something that I think is the worst thing that can be done to a person—my favorite novel of all time? Because it’s real. Because it describes rape in a way that can’t be sugarcoated. Because it shows you that sexual assault absolutely ruins someone if they aren’t able to get help. Because rape needs to be talked about more. Because it doesn’t glamorize this act. Because because because. I could go on forever. 

With crimes like these, we often find ourselves going, “that’s so tragic, I can’t believe someone would do that,” but then we turn the other way and forget about it. In the novel, Eden thought something to herself that perfectly summarizes what I mean: “And rape… all I know about rape is that it’s a terrible thing, something that happens to other people. Not me.” Why why why are we always in this mindset that since the bad thing isn’t happening to us, it doesn’t matter? Our culture, our world, glamorizes violence, rape, and so many other things. I recently read a book that everyone is hyping up about a man who stalks and rapes a girl, but here’s the kicker, it’s a ROMANCE novel. The Way I Used to Be shows us everything that this violent crime is: disgusting. Violence begets more violence and you cannot convince me otherwise. 

As far as things that I liked about this novel: the plot, some of the characters, and the writing. I’ll start with the writing because Amber Smith’s prose is beautiful. It’s evocative and emotional and everything that I want in a novel. The plot? I read a review that said something along the lines of “one bad thing after another does not make a novel,” but yes, it does. Want to know why? Because survivors of sexual assault often spiral and Eden’s journey to healing was so true to me that I often felt close to tears. With the characters, you already know if you’ve read my other reviews that Josh is my favorite type of character. I loved Eden, too. The rest of the characters? Not so much. It seems a little off to me that Josh was the only one who could recognize that something was wrong with Eden. Yes, I get you can pass a lot of this off as moody teenager drama, and I know that she had a relatively slow downward spiral. But seriously. No one else noticed? It just made me incredibly sad. 

Overall, this book is everything to me. In order to not make this review an entire novel, I’ll stop here. Because I could honestly write about this book forever, and I believe that so many more people need to read it. We need the world to wake up. We need to be okay with talking about rape. We need to have better support for our survivors. We need to be better, and I truly believe that novels like these can help us get there. 

Source: Personal Copy

P.S. If you really liked this book, check out Promising Young Woman (one of my favorite movies on the topic of sexual assault), and We All Know About Margot (a short story that really makes you think about labeling women based off of what you “think” you know about them).