Victoria gets kicked out of her house by her father and gets put into the foster care system. It's not really known for a bit why but one it comes out..... It's on a very hard subject. There are some other issues that are dealt with. Victoria finds a great friend and great boyfriend that eventually help her confront her past and help some people she left behind.

I have no problem with emotional stories, but The Quiet You Carry truly disturbed me. It's a no holds barred look into foster care and abuse. Maybe it's because I have kids, but I wish I had not read this book. It's nothing against the story. It's a good engaging haunting story. My issues are with me only. Just be sure you are mentally prepared before you read. It's a good read overall.

This book was full of raw emotion and I read a blurb that the author had put on Goodreads that she was also in the foster care system. I can’t imagine what it is like, but I did know some kids that were when I was in school and they had a hard time because their foster parents didn’t really care for them.
From the very beginning of the story it was emotional. There are some serious issues that are talked about in the book that it thinks the author did an amazing job of describing. This book was a completely an eye opener for me. This is a book that everyone should read, not because its such a beautiful story but because of how it told.
This book follows Victoria who had something horrible things happen to her and because of that she suffers PTSD and to see her deal and grow as a person even with all that life has thrown at her is amazing and empowering.
I defiantly recommend this to everyone to check out.

This was a unique book. I like how it was written. It made you go uggh when it would tell what was happening then jus stop & continue with something else. I loved the characters.

The Quiet You Carry was a beautiful, yet very sad read. I loved how realistic the story was and also the characters. In no way did this book make out foster care to be a loving second family where everything is happiness and rainbows, but it also did not demonize the whole system.

The book was heart-wrenching and I cried at several points. But I loved every second of it.

Great book for anyone who loves emotional drama stories!

Thanks to NetGalley & North Star Editions for the ARC!

I received an advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review

The story sounded intriguing but I just couldn’t get into the narrative or the characters. Some good dialogue but needs editing for narrative flow.

Seventeen year old Victoria is "thrown out" of her dad's house - he has accused her of "coming on to him". Child protective services places her with a single mom in another town. The Quiet You Carry gives readers a glimpse of life in a small town foster home, and the anquish that young girls sometimes face with an abusive parent.

The story would have been more powerful if the reader was made aware of the more intense details of the abuses that occured. However, Barthelmess uses language that is appropriate for teenagers to read, and so the message is somewhat softened. The end of the book, very appropriately, lists resources for those who need to seek help with personal abuses and mental / emotional issues.

I would recommend this story to young readers.

Trigger warning!

Lots of sensitive subject matter. Be cautious as there are themes of abuse and mental illness.

That said, I was convinced by the characters. I felt no real connection to the story other than pity, and pity has never been a big motivator for me.

This book was so full of emotion and pure pain - mental, physical and emotional - that I couldn’t help but feel what Victoria, the protagonist, felt. At first, I was unsure of how she’d cope with it all and of course, she resorted to self-blame and denial but once she realized that what she did or didn’t do would help or harm the people around her, she had so much growth as a character. I was proud of her in the end. I also loved Kale and the humor but self-assurance and comfort he brought not only to Victoria but to the reader itself.

This was a great lesson in empathy and I’m really happy that YA books are started to be a little bit riskier and raw by tackling such dark yet REAL LIFE topics like this.

***Thank you to NetGalley and Flux/North Star Editions for providing me with an advanced ARC of The Quiet You Carry by Nikki Barthelmess in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.***

Every once in a great while a powerful book comes along that truly rocks you to your core. The Quiet You Carry is one of those books.

Nikki Barthelmess writes a tale that sucks you into the world of Victoria, a young woman who has been abused by her father and thrown into foster care. She is faced with heartbreaking decisions, conflicting emotions, and worst of all, a system that, while keeping her safe, has removed her from everyone she ever cared about.

This book not only opened my eyes to the reality of what many children in foster care face on a daily basis, but how they are often treated by outsiders. People assuming that they are in foster care because of something they did. It's heartbreaking.

It's important to note that while this book covers several very difficult topics, it is also uplifting. Even as Victoria's world crashes down around her, there are adults in her life that care about her and her wellbeing. Also, she has two great friends who stick by her side. They are there, every step of the way, offering support. Most importantly, they do not cast judgement on Victoria and stand up to those who do.

The Quiet You Carry addresses domestic violence, sexual abuse, and what it's like for the hundreds of thousands of children in foster care in the United States. This is exactly the type of book that should be read in classrooms and talked about around the dinner table. Knowledge is power. Empathy is priceless. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of The Quiet You Carry. It will change your world.

4 stars

This book man. This book was heart wrenching in all the right ways and provided an interesting and informative look at a topic that is not often discussed in YA literature, foster care. In this book we follow Victoria, who is taken out of her home and put into foster care. She now has to start over in a new town while navigating living with 2 other foster sisters, an overly domineering foster mother, and a the secret of why she was placed in foster care in the first place.

I thought the plot was well paced and I loved all the intense topics that were explored throughout the novel. There was a lot that was unpacked in such a short book, and as a reader, I really appreciated how well everything was handled. For example, Victoria is dealing with a lot in this book, to say the least. Although the reader has a strong idea of what happened to Victoria right from the get go, it was really powerful to see her grappling with and coming to terms with what happened to her. The way she navigated through her trauma and how she dealt with the guilt was extremely realistic and hard to read through at times. I also found the exploration of foster care and foster homes very interesting. I am the first to acknowledge that I don't really know how it works, and I definitely felt like I learned a lot from reading this book. My only criticism of the the plot is, because the book is so short, I would have liked to have seen more, especially at the end.

This book is also full of strong, supportive, dynamic, and realistic characters. Victoria, of course, goes through some major changes throughout the book and I never once really questioned her motives. She does make some dumb decisions, but I always understood why she was making those choices. Her friend group was also so great. Kale and Christina are the kind of friends who Victoria needed and their relationship blossomed in such an organic and supportive way throughout the book. One of the most interesting characters to me was Connie. I enjoyed getting to see little snippets into her past and understanding exactly what was going through her mind. I would have loved to have liked to have seen more of Jaime, but again it was a short book.

This book is extremely powerful and deals with some pretty intense topics, but I thought it was more than worth the read. I would highly recommend this book.

Well, this was a real tearjerker. I've always been drawn to emotional books about things I don't have any personal knowledge of (like foster care, abuse, etc.) but I didn't expect to be quite as touched by this one as I was. So many emotions going through me... mostly anger. This was definitely an eye-opening read for me.

*3.5/5*

The Quiet You Carry is a Young Adult book about Victoria who’s dumped into a foster home, in a different city just because her dad didn’t want her home anymore. But is that the only reason?

The Quit You Carry was such an interesting book. I wanted to know what was going to happen to Victoria and what really happened between Victoria and her father. I read this book in two days just because I wanted to know the ending. I think that this book has a strong message and you also get to know more about foster care.

We have our main character Victoria who suffered a lot at home and is now in a foster home. In the beginning, I really wanted to like her because she is the main character, but she was really annoying. She kept whining and I get that her situation wasn’t ideal, but I think that the whining wasn’t necessary…

Besides the main character, I enjoyed reading this book. The Quiet You Carry is fast paced, confronting and interesting!

I received an e-arc of this book thru Net Galley. All opinions are my own.

Such a heartbreaking story and honestly it made me cry. Nobody should ever experience what Victoria did with her family but sadly this is a reality to some

"None of us can understand what’s going on in another person’s life from the outside looking in. No one can really see the quiet you carry, unless you let them"

I feel this quote resonates to not only me but to everyone who tries to keep things hidden.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book was tough to read in many ways but was well-written and kept me interested. It did a good job of exploring the foster care system and the emotions involved on all sides when children end up in the system. I learned a lot and felt very connected to the characters.

Victoria's life is forked one night when social services shows up to her door, the door to the house she's been locked out of by her widowed and remarried father. She's told to pack some belongings--nothing valuable--and get in a social worker's car, and with that, she's in the foster care system. After a night on a stinky couch in the social worker's office (or home, I forget), Victoria is delivered to foster-mother Connie's house, where she is to reside in the girls' dormitory with two foster sisters and Connie's real daughter. Yep, it's like that.

Victoria is a second semester senior and has to start fresh at a new school, which is hard enough when you're not carrying secrets, shame, and have zero contact with your old life (cell phones are valuable, so verboten). She's hella lucky to be befriended by a sweet girl named Christina, and it's to her credit that she allows herself to be brought into Christina's life because the secrecy and shame make bonding difficult.

Things get better, fortunately, and Victoria gets back some of what she's lost, but it's a slog. The story drives home how when you're at a disadvantage, everything is harder and it's impossible not to make mistakes. The Quiet You Carry is an important read on a topic that is underrepresented in young adult literature.

This was another book that I wasn't quite sure where to post - it is definitely a YA book, but one that had explicit and dark themes. Not one that you would want to be read by a young teenager, particularly as the protagonist appears to be punished for what has been done to her (victim blaming at its finest). For older teens and adults it is completely clear that this is not ok but I fear for younger teens in this position it would just add another complication that encourages silence. So it's here - with the adult books. 

From the get go this book reminded me of one that I read as a teenager. It wasn't my typical reading material but it had come free with a magazine (probably more magazine, which looking back was wickedly inappropriate for a young teen - oh well). I have tried to search for the name of the book but google is drawing a blank and I'm concerned about ending up on a weird watchlist so I've decided to stop. Anyway that book was the introduction to me that weird shit happened in the world and that I was probably pretty lucky to read 15 or so and have no idea that these types of things happen. Probably an upside to growing up pre-internet. 

Back to the story here - it was an intriguing read. The author had a good understanding of the inadequacies of the care system and the lack of support available to everyone in these situations (with a huge dollop of empathy for both the social workers and the foster carers). One thing that frustrated me was that the principal appeared to have an interest because he had been adopted - I'm not sure that having him be adopted added anything to the story. It is his job to make sure that he looks out for a child who has just been placed in a care facility, no justification needed. This is nit-picky, I know, but  I work with children in similar positions and feel that bonding over not being with birth families is perhaps not something that happens on first meeting. Certainly the principal should be better at his job than having this the way to show he was trustworthy. 

I enjoyed the writing and story and I did read all the way to the end. Unfortunately the story won't stay with me in the same way that the previous book did. 

I would rate this a 3.5 out of 5. 

ARC provided through netgalley.

*Scheduled to post on publication date*

Everyone has that something that they deal with, that they carry alone.... unless they choose to let others in. This book was not easy to read, but one that NEEDS- to be read. It was hauntingly beautiful and heartbreaking. Its one of those books that may not be for you but you can tell, its written in a way, that it was meant for someone.

In the Quiet you Carry, we follow main character Victoria, who goes through something awful and gets put into Foster Care. She suffers from PTSD and has to learn how to grow, move on and deal with what has happened to her. As her life is thrown into chaos- we get to see how she manages the changes. Victoria's character growth, throughout the book was amazing to read. The author did a fabulous job telling this very empowering story of life in the foster care system. If you're looking for a book that takes all your emotions and throws them into a tailspin- one that grips you and your heartstrings...from the very first chapter- I totally recommend this one!!!

Here is a short and sweet review to close off 2018... a review for a YA tragedy that had me tear up throughout.

This was such an intense book from the first chapter all the way to the last one. It's a book that grips you and never leaves you with a dull moment. I guess it may be strange for me to say so, but sometimes I will read books that don't have much development in them - that is not the case with The Quiet You Carry. I got real development from main and secondary characters, from the plot, and from the entire situation the protagonist goes through. It's a book that moves... and it will move you.

I'd like to thank North Star Editions for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A heartbreaking and empowering story of life in the foster system, author Nikki Barthelmeiss has drawn on her own experience to create the story of Victoria, a seventeen year old girl thrown out of her home by her widowed father who has accused her of making sexual advances towards him. As well as dealing with the loss of the only family she has left, she must learn to cope in a chaotic foster home run by a strict disciplinarian , whose only interest in her charges seems to be financial, while worrying about the younger step sister she has left behind. To cap it all off she has to move away and change schools , putting her college aspirations at risk. It is no wonder that she builds a wall and makes it difficult for anyone in her new life to connect with her, despite their good intentions, but eventually she makes some true friends, ones that will help her face up to some very difficult decisions and help her to do what she must.
As I mentioned it is clear that this is a book written by somebody with experience of the foster system, and while the situations described may be harsh, they are absolutely believable. I found myself really rooting for Victoria as a character, and I felt the highs and lows with her as her story progressed.
I read and reviewed a book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher,all opinions are my own.