I received a copy of this ARC for free in exchange for an honest review.

I hate to say that it took me forever to get to this book (school, work, life got in the way) but I really wish it didn't. I greatly enjoyed this story. It reminds me of the book Cut, which I also enjoyed. A Life, Forward is the sequel to A Life, Redefined. I enjoyed the characters how everything unfolded. I wish both books were longer (they're definitely on the short side) and more flushed out relationships but those are my only complaints.

Definitely worth a quick read and I'll be reading book three ASAP!

I received a copy of the book from Netgalley to review. Thank you for the opportunity.
A very slow paced story with little twists and turns. The writing is OK and the characters quite engaging. However, it was quite bland and predictable.
An OK read.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.



This was my first book by this author, so I wasn't too sure on what to expect in terms of writing style.
Unfortunately, i couldn't finish this book. It was a slow, slow start for me. I found myself waiting for something interesting to happen or something to keep me turning the pages.

I'm sorry, it just wasn't for me.

A Life Forward was quite simplistic and easy to read. The sentence structure was short and to the point. Which was great, but it also left little room for imagination.

Well written, a quick and easy read.

Sadly my phone which I was using to read this book screen had broken and so sadly I couldn't finish the book because it was past the archive date and I couldn't download it onto a different device. I only got a chapter or so read but the storyline was hooking, I really wished I could of finished this book.

A story based on a realistic problem with a good solid positive ending being as happily ever after as it could be. A quick read that leads us to have empathy and hope for Rowen, age eighteen, as she battle a past of cutting because of a mother and father that never seemed to love her. She has found love in her boyfriend's family that has taken her in this last year of high school and a wonderful guidance counselor who is very supportive. They promote love and forgiveness. She also has a friend, Jess, who is pregnant and they both become support for each other, even getting an apartment together. A story full of love, hope and compassion and some leaning on God.

A life, Forward by Tracy Hewitt Meyer
Publication date - 5th November 2020

Thank you to @bhc.press @tracyhewittmeyer and @netgalley for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this book, I didn’t realise it was part of a series until I logged it on goodreads.

This shows how well the book was written, and that the back story was explained to the reader.

I really like Rowen as a character. She was portrayed as a strong person considering the issues she had faced, but I did feel she was slightly annoying as she seemed weak when it came to how her boyfriend treated her.

I feel that as an young adult book, it covered the topics well, they were well written, without skimming over, just because the audience may be younger.

I look forward to reading the other books in the series



. #netgalley #arc #bookreview #booksofinstagram #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookcommunity #alifeforward

I thought by the description provided on NetGalley that this book was going to be a wholesome and heartfelt journey of a teenager overcoming family issues and learning to cope and live. However, what this book ended up being was much more shallowly dark and sort of emotionally manipulative. It would be nice (or deseperately necesessary) to have more information on the blurb, or some trigger warnings, because it’s veryon the face and not even handled correctly. It’s also a 2014 book and has the feeling and the tone of it with all the problematic trends that age of YA had, but let me gather my thoughts.

The Good

What can I say that salvages this book?

Well, for once, even though now the more I think about it, it does suffer from middle book in the trilogy syndrome and it feels like a bridge to whatever might happen next in the story, it also does hold up a story on its own. You see, I had no idea this was a sequel until I went to Goodreads to write my review. I didn’t even notice all troughout my reading experience. Pieces of the story didn’t even feel missing.

In addition, I can say I appreciate what the intent (maybe?) behind writing this story was. The execution not so much. But writing stories about overcoming and seeking help in situations like this is always appreciated. Also, I thought the poetry was nice.

The Bad

However, I don’t think that the things I listed above are able to erase the things this book fails at. I’m just so confused, even though I sort of understand what the author was trying to do, at the same time I just don’t.

Firstly, I think this story at some point, analysing Rowan’s, our main character, life and recent events, seems like tragedy porn. It feels weird to say it but it really seems like all of the things that went wrong with her life and all of the shitty people she encountered are just tools from the author to make the reader feel compassion for the protagonist because none of them are handled well or in a way that shows that the author was trying to convey a message. I’m not saying tragedies like this can’t happen, because of course they can, but using them in a book in this way, borders disgusting. See, let me tell you a bit about Rowan’s life at the moment. When she was ten, her baby borther died, it seemed to happen because when she was babysitting him, Rowan put a blanket over him, and because of the heat he suffered from something called Sudden infant death syndrome. In reality, what had happened was that he mother had suffocated her own child out of jealousy, but let Rowan take the blame for seven years. In consequence to this, her father was abusive towards her, phisically, emotionally, verbally and psychologically, to the point where last year he beat her up. After this, she found out the truth about her baby brother and left her home to live with her boyfriend and her boyfriend’s parents. Her mom got sent to jail and her dad went away, so her sister and her grandma stayed at their house. Oh, and her sister, Trina, also last year she got pregnant and lied and said that the bay was Mike’s, Rowan’s boyfriend,, because OH she also said Mike had raped her. Yup. It went there. I’m going to talk about Trina’s characterisation later but this doesn’t stop here. In the middle of all of the mess from last year, Rowan started to self-harm, she has stopped since her mom got sent to jail but she’s still processing it. On top of this, on present day, while Mike has gone off to college and Rowan is struggling with feeling comfortable living with his parents, never seeing him and barely talking to him over the phone, Rowan’s best and only friend Jessica gets pregnant with a teacher’s (which is mentioned so casually?????) baby, and the father leaves. Also also, her sister Trina seeing that her sister left her and won’t come bacj to the house where she suffered all sorts of abuse, resorts to heavy drugs. And also also ALSO, her dad reappears because he has cancer and passes away.

Do you see what I mean?

None of these extremely sad and horrible topics are treated correctly. They are written in a way that seems like the author doesn’t really understands them or has a care for them. They are sort of shallowly woven in, which sounds ridiculous because these things can impact a person so deeply. There wasn’t sensibility to tell this story, so I don’t really understand what the author tried to do. I think the example that most shows what I’m talking about is Rowan’s dad. He was an abuser but when he dies the story pretends that nothing happened. Of course, victims have difficult relationships with their abusers’ deaths, but it really seems like the story sweeps this under the rug. And that’s the thing. After everything (EVERYTHING) that happened to Rowan last year, everyone just kind of pushes her to move on??? Without offering help?? They blatantly tell her to forgive her family in a very pushy way.

Things like this show me that the book doesn’t really want to give a message but instead it’s using these horrible tragedies that can actuallly happen to a person in order to try to get the reader invested. All of these things are used in a cheap and disgusting manner, because besides them there’s not even a plot I can tell you about. There’s no story here, just horribly used trauma.

Moreover, it falls into all of the bad aspects of the time it was originally published. I don’t know if this is a reprint, there should be more editing if that’s the case. At first, I realised that this book wasn’t meant to take place in 2020 or something near when the main characters started to “flip her phone shut”, but then it became obvious by the tone of the novel that this was an early 2010s book. The way traumatic things are thrown at the reader, the writing style, the girl hate, the slut-shaming, the female characters characterisation and the weird dialogue all seemed to fit in with my guess. Goodreads later confirmed it for me. I can’t stand the way the words “slut”, “tramp” and “skank” are thrown around.

This is so visible by the way Trina is written. She’s that character that happens when someone watches Mean Girls but doesn’t really understand what Mean Girls was trying to say. On top of this, add her actually being a bad person. She lied about her sister’s boyfriend having sexually assaulted her to cover up her pregnancy. Why would you write something like that? WHY WOULD YOU WRITE SOMETHING LIKE THAT? If there was nuance or any repercussions for Trina, maybe I wouldn’t have hated her storyline so much, but what is this? Her dialogue is the worst of all of the weird ways everybody talks. She sounds like a five year old but at the same times she says horrible stuff to her sister. I just… don’t understand the author’s point in writing her into existance.

In conclusion, I don't recommend this and this book should go through some examining before getting re-published.

First of all, I must admit that this book wasn't my cup of tea. For sure.

A life, forward follows the story of a girl named Rowan who has an abusive family and a very complicated past so she moves out to her boyfriend's house in order to be safe. Through the book she will try to find out where she belongs and how to deal with her inner conflicts.

I think there where only three things that I enjoyed about this book and were: the writing, the pace and Rowan during the first chapters. The writing was really nice and the pace was fast so it made me keep reading the book even if I wasn't likng it at all..
At first, Rowan was a good main character and it was really interesting how the author described her problems and how she struggled with them internally. But after a few pages I couldn't understand why she acted the way she did and like the other characters in the book became really annoying.

The thing I hated the most about this book is how the author treated mental health. There are a lot of things going on in this book such as drug abuse, self-harm, depression and eating disorders and no one it's treated correctly! They are just named like it was another character's feature. It made me feel so helpless because any character seemed to care about how the other was struggling. But in the end, everyone was ok and moving forward.

Last but not the least, the three out of four times that Rowan talks about her mother it's mentioned how fat and obese she is. Not fatphobic. AT ALL.

Definetely this book wasn't what I was looking for, and I think my 15-year-old- self would have enjoyed it more. But not anymore.

Rowan is a young girl that starts a new life on her own just in time for college. Everything seems to be falling into place for her, but the past always comes back to haunt you. A Life Forward is a tale of a young woman learning to be strong and independent while fighting her past demons. This is a great read, especially for lovers of books with a strong female lead. I would recommend to anyone.