Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Like any other of Abigail Johnson’s books, Every Time You Go Away deals with some pretty heavy topics, most notably, substance abuse and grief.

I enjoyed the book, but the characters irked me at times with their lack of communication and their tendency to hide how they felt. I also didn’t feel the chemistry between Rebecca and Ethan. They both had so much going on and I felt as if they were better off as friends. Their relationship was also way too angsty for me. I just wasn’t as invested in them together as couple and was more interested on their individual stories.

All in all, this was an okay read. I just don’t think I was in the right headspace for it.

***Thanks to NetGalley for providing me a complimentary copy of EVERY TIME YOU GO AWAY by Abigail Johnson in exchange for my honest review.***

4.5 STARS

Rebecca lives next door to Ethan’s grandparents. The two become friends as kids when his mom drops him off to get clean. As quickly as he arrives he disappears, returning at various intervals without their childhoods. Now seventeen, Ethan is back after a four year absence, angry and resentful. Rebecca, partially paralyzed from an accident that killed her father carries even more scars on the inside. The two emotionally damaged teens try to regain their friendship and maybe more in EVERY TIME YOU GO AWAY.

I enjoy Abigail Johnson’s writing style, the characters she creates and her storytelling. Though the characters are now seventeen, EVERY TIME YOU GO AWAY will appeal more toward older middle grade and younger young adult readers as it lacks some of the grittiness and harsher realities of substance abuse older readers would expect.

Thinking of my clients whose parents abused substances, I can’t imagine any would still have hope or try to locate a parent who left rehab for the umpteenth time when there has never been a period of sustained recovery. By the time they’re seventeen, they’re jaded to the unkept promises and while they’re often parentified and blame themselves, they also lack hope that *this time* will be different.

My favorite character was John, Rebecca’s future stepfather. I love how he tried to show Rebecca that her mom demonstrated love in different ways than she did. I could see how her mom’s coldness felt like a lack of love to Rebecca and it made me think of people in my life who were less demonstrative, showing love in deeds rather than words like her mom. This is a great message for young people depicted through the actions of characters, something I wish I had read as a young person.

In the preface Abigail Johnson says she never thought she’d write a paraplegic character and that while Rebecca’s story is not hers and Rebecca is not Johnson, Rebecca couldn’t have been written by an able-bodied person. The experience of someone who’s had to navigate spaces that don’t accommodate wheelchairs, so many places like doors, tables, bathrooms, door handles I’d never considered, could only be told authentically by someone who knows from experience. When I was in college in the early 1980s I worked retail. A customer in a wheelchair complained because the clothing racks were too close together and she couldn’t get through or even shop. It was Christmas time, we jammed as much merchandise as we could into our department. I figured it shouldn’t matter because we rarely had customers in wheelchairs. This was before the Americans with Disabilities Act and not long after Handicapped Parking, as it was then called, be more common. I don’t think I realized until reading EVERY TIME YOU GO AWAY how awful my thoughts about the customer’s very justified concern were. I share this in my review to illustrate the importance of Johnson writing a character like Rebecca are. Representation matters and the manner in which Johnson shows Rebecca’s daily life obstacles are less about her paralysis and more about inadequate accommodations by people who probably thought like I did in the 1980s or not at all because they never had to.

I can’t read the title EVERY TIME YOU GO AWAY without the song ringing in my head. This important book should be in every middle and high school classroom and library.