Rebecca and Ethan have both been through their fare share of grief. Will it tear them apart or bring them together? This is such a sweet and emotional story of friendship, healing, forgiveness, and love.

Ethan and Rebecca met eight years ago. Every time Ethan's mom would try to get clean again, she would drop him off at his grandparents. And then he would be gone again ... until the next time.

It has been three years since the last time Ethan left, and a lot has changed.
Both dealing with their own issues, Ethan and Rebecca have a push and pull relationship that left my head spinning.

Look I remember what it was like being a teenager, I remember the angst and the rollercoaster of emotions, and I am all for reading about it.
But this one was too much. I felt like this whole book was two characters taking turns being mad at each other.

A second chance romance where the MMC and FMC meet again after both going through tragedy/obstacles on their own. I'm always a fan of real life events being obstacles characters face and grow from. Ethan would stay with his grandparents when his mom was unable to care for him. Rebecca lived next door. They were friends who could have been more. Then 2 years after he left his grandparents she's in an accident and ends up paralyzed. When Ethan returns, she fears too much has changed between them.

I'm not usually a YA/NA reader, but I love books with disability rep and decided to give this one a chance. It was a great read.

If you can handle grief and a little soul searching, trauma healing read this one.

Ethan and Rebecca go through a lot to get to the end of this book and the place they end.

It is a story that takes places over an extended time and each time the grief and the real life gets even more real.

This is definitely a second chance, we worked through life to get here story and I truly think you will enjoy it.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for a chance to read and review.

Thanks to NetGalley, Abigail Johnson and Inkyard Press for this ARC. Rebecca and Ethan have spent splintered time together over a span of years, first as children and now as teens. Rebecca is now in a wheelchair, and Ethan is still worrying and searching for his mom. Both have demons and difficult relationships with adults in their lives. Finally, they have to decide, are they in this together or are they done with each other.

Wonderful story, great character development, great writing! Highly recommend this book. I thoroughly enjoyed it

This was a beautifully written story about guilt, family, childhood trauma and friendship starring characters who feel extremely real and vulnerable. The progression of Ethan and Rebecca's relationship was understated in a way that a lot of YA relationships aren't, and I truly appreciated the development that happened. There were definitely parts of the plot that lagged, making the pacing of the book a bit odd because the chapters were short, which usually quickens the pace. For the majority of the book, I also just wanted to scream at the characters to actually talk to each other because the lack of communication was astounding. Overall, this was a heartfelt, authentic story that I really enjoyed.

Hmm. A combination love story and comparing trauma. The ways that the people closest to us hurt us the most. That sort of thing. I think it's the obvious direction of the plot that I struggle with the most. Yes, there's a lot of back and forth and will they/won't they. We know how it's going to end and I sort of wish it had taken a different path.

Rounded up to 3.5 stars.
I so appreciate a book that has depth and authors that are willing to address heavy topics. I especially love when authors like Abigail Johnson write about these topics from a personal place, like the disability representation in this story comes from Abigail's own experience. Yes, this is a second chance romance, but it's not meant to be a light-hearted story and I love it all the more for that. The journey through heartache, sorrow, grief, forgiveness and acceptance make it a beautiful story that I think the young adult audience would resonate with and find comfort in. Thank you NetGalley and Inkyard Press for a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Here I am, once again, trying desperately to find the words to review a book that made me sob uncontrollably but nothing I think of can do this book justice

Ethan and Rebecca’s story is one of loss, trauma, letting go of guilt, and ultimately learning to live for yourself. While there is a childhood friends to lovers romance tied up in this story I think that ultimately the healing that happens for these characters is the most important and my favorite part.

This is told in a multiple POV between the two MCs with several flashbacks to the past which I think really helps us see how their friendship has grown over the years, despite the fact that Ethan always ends up leaving to go back to his mother.

CWs: child abuse/neglect, substance abuse, death of a parent, physical trauma

If you have a teen in your life who yearns for a real story- hand them this title. I can definitely see this being made into a movie. It's very John Green like.

I love a book that incorporates some form of overcoming into a real story and Abigail Johnson nailed it! I was very intrigued by the author's own story when I looked her up having overcome her own challenges after suffering paralysis from an accident, and I now know why this story was so beautifully written.

The story follows Rebecca and Ethan who were on and off friends as he came in and out of her life, but now he is back and things are different. He's far more jaded by his personal struggles with an addict mother and she's in a wheelchair after an accident injured her and killed her father. I knew right away there was going to be a lot of emotion in this story. I wasn't so sure I wanted to cry, but honestly, it wasn't that type of emotional. I felt a lot, but it was more a sadness because I felt these kids were given too much in their young lives and pride as you watch them grow in the book. Johnson was really able to hit these hard topics in a way that educated and showed the reality woven into this story. She not only hit one heavy topic, addiction but also about overcoming a traumatic injury that changes a life.

There was nothing I did not like about this story. While I usually dislike jumping back and forth in time, I felt this was well-placed and gave a little insight into a current situation, and wasn't over the top. I loved the character development and while there were side characters that helped guide the story and the characters themselves, the focus was really on Ethan and Rebecca the whole time. I'm a huge fan of Abigail Johnson's writing and cannot wait to go get the next book.

Ethan and Rebecca met as kids when Ethan's addict mom dropped him off with her parents while she was off 'getting better.' They became fast friends and adventure buddies. But Rebecca missed her friend more and more each time Ethan's mom came back for him, and Ethan felt pressure to be the one to keep his mom clean and alive despite the awful situations this put him in. Now, Ethan has come back after a long absence to a Rebecca who has been changed by a horrible accident that took his dad and the use of her legs. The time apart and hardships are making it impossible to ignore all the little cracks in their friendship, especially when Ethan refuses to face reality and Rebecca feels like he's just counting the days until he leaves again with his mom and keeping her true feelings hidden from everyone around her.
First of all, I am amazed at Johnson's ability to write a book full of positive vibes around a plot that touches on such dark topics. Even when Ethan and Rebecca are on the outs or forced to face the consequences of their choices and those around them, there's this feeling that things will work out in the end. I really appreciate it when YA books aren't afraid to touch difficult topics without making it a depressing read—extra brownie points for Johnson on that front.
Then there's the fact that the things both are facing feel like something unfortunately plausible. There are no exaggerated situations, only the sad realities that people can fall into. It makes connecting with both characters easy and it helps see both their POVs enough that you can't really fault either of them for their choices.
An overall excellent read that gave me lots to think about and be thankful for.

Happy thanks to NetGalley and Inkyard Press for the emotional read!

The story alternates points of view between Ethan and Rebecca, with some chapters taking place in the present (labeled now) and some in the past (labeled before). While the timeline is never as clearly laid out in the narrative as it is in the book’s cover copy, I didn’t have any trouble putting things in some kind of order. I’m not sure I was always completely right about how I assembled the events together, but I think it was close enough that everything still made sense.

I loved the scenes in which Rebecca describes making jewelry. It was easy to feel her love for her craft and to picture some of the pieces she worked on. I thought it was cool the way her work played into the story with the different pieces creating or representing connections to other people.

Ethan’s interest in plants was cool, too. It didn’t really ever become as central a thing as Rebecca’s jewelry-making did, but it was still a cool, not often explored area of interest.

Rebecca is a wheelchair user and has been since the car accident that killed her dad. Because of the straightforwardness of the narrative, I found it easy to picture moments like transferring to a car or what it was like when someone touched her leg, and she couldn’t feel it. Her paralysis was present in the story, but it isn’t a story about paralysis, if that makes sense. I felt like the author did a perfect job crafting the balance between helping readers picture Rebecca and her environment and the impact it would have on her experience without making it seem intrusive or artificial.

I also really appreciated that there was more than one wheelchair user in the story. Amelia, Rebecca’s friend, mentor, and employer, also uses a wheelchair. This created moments in which two people could talk about their lives and experiences and offer two different perspectives. I loved that.

Book Review of Every Time You Go Away by Abigail Johnson

Cover Story: Paper Flowers
BFF Charm: Big Sister
Swoonworthy Scale: 5
Talky Talk: Push and Pull
Bonus Factors: Wheelchair Rep, Found Family
Anti-Bonus Factor: Dan Scott Award for Awful Parenting
Relationship Status: Keeping It Real

Cover Story: Paper Flowers
Black letters spell out the title of the book against a teal background, and the entire thing is covered in paper flowers. A boy with long hair and a girl in a wheelchair, also seemingly made of paper, are perched on the words. While the cover is pretty faithful to the description of the characters (and evokes Ethan’s temporary job at his grandfather’s plant nursery), it’s a bit flavorless. I wish there had been a little bit more to show us the seriousness of the story we’re about to read.

The Deal:
Rebecca and Ethan were best friends eight years ago, when Ethan’s mom dropped him off at his grandparents’ house in Arizona, and Rebecca lived next door. Ethan’s mother is a drug addict and, over the years when she felt she couldn’t handle parenting, she would pawn him off on her parents to sort herself out. But when she was feeling better or more responsible, she would come back for Ethan, and he would follow her home to LA. Rebecca wouldn’t know that Ethan was leaving but would find drawings of flowers on her windowsill in the mornings when he would be gone.

Now, Ethan is back when Joy joins – then skips out on – rehab, and Rebecca’s life has been upended: she was in a car crash that rendered her paralyzed below the waist, and the crash killed her father. She’s still learning what it means to reimagine her life as a disabled person, and holds a lot of guilt about her father’s death. Ethan wants to find his mom. Rebecca wants to talk to her mom, who has pulled away since the accident. But maybe home isn’t a place, it’s a person… someone you’ve known since you were kids…

BFF Charm: Big Sister
Our two protagonists need someone to cry on, that’s for sure. Ethan has been abandoned multiple times by his mother. Rebecca blames herself for the accident and her father’s death. They try to confide in each other, but reuniting as best friends is complicated when Rebecca is still hurt from the last time Ethan left without a word of warning, and Ethan is distracted by the search for his mother, who has checked herself out of rehab and yet hasn’t come back to claim him.

These two keep trying to reach each other, but they keep hurting each other inadvertently. It feels like a dance where they won’t ever find their way to each other. And each time the chance slips through one of their fingers, I just want to be there for either of them and let them cry on my shoulder.

Swoonworthy Scale: 5
There’s a wonderful tug-of-war happening between the two POVs that you really feel like you know these two seventeen-year-olds. Rebecca yearns for the boy who painted murals in her treehouse. Ethan craves stability, but his life keeps getting shaken up by the chaos that follows his mother around. When they do have a chance to meet in the middle, their spark is electric. The only quibble I have with this book is that there were not enough moments when they got close and shared a kiss.

Talky Talk: Push and Pull
Johnson is great at writing tortured souls who don’t know what they want – but they’re aware that they are not happy. The characters were complicated, flawed, and gosh, so darn stubborn, it was hard to root for them sometimes, but they were wonderfully human and I grew to appreciate the story more because of it. My father-in-law once said, “A partnership is not always fifty-fifty. Sometimes it’s eighty-twenty, sometimes it’s thirty-seventy.” And I think that kind of partnership is apparent in Rebecca and Ethan’s case: they keep trying to fill that gap for each other. It’s just, well, not always in their best interest to do so.

Bonus Factors: Wheelchair Rep
I don’t see a lot of rep about wheelchair users in fiction, so bravo for this book! Johnson herself is a wheelchair user, and in her author’s note she mentions that this book is near and dear to her heart. All of Rebecca’s frustrations, observations, vehemence, and acceptance of her situation seem very authentic. And Ethan’s reactions to her being in a wheelchair – that is, he finds her stunning and wonderful, and takes care to understand Rebecca’s needs – are refreshing in fiction. Yes, there are people who don’t accommodate Rebecca and her chair, but Ethan is not one of them. We like him for that.

Bonus Factor: Found Family
Rebecca’s mentor and boss at a jewelry-making studio, Amelia (also a wheelchair user) is a great addition to the group. Amelia’s husband and toddler are sweet to Rebecca, and Amelia understands Rebecca’s complicated feelings about not being able to walk anymore. Which is good, because…

Anti-Bonus Factor: Dan Scott Award for Awful Parenting
Rebecca’s mother kinda sucks for most of the book. She avoids her daughter, she barely acknowledges when Rebecca reaches out for her… She more than hints at wanting Rebecca out of the house and in a different state for college, which makes Rebecca feel unwanted, and the two can’t even mourn Rebecca’s father together because she’s just that distant.

Likewise, Ethan’s mom also has her own problems. She’s an addict, and in that there are issues, like lack of stability and narrow-sightedness about what she wants (her next hit being more important than taking care of her own son). Johnson is careful not to make Joy out to be a caricature of an addict, but these are some serious issues she’s taking on, and in lesser hands this book could’ve been a disaster.

Relationship Status: Keeping It Real
I was somewhat surprised to learn that Johnson has written multiple books since 2017, and yet I hadn’t heard of her before. This book shows an understanding of complicated situations and of nuance, and I think is very strong. Don’t sleep on this one, friends! It’s a winner.

This is a really weird book for me to read. If you know me, you know why. I am not one who likes to read about anyone that has substance abuse problems because of some bad history with my family. It always hits too close to home. And I really don’t know what made me finish this one, but I couldn’t stop listening.

They met and became best friends. And then they were ripped away from each other. And then it happened over and over again. And though it hurt them, they continued to be around each other and be friend each other over and over again. But this last time, they’re almost adults, and things are so much more different than they were the last time they were together. So much has changed, but so much has also stayed the same. Will these things make or break their friendship?

So the part that I know way too much about in this book was Ethan’s. Not so much the coming and going every time, but the adult figure in a kid’s life who is suffering from substance abuse. I really should read the synopsis of books before I decide to add them to my TBR. But this one stood out to me and once I started it I couldn’t stop. The way he made decisions based on her, the way he was filled with so much anger all the time, the way he had so many tips and tricks for when she was doing all these things. It broke me. But it broke me because it all felt so real. No the person who had problems wasn’t my mom, but all of this still resonated with me. I know a fraction of what he was feeling, which is probably why I didn’t want to look away. He felt so real and I hated that I knew a piece of his pain.

As for Rebecca, I didn’t feel anything as visceral towards her as I did for Ethan. But that was only because I’m not a wheelchair user. Her wheelchair was from an accident, one that made her also lose her father. She’s left with a non-affectionate mom who she thinks blames her for her father’s death as well as doesn’t like her. I was broken about that for her. If nothing else, Johnson can really write an emotional character.

The only thing I didn’t like was the non-linear timeline. It kept jumping back and forth and it ended up making things seem really out of order. And I hate the way things were revealed that way. Normally I would like books like this, but when it’s dropped into the middle of the story and the main characters and what happened to them are the only things that are emotional, it’s not as good. And let me tell you, this book should have been a tear-jerker, but it just wasn’t. What they went through was emotional, but the way it was written just didn’t take it there. I think this is the reason the content didn’t hit me as bad. (Well that and because his mom didn’t pass away.) One thing I wish was looked more into and more explained tho was her mom. Why was she that way? Was she autistic? Did she just not want to be touched? I really wanted more than just “I wasn’t good at that stuff.” As a mom I was furious with her. Even if you did do all of those things for the reason you told her, you should have been way more transparent. I couldn’t imagine that her mom didn’t think for one second that she might not have taken raised tables the right way as a teenager. I swear parents in YA books get worse and worse.

The romance was ok. I was afraid that they would be falling for each other because they were going through things, but they were actually friends first and then started falling in love. The things that happened to them happened after they’d already been friends for years. But they never actually got together and everything, so I categorized this as more of a coming of age book that had strong romantic themes. Watching them grow and need each and then push each other away was just what I needed at that moment.

I wish there was so much more umph in this book. But then again I don’t know that I would have been ok enough to finish it. Again, I don’t have a disability, but I thought this was ok. She was independent and she had so much confidence. And he let her make her own mistakes and choices and I loved that. I was surprised to have liked this as much as I did.

This was sweet, heartfelt, dealt with some tough subjects and was a great YA novel when you want to FEEL something. I loved Ethan and Rebecca together - I did feel like they acted their age and it was something that was alternately sweet and sometimes frustrating to read. The pining and first love feeling was so palpable, and the way this made me cry into my pillowcase. I enjoyed reading this.

Ethan and Rebecca meet when Ethan is dropped off at his grandparents house one day. His mom is in a constant battle with drug addiction and drops Ethan off with his grandparents when she goes to get clean. The problem is, her treatments never "take". Its a revolving door of coming and leaving. While Rebecca and Ethan become fast friends, they both understand Ethan will leave again. They are reunited several years later however, Rebecca is now a paralyzed wheelchair user. The story is told from each character's point of view with flashbacks to explain current day situations. It was a love story but also one that dealth with deeper issues such as forgiveness, acceptance, and coming of age.

Sometimes you start a book and are immediately captivated in a way that you know you're going to devour it one sitting. But at the same time, it's a book that once you close it, you keep thinking about it. That was this book. It is overflowing with the most raw and authentic emotion, and I just loved it. It's the story of two friends who have been through a whole heckuva lot of stuff, and they are figuring out who they are now. For Rebecca, that's learning life as a human in a wheelchair after being in a car wreck that killed her father. For Ethan, that's figuring out how to navigate his mom's continued struggles with substance use. For both of them, it's figuring out their relationship now. The book also includes flashbacks to "then" which I appreciated to really understand who Rebecca and Ethan were. I also liked both of them told the story. This was just an outstanding read from beginning to every page in between to end. Thanks to NetGalley for the look at this recent release.

Every Time You Go Away
By: Abigail Johnson

Genre:
Young Adult, Realistic fiction

Red Flags:
Disabilities, Intoxication, Substance Abuse, Addiction, Neglect,

Summary/ Review:

Rebecca and Ethan were childhood friends, growing up next door to each other, establishing a childhood connection, that is until Ethan is whisked away…time and time again. Every time Ethan went away, he left a flower on Rebeccca’s windowsill to let her know he was gone again. Their established friendship is fostered over many years from childhood into the early teenage years, then…it stops. Now they are young adults filled with choices, and consequences of those choices. The author depicts a beautiful transition between the young childhood friendship, and the newer young adult relationship. Ethan has moved back into his grandparents house again, and he is trying to repair the damage from the last time he left. Rebecca is a different woman now, disabled and trying to move on in life. The chemistry dynamic between these two characters was perfect for a young adult novel. The plot is told in the two points of view which transition smoothly throughout the storyline. I enjoyed all the elements of this novel, I laughed, and cried…it’s an emotional roller coaster. Highly Recommended!

Thank you to Abigail Johnson, Inkyard Press, and Netgalley for the Advanced Readers Copy for free. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

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