â â â â â "Eat, Pray, Love, meets 13 Reasons Why. Iâm officially hooked on this book."
Sophie is desperate to stitch her life back together.
Quirky. De-railed. Unhinged. Untamed. Awkward. And ultimately hanging on by a thread, after a life changing car crash changes the direction of her life as she knew it. Navigating loosing love, death, and finding her place in the world she sets out on a journey to fall back in love, with life.
Between sewing sarcastic cross-stitches, threads of sexual tension, and a rift of spiritual revelations Sophie finds herself new friendships, traveling new lands, and living in limbo between worlds. Foreign worlds. Haunted by her past. And stuck in her present. Ugh, life? What a dick sometimes, am I right?
Enter Chris, the seductive Australian backpacker who just might help her come back to the reality of now. After a string of fateful meetings Sophie if forced to confront the fabric of her life. Stay tangled by the past? Or cut herself free for a future.
Guilt. Lust. Grief. Longing. Welcome to Sophieâs awkward world, and how it unravelled.
Aka one big fat knotted mess.
â â â â â "Eat, Pray, Love, meets 13 Reasons Why. Iâm officially hooked on this book."
Sophie is desperate to stitch her life back together.
Quirky. De-railed. Unhinged. Untamed. Awkward. And ultimately hanging on by a thread, after a life changing car crash changes the direction of her life as she knew it. Navigating loosing love, death, and finding her place in the world she sets out on a journey to fall back in love, with life.
Between sewing sarcastic cross-stitches, threads of sexual tension, and a rift of spiritual revelations Sophie finds herself new friendships, traveling new lands, and living in limbo between worlds. Foreign worlds. Haunted by her past. And stuck in her present. Ugh, life? What a dick sometimes, am I right?
Enter Chris, the seductive Australian backpacker who just might help her come back to the reality of now. After a string of fateful meetings Sophie if forced to confront the fabric of her life. Stay tangled by the past? Or cut herself free for a future.
Guilt. Lust. Grief. Longing. Welcome to Sophieâs awkward world, and how it unravelled.
Aka one big fat knotted mess.
I remember when you caught my eye. I peered at you through a bookshelf and did a double-take before walking down the aisle toward you. Something drew me to you, almost as though I knew you were the one. I looked at you and said to myself, youâre coming home with me.Â
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I remember picking you up and rubbing my hand over your rich, hessian
exterior, your colors reminded me of a Buddhist robe, bright red and yellowâyou oozed inspiration in a peaceful sort of way. Yup, I had to have this journal.
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From that day on you were always in my handbag or jean shortsâ back pocket. You became part of my body, like a ring from a dead grandma or a cell phone to a text-a-holicâyou were my treasure. A safe place for me to scribe my most secret admissions. And in truth, a place for me to realize them.
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The first time I wrote in you I was even worried you would judge meâcan you imagine? After all, you were nothing more than blank pieces of paper bound together with glue! But there is something so permanent about putting thoughts onto paper. The truth can bellow like an enraged bull when you write it down and itâs staring back at you, ready to charge into your life. A huff and puff of brutal honesty. Often not even known to the writer until it is written.
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I decided I wasnât going to write to you as if I were reporting the news. News reports are for strangers. I would try to write to you as a friend. As though you were my guardian angel, my cosmic team, my soul sisterâlistening to my every word. And so, I began to share my life with you.
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Hola, Journal,
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Thatâs âhelloâ in Spanishânot that many folks here in this small town of Karitane, New Zealand know what the hell âholaâ means. Karitane is quite possibly one of the most boring, small farm towns in the world. If I said hola to someone they would probably reply with, âGesundhelt, dear.â Â Â
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Donât get me wrong, New Zealand is beautiful, safe, green, and lush. But itâs all I know, and I want to know more. I want to be in a room where I donât understand a word of what anyone is saying, where no one knows me, where I can be reborn! I want to take a million photos of new things, new customs, cultures, and costumes. I want to look around me and think âif only people could see through my eyes right now.â Today I am only daydreaming about new lands, trying new foods, and kissing foreign guys. Cutting out photos of exotic places. Tomorrow I will be there!
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I was at the local supermarket today in the international food aisle and bumped into old Mrs. Harper. A bitter woman who has lived here in Karitane foreverâshe wears the same knitted hats she handmade back in the â60s; I swear she smells like dust and peppermint. Anyway, she saw me reading the ingredients on a taco sauce packet and asked me, âWhat is a taco?â! I mean seriouslyâa taco? You could say the taco was a turning point for me.
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As I pushed my cart to the checkout, I took a good look around me. Not a thing in that supermarket had changed since I was a little girl. The same checkout ladies were still gossiping like hens, with a few more grey hairs on their heads and a handful of crowâs feet laugh lines. And there was Carl, the same old janitor who walks around the aisles dragging a dirty, damp mop behind him. Yup, the only change in this town was age. Come to think of it, why do they even have an international foods section? I have never seen anyone else buy anything out of that aisle. These small-town New Zealanders like toast, cereal, meat, and veggies. I mean, why bother!
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My best friend Fiona and I have always been in sync. Fi and I have known each other our whole lives, twenty-one years, since we were toothless, pigtailed, finger-up-our-nose kids. We even started school on the same day, and we were both petrified from being thrust into a strange place. The teacher introduced us and made us hold hands, and we have been inseparable ever since. She is the best friend I could have asked for. She has always supported me, made me laugh, and is part of almost all my memories growing up, but lately Iâve started to see a difference in where weâre heading in life.
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She loves Karitane. She is perfectly happy maturing into the âborn and raisedâ neighbor I cringe about as my predicted future. I know one day Iâm going to have to let go of her hand and get some memories to call my own.
Itâs you and me, Journal.
 Love, Sophie.
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The story follows Sophie as she falls in love with Joel at first sight and they begin to build a whole future that has them together and united in their heads that they donât get to see through as Joel passes away untimely in an accident. Feeling trapped, lonely, and in pain, Sophie decides to see their plans of exploration through on her own by traveling around the world where she gives in to new experiences, learns new things, makes new friends, and finds herself holding the interest of a new man.
The story starts out as a journal entry, emphasizing its importance as if the story is to be told through it, but that is quickly abandoned as it becomes a casual stop every now and then in which nothing is revealed that we donât already know, making it pointless and not that interesting.
Whatever it is about Sophie that attracts these men to her and whatever it is that makes her fall in love with them, we donât see it, weâre simply told of it. The conversations between the characters fall flat and boring. There seems to be no real chemistry between the characters â none that we get to see anyway. Perhaps if weâd been allowed on the conversations that made them fall in love or if weâd seen a slow burn between Sophie and Joel then his death wouldâve mattered more to us. We donât even get to see what Sophie was like with her friends before, weâre simply told of how she was, so her change of behavior doesnât really affect us.
As for the spirituality that Sophie goes through, it feels lacking; at some points expanded seemingly to fill out pages, at others cut too short as if the author was simply looking the information up on the internet and paraphrasing it into the story.
The story is about moving on, but we donât see enough to really get a sense of what is being moved on from, and we donât see enough to really get a sense of what is being moved onto.