Standing Sideways, by J. Lynn Bailey | {ARC} Book Review #319

A huge Thank-You to Xpresso Book Tours, via Netgalley for allowing me to read Standing Sideways by J. Lynn Bailey in exchange for an honest review.

Trigger Warning:
Grief, Drug Abuse, Alcoholism, Death, & Gun Violence Resulting in Death, Car Accident, Car Accident Resulting in Death. 

When Livia Stone suddenly loses her twin brother, Jasper, she must learn to navigate her new life alone. As she faces tragedy and starts down a road toward self-destruction, Daniel enters Livia’s life—at a moment when she needs it most.

Standing Sideways is a poignant, relevant, and touching story of survival, courage, and compassion that will have readers crying, laughing, and most of all, debating the issues affecting the lives of parents and teens alike on a journey of hope and forgiveness.

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Publication Date: January 30, 2018.

I had thoughts on this book before I actually sat down to read it. Mostly I thought that Standing Sideways would, overall, be a happy book. Oh how wrong I was.

Standing Sideways is a book that I ended up reading in one sitting. I literally could not tear my eyes away from the words that J. Lynn Bailey has written. While the author mentioned that there were some very real aspects of this book, most of the book is fictional. That said though, J. Lynn Bailey’s writing is so vivid, her characters are so real, I could just reach in and pull them out, they’d be real people.

Standing Sideways starts off with us knowing that the main character, Livia, is grieving her brothers death. Through the book, we follow Livia as she lives her life grieving her older brother. We see her make decisions that she shouldn’t. Honestly, I saw a young girl grieving and dealing with her grief in the only way she knew how.

Standing Sideways is at times brutally honest, and at other times, just makes you feel for the characters in the story. My eyes wanted to leak so badly through the last bit of Standing Sideways. Seriously; I’m not a person who normally cries while they read a book. Yet J. Lynn Bailey perfectly pulled at my heartstrings and emotions.

I personally connected with a certain aspect of this novel, which was something that I didn’t expect at all.

In terms of predicting anything, I didn’t particularly want to predict anything, so I didn’t. Thus making Standing Sideways unpredictable.

Seeing Livia’s journey through to the end though was amazing to read about. I’m honestly really glad that I read Standing Sideways.

What makes this book so real, so believable to me is that this book is real. Livia is a smart girl, and she deals with real world problems that actually quite a lot of people face. She makes real life decisions. When Livia decides to do what she does, I can empathize with her.

Overall, while Standing Sideways is a heavier novel, I did enjoy reading it.

Standing Sideways hit me in the chest and still hasn’t let go. I’m going to be remembering Livia’s story for a long time.

I give Standing Sideways, 5 stars on Goodreads.

Happy Reading!
Adele