In An Instant by Suzanne Redfearn

In An Instant by Suzanne Redfearn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was a very difficult book to read. It was heartbreaking. I love a good cry book, but this one tested my limits. As a parent, as a human. I am giving it 5 stars because... wow. But boy did it hurt. The one saving grace is that so much is shared in the book summary. At one point in the earlier part of the book I actually stopped reading to come back to the summary and got a little relief on knowing at least the immediate fate of some of the characters.

You have the first 25% of the book which is focused on an introduction to the characters and then this horrible accident and the immediate aftermath. That was tragic enough. Then the remaining 75% of the book is about life after this tragedy.

This was a book club pick, and I imagine our discussion of this will not be without tears again. There was so much sadness here. But loss is sad and in that regard, this author did a fantastic job of putting this into words.

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** A little something extra.... I started this book before going to bed. I fell asleep right before the accident happened. I woke up at 3am unable to go back to sleep so I picked the book back up, read about  the accident and realized immediately I wasn't going back to sleep. I didn't put it down until I finished it a few hours later and I cried on an off for the rest of the morning. I may cry more later as I remember this.

Typically in books like this you imagine the sadness is from death. But in reality, most of that is given away in the  book summary.  The sadness here came in the way death affects all the characters.  The sadness came in the decisions that people made on that dark snowy night.  The sadness came in realizing how selfish we can all be.  The sadness came in learning how to move on after something so tragic.