Book Review - "When we Vanish" by Yael Maree

I used to read every night before I went to sleep.  In the days before facebook and games on phones....

I have decided that I need to put down my technology more and get back to doing more of the things I loved before facebook was a thing.

The author of this book is a dear friend of mine.  Ironically, I wouldn't know her if it wasn't for facebook. We have only met once but in that meeting we just kind of clicked.  We are in contact regularly and she is someone that will just check in on me randomly to see how I'm doing. 

She wrote this book in 2016.  I started reading it in 2016.... and finished it last night.

It wasn't that the book wasn't gripping, trust me, it was, my mind was just focussed on other things and I didn't pick it up again for years.

To me this book is about not feeling seen, living your life like a stranger in someone else's story, and trying to rediscover who you are and what is important to you.

I earmarked a couple of passages that really grabbed me.

"Memory is all about forgetting, my friend, and life is all about losing ourselves.  Every day we are losing something precious to us. Time, moments, love, all these things we can never get back again, but it is all part of being alive, is it not?"

and

"There is never any joy if first you don't know hardship and sadness, there is never any healing if you don't first endure suffering."

Being the person I am and believing that things happen for a reason, I truly believe that the reason I didn't finish this book all those years ago is because I needed the lessons within it NOW at this point in my life.  I didn't need it then. 

The first passage relates to my recent blogs about dreaming and memories.  The second passage is very relevant to my life right now.

This book was very well written and so detailed that I could picture everything in it, even though I have never been to America, Thailand, Paris or Africa. The story line was enthralling and I always wanted to read "just one more chapter".

***** (5/5 stars)

Hopefully this will be the first of many more book reviews to come. My reviews will always tie into my own mental health journey and keep relevant to this blog.

Yael's books are available on Amazon.

HUGS xxx