Review: Making Faces by Amy Harmon

Making Faces by Amy Harmon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

You’ll Need Tissues

I swear this book had me choked up for around 50% of it. It’s a proper tear jerker. This is a story about youth, leaving it behind and learning to live.

Fern is petite, has a head of bright red curls and wore glasses and braces through high school. She was teased and overlooked but she was beautiful inside. Her cousin Bailey was almost exactly the same age as her and they lived next door to each other growing up. They were best friends and close as siblings. Bailey also had Duchennes Muscular Dystrophy. He had the heart of a lion, the wiseness of an old man and a mighty brain. He was also unlikely to live much past aged 21.

At school Fern had a huge crush on Ambrose, a boy who was strong, tall and good looking, and had the weight of the town’s expectations on his shoulders, and barely had any time for a girl like Fern. Instead of heading to college after high school on a full wrestling scholarship he decided to sign up for the army and talked his best friends into joining him.

The book skips back and forth between high school and the current day. We see how each character saw the other and how they relate to each other now they are in their twenties. It’s a really beautiful book and I devoured it in one sitting. I sat with tears streaming down my face for quite a few pages, which is unusual for me. I might get a bit of dampness in the eyes, but never to the point of actual tears.

This book is full of wise and sad things, about the poignancy of grief and loss of loved ones. It’s also about grabbing life with both hands and living it to it’s fullest no matter what. I will say that this is a less a romance and more a book about friendship. It’s definitely a clean romance as there is nothing more than a few kisses. Fern is the daughter of a pastor and her faith and that of her parents is front and centre in the book. As an atheist I find that sort of thing in a book difficult to deal with, but it wasn’t overdone, it was just part of the characters and how they dealt with life.

This is the first book I’ve read by the author and next time I feel the need to bawl my eyes out I’ll look for one of her books.

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