The Chaos of Standing Still

by Jessica Brody

Ryn, eighteen, trapped by a massive blizzard in the Denver airport, meets some unique characters who help her cope with survivor's guilt on the first anniversary of her best friend's death.

• ISBN10: 1481499181
• ISBN13: 9781481499187
• Publish Date: 28 November 2017
• Publish Status: Active
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Imprint: Simon Pulse
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 416
• Language: English

Reviews

[Stephanie]

I always look forward to Jessica Brody books, and this one did not disappoint. Ryn really has some things to work through. Her best friend, Lottie, died in a car accident almost exactly a year ago, and Ryn is having a hard time coming to terms with it because she knows she should have been in the car with Lottie when it happened, but thanks to some food poisoning, she wasn't. Ryn doesn't know how to grieve her best friend, which ends up making her seem a little crazy. She copes the best way she can, and that's by carrying on conversations with Lottie in her head and constantly googling questions on her phone.

There is a lot going on in the book. It takes place in 24 hours, which I always find fun to read. Ryn is stuck in the Denver airport thanks to a blizzard. There's an illuminati conspiracy storyline, there's the obvious dead best friend storyline and all that that entails with flashbacks of therapy sessions and moments with Lottie There's the Xander storyline, and then there's the Denver employee's who Ryn becomes friends with storyline. There's a LOT going on, but I never felt too overwhelmed with it. I think it helped break up the crazy grief-stricken storyline and made the book a little more fun.

[Sam@WLABB]

Rating: 3.5 Stars

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy is always increasing, or in other words, we are always tending towards chaos. This was what came to my mind, as I considered the main character of this book, Ryn, and the title of this book. Ryn was stuck. She couldn't move on after the death of her best friend, and as she continually tried to keep her grief under control, she slowly started to unravel, thus moving towards more chaos.

I have to confess, I am a lover of grief books. When I read the synopsis for this book, I immediately wanted to read it, and work through the grieving process with Ryn. I absolutely loved the way Brody wrote this aspect of the book. Ryn was dripping with sadness and pain. She acquired the name "mopey girl" during the course of this book, because she was in fact, a mopey girl. She had withdrawn from life, had stopped doing things she enjoyed, and was living in some sort of limbo, where she was clawing at small bits and pieces to try and keep Lottie alive. I felt that pain with her. Well done, Ms. Brody!

Despite this being a grief book, there were lots of fun and light parts, which I really enjoyed. Ryn may have been trapped in the airport due to a storm, but at least this airport was filled with some colorful and interesting characters. I absolutely adored Siri and Jimmy. I believe they were the comic relief and they really rose to the challenge. I enjoyed quite a few laughs thanks to these two. There were also some very interesting encounters with a child prodigy, Troy. When he spoke science, I listened.

But my favorite character, and probably one of my favorite things in this book, was Xander. From his muppet shirt to his charm and sense of humor, he was the one I was drawn to every time he was on page. He was fun, sweet, and genuine. There were some fantastic things he did or encouraged Ryn to do, which brought a smile to my face.

There was one thing that kept this book from being a home run for me, and it was Lottie. We were presented with quite a few flashbacks, as Ryn recalled some moments in her friendship with Lottie, and I hate to speak ill of the dead, but she was a hot mess. She was obviously in a lot of pain herself, even if she never explicitly stated it. She exhibited so many self destructive behaviors, and didn't seem to mind dragging Ryn into troublesome situations. It was hard for me to care about her. HOWEVER, this did not deter me from caring about Ryn, because it really mattered to me that she confronted her grief. I wanted her to get past this, move on, and experience all the wonderful things that were waiting for her, and I was so happy she found some people one night in an airport, who were able to help her do that.

I also have to commend Brody on the ending. That is something I appreciate in general, and something I have found Brody does well. It was a lovely and touching ending, which may have cause me to shed a tear or two. I was really happy with where she left Xander and Ryn, and Ryn was definitely no longer standing still at the end of this story.

Overall: A heartfelt story of loss and finding the will to push through the pain.

FAVORITE QUOTES

"We prefer the term 'prodigy'. 'Genius' was tainted when those morons at the Apple Store started using it. Ooh! Look at me! I can do a hard reset on your phone! I'm a genius!"

"but I never drew in color. I preferred the simplicity of my black sketch pen. It turned everything into black and white. Right and Wrong. Truth and lie. It uncomplicated a complicated world."

"Because that's what good girls like me do when they lose their anchor. They get lost at sea."

"His hand reaches for my face. His fingertips trace a line from my cheekbone to my chin. His skin on my skin is like the life raft I've been floundering for."

"Well, anyway, Albert Einstein once said, 'Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.'"
I squint. "What does that mean?"
"It means everyone's problems are relative. Even mine."

"I was the planet to her sun. I lit up because I was near her."

"The English language has over one million words in it, and none of them are good enough for Lottie. None of them will capture what I saw when I looked at her. What I see now when I remember her. How she will forever look through my filtered view of the world."

"That she preferred my drawings to her own reflection because I mercifully chose to leave out all her flaws. I never told her that I just didn't see any."

**I would like to thank the publisher for the advanced copy of this book. Quotes are from an ARC and may change upon publication.