Delilah: The Making of Red (Breaking Nova, #2.5)

by Jessica Sorensen

[Suz @ Bookish Revelations]

I'm discovering lately that my favorite kinds of characters, are those who are mostly unlikable because they seem the most real to me in a lot of ways that hold my interest. [b:Delilah: The Making of Red|20661626|Delilah The Making of Red (Nova, #2.5)|Jessica Sorensen|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1391185816s/20661626.jpg|39960256] is an incredibly, eye-opening, intense look at who Delilah was and how she became the broken and tormented person she is in the story. You could somewhat argue that she never really stood a chance in life, because of the way her mother raised her, her absentee father, and Dylan. It isn't any secret that I didn't particularly find any qualities that I liked about her while reading [b:Breaking Nova|17672770|Breaking Nova (Nova, #1)|Jessica Sorensen|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1376496716s/17672770.jpg|24672201] and [b:Saving Quinton|18210225|Saving Quinton (Nova, #2)|Jessica Sorensen|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388852598s/18210225.jpg|25631383], but I didn't dislike her either because I accepted that she was a product of her circumstances. I'm not saying that she's not responsible for her actions or that they don't have consequences, what I am saying is that what she endured between her mother's neglect and Dylan's abuse, is what sent her spiraling hard and as fast as she did.

Delilah's story, was an ugly, complicated, mess of a story and it was hard for me to read it and stomach all of the abuse that she took from Dylan and the way that he was able to stamp out any self-worth or confidence that she could possibly have in herself. She's dark, prickly, and pretty much every bit the bitch that life and her circumstances have made her. There is something inside of her that is very broken, so broken that as she's fading in and out of consciousness you can't help but feel for her. It makes you want to reach out and save her, as she comes to the realization that she should have made better choices. My heart ached for her, I wanted to pull her up from the darkness and save her myself. I wanted to tell her that she could still be better, that she was worthy of love and being loved without being abused and without having to abuse drugs to reach the state of numbness to lock out the pain of her own tragedies.

This story left me reeling and it left me in constant state of confusion, deep sadness, and crazy conflicted emotions flailing all over the place. I don't know about you or how you deal with all of the feels that a book can give you, but for me it sort of sends me spiraling a bit. I didn't go to a dark place, I went somewhere else. I went where I just wanted to see nothing, but goodness and hope and light for Delilah and yet I knew, that before I finished reading it wouldn't end up the way I wanted and that's okay with me because it left me with the thought of something [a:Joss Whedon|18015|Joss Whedon|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1302721520p2/18015.jpg] always said when it came to his fans and what they wanted. "I need to give the fans what they need, not necessarily what they want." That's a very true statement and one that's relatively accurate a good portion of the time. I can't help, but think that's what [a:Jessica Sorensen|4601855|Jessica Sorensen|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1388093087p2/4601855.jpg] was doing with Delilah and her story that she had to tell. That even if you wanted something good to come out of it, it was always going to be headed in the opposite direction instead.

I love Nova to a fault, but goodness this girl. I just want to shake her a little bit sometimes and say, "enough with the guilt okay!" You can't save everyone all of the time and especially at the risk of your own mental health. It's just not an accurate depiction of what life is like most the time, because it is hard, it is real, and it complicated in a lot of messy fucked up ways beyond your wildest imagination. I think [a:Jessica Sorensen|4601855|Jessica Sorensen|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1388093087p2/4601855.jpg] gets that full on and she's unafraid to tackle the realities of that part of life, the gritty, dark, and spiraling out of control aspect as brilliantly as she does and with such intensity and emotion that it will leave you breathless and reeling a greater portion of the time. You just get her books and these stories, they are very real and they are hard, but so necessarily. It can not always be a happily-ever-after, it can not always be positive, but even in the darkest of places and the coldest realities of weakness and suffering a light (just a glimmer, a flicker maybe) still remains and that's enough because her writing makes it enough.

I am amazed and surprised, I'm not almost always that.