The Art of Losing is a compelling debut that explores issues of addiction, sisterhood, and loss.
On one terrible night, 17-year-old Harley Langston’s life changes forever. At a party she discovers her boyfriend, Mike, hooking up with her younger sister, Audrey. Furious, she abandons them both. When Mike drunkenly attempts to drive Audrey home, he crashes and Audrey ends up in a coma. Now Harley is left with guilt, grief, pain and the undeniable truth that her now ex-boyfriend has a drinking problem. So it’s a surprise that she finds herself reconnecting with Raf, a neighbor and childhood friend who’s recently out of rehab and still wrestling with his own demons. At first Harley doesn’t want to get too close to him. But as her sister slowly recovers, Harley begins to see a path forward with Raf’s help that she never would have believed possible—one guided by honesty, forgiveness, and redemption.
Really well done.
It doesn’t sugarcoat the ugliness that comes with addiction. I know we don’t like to think of teens as addicts but it is a problem that some of them will struggle with. This book follows both paths: when you want to recover and when you don’t recover.
Reading updates
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Started reading
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22 April, 2019:
Finished reading
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22 April, 2019:
Reviewed