How to Save a Life

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People who are looking for immaculately written, contemporary YA fiction. People who are looking for their mirror image. People who love train journeys. People who like bad Mexican food and pancakes. People who would like to go on a stakeout with a tall, dark, stranger. Coffee not included. Katherine Heigl is probably the most redeemed by the book, but too little time is given to discussing the interpersonal conflicts that led to the explosion in publicity and drama that culminated in the third season of the show.

Okay... Hands down. The author is hell of a brilliant storyteller! But I wished I could relate with the characters she created so reading it wouldn’t be a rough patch for me to get through! Both voices are exceptionally well-realised, essential for such a character-driven story. And while there is some crossover of events between the perspectives, they remain distinct and true to each character. Kerry and Tim are best mates, destined to be doctors. Out celebrating New Years Eve with the rest of their classmates just before they take their exams, suddenly their class mate Joel goes into cardiac arrest. The promising footballer and Kerry's secret crush, is just lying there while his friends panic. Kerry immediately dives into action and begins to perform CPR for 18 minutes, whilst Tim is frozen to the spot. What the three teenagers don't realise, is the impact those crucial 18 minutes will have on the rest of their lives. Over the next 18 years, all three drift in and out of each others lives but always making an impact - whether in a positive or negative way.If you love Grey’s, this is essential reading. It was juicy, riveting, and I had the best time listening to it on audio. There are multiple cast members, writers, and others connected to the show interviewed, and the format is Daisy Jones-esque in the way the dialogue is written. Thank you to my good friend, Shellie, here on GR for sending me this book with a high recommendation. P.S. I love the cover of this book! All in all I couldn’t recommend this book more. I cared, I laughed and read the last few chapters with baited breath. Brilliant read. A lot happens between this description and the very early events in the novel. What will happen to the three as they move into their post school days and life does not (always) cooperate? The oral-history format feels like the wrong approach for a book claiming to be “the inside story,” especially if the interviews are going to be largely culled from (or written in the same style) as the PR-friendly missives you get in EW, People, or TVLine. Very few people seem willing to share the actual truth, leading the reader to try to infer the actual interpersonal dynamics at play.

Zarr writes love interests well, too, even if they don't always seem like love interests at all times. Absent but mentioned, apart but disjointed, the boys in How to Save a Life are more than just the catalysts for their women. Zarr wrote relationships, all kinds of relationships, with a startling acuteness that read like a mirror of reality, because really, boys who wear makeup, and ripped jeans, and listen to Otis...they're real, they're alive, they have feelings, but they're rarely done well in literature. The mother-daughter relationship between Jill and Robin, and Robin and Mandy was heartbreaking and realistic, because really, mothers and daughters? Their relationships? They're a lot more complicated than some authors make them out to be, and they're very hard to reflect, even in real-life conversations. The sisterly-stuff going on between Jill and Mandy touched my heart deeply, and each conversation that went on between them brought tears to my eyes.

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You know, how there are 2 types of books. The first type are the ones that don't leave such an impression on you. They just pass by you without marking their presence and you move on with your life with no alterations on your part. Code Blue--this book is a deadly, wrong-headed, disappointing "oral history" of the TV show. It required almost no writing on the part of the "author" (who wrote almost nothing so she simply was an editor) and includes a whole lot of quotes taken from a variety of sourses, often out of context or making no sense when pieced together. We have three narrators, our tormented MCs we follow their lives for 18 years. Not simple, smooth, peaceful lives they’d dreamed to live! Those lives are full of angsts, dramas, sadness push them use drugs, losing control, making millions of mistakes. At some parts I want to shake some sense into them. They pissed me off a lot just like the people who act like martyrs punishing themselves ! ( Yes, Joel, I’m exactly talking about you!!!) Jill is a high-school girl grieving the loss of her Dad. She has lost most of her friends. She really doesn't know who she is anymore. Her Mother has the hairbrained idea to adopt this baby involving no lawyers and no middle men. Jill sees this as a HUGE problem. She doesn't trust Mandy. She doesn't trust her Mom's judgment. She is skeptical of everything. She thinks her mom is trying to patch a whole in her heart with this baby. She is angry, sad, jealous and confused. She is a mess. Kerry and Tim have been best friends since they first met and both are planning on being doctors. Joel is the up and coming football star. Although they go to the same school, they don't run in the same circles.

This book was moving. It had the potential to be sappy, but it didn’t go there. It is hard to explain what made me love this book, the words are hard to find. I identify with Jill. I have a tendency to keep to myself and hold people at a distance sometimes. Maybe I should stop being like that. Kerry and Tim are doing St. Johns Ambulance training on New Years Eve when oel goes into cardiac arrest and his heart stops for eighteen minutes. These eighteen minutes were to connect them forever. The characters are lkeable and a little flawed. We follow the characters from when they are young adults and we get to know them a little better as the years go by. This is a story of survival, friendship, grief, love and a bond that was sealed that New Years Eve. The chapters are told alternately by one if he characters. The story also covers addiction, depression and a few other health issues. Throughout the book there is instructions on how to give CPR which might help someone someday to save a life. Eighteen-year-old Kerry has had a crush on Joel for years, but knows he's out of her league. Then something extraordinary happens: minutes before midnight on the eve of the millennium, Joel collapses and Kerry saves his life. A heart-stopping, heart-wrenching and heart-warming story that kept me reading well into the night. I loved it'

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Jill MacSweeney was once an outgoing girl with lots of friends and a boyfriend, Dillon. She turns inward, and pushes her friends, Dillon and mother, Robin, away after she lost the one person who understood her, her father. One day Jill’s mother decides she wants to adopt a baby and she feels as if her mother is trying to replace her father. I don’t want to go into Mandy’s boys because it makes me too sad and I don’t want to spoil anything. How to save a life tells of three protagonists- teenagers when we meet them - and weaves their life stories over decades as we see them love, lose, fail and continue to carry on. I don't know how Zarr does it, but once again she made me appreciate her characters that I first thought very difficult and unpleasant. Maybe not love them, but understand them and revel in their growth and transformation. These two girls' journey to accept and get the best out of each other was truly magical. I was searching for something different; something easy but substantial, and this turned out to be exactly what I was looking for.

The characters in How to Save a Life are hard to like. They're aloof, odd, horrible and rude. They all have huge faults, they're all creatively insane, and they each have their stupid moments. And they're all a little bit muddled, and hurt, stung. The thing is, though, is that it's very hard not to relate to them. Because, man, did I see a hell of a lot of myself in Jill, as I'm sure many people will. Jill isn't a simple character - most real people aren't - and she was very hard to deal with. She broke out in tears a lot, she was coldhearted and bitchy, she was unable to deal with loss and understanding love, and she had no idea where she wanted to go in life - for these reasons, I think she's one of the most enjoyable characters around. Mandy, the pregnant eighteen year old with a messy past and an attachment issue, is uncomfortable at first, as she's simply one who's everywhere with everything (from her emotions to her decisions to her thoughts), but I guess she's the person you'd be if you aren't a Jill. This was so good! It was mostly oral history style and it worked so well. It reminded me of reading Daisy Jones and the Six, it was so interesting to hear all these different opinions on the same event by the people who were there behind the scenes. The story is told in first person alternating points of view, which is a huge and admirable challenge for authors because the characters’ voices and perspectives must be unique, equally compelling, equally important, and wholly necessary. And each alternating scene must cover new ground while at the same time conveying each characters’ thoughts, feelings, and reactions to shared moments and events through their own unique perspectives. Zarr crafts the point of view switches beautifully. I was immediately drawn to each girl for very different reasons, and found myself at times connecting with one more than the other, then my feelings would change, then change again, until ultimately I was so wrapped up in the outcome of their shared story that I simply couldn’t put the book down until I knew how things would turn out for both of them. How to Save a Life is the first novel from an experienced journalist, written under a pseudonym, about three broken young people working out what they need from life. Set in Brighton, it’s like a cross between One Day, and Normal People, but with a strong medical focus, which is what attracted me, as I generally avoid love stories. I actually can’t believe the author is not a doctor herself as she got so many details about medical life just right. I thought this was heading for 3 stars, as for most of the book I didn’t like any of the characters, but they won me over in the end, so 4 it is.

I was completely swept away by How to Save a Life, which truly is a salve for the soul. It’s a beautiful book, full of drama, passion, and truth: You’ll remember Joel, Kerry, and Tim long after you finish reading their story.” —Rowan Coleman, author of The Day We Met I cried. As someone who is frequently teased for never having cried during "The Notebook" or "The Titanic" and rather well-known for my ice-cold heart, this admission carries quite a bit of weight. How to Save a Life is a novel that hasn't gone unnoticed by readers, but I remained skeptical about reading it myself. Frankly speaking, I find little allure in novels about teenage pregnancy, let alone when paired alongside with grief. After reading - and absolutely loving - Small Damages earlier this year, however, I began to realize that my pre-conceived notions about novels that dealt with teen pregnancy were utterly unfounded. And How to Save a Life simply proved me right. Sara Zarr's most popular novel lives up to its hype and delivered above and beyond my sky-high expectations, instantly making her one of my favorite authors. Ever. Because? Because of the characterization. Zarr knows her way around a gray area, and the two "battling" girls -- pregnant Mandy and distrustful Jill -- are no treat, either of them. Which makes them a treat. If that makes sense. Does it? they are both dreadful. add to that a mother who is trying to save the word one gluten-free cookie at a time, and an emo boyfriend who is allowing himself to be doormatted while his girl works through her rage at the world. Joel is 18 when his heart stops and Kerry saves him, he now has a box under his skin to get his heart going when it stops because of this he misses out on his dream and this sends him spiraling down, he looses hope for his future.