by Justina Chen Headley
ages: 14+
First sentence: “Not to brag or anything, but if you saw me from behind, you’d probably think I was perfect.”
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At first glance, Terra is your average 16 year old. But, you get close and the first thing most anyone notices is the port wine stain that covers most of one side of her face. Her parents have spent lots of money trying to remove the stain, all to no avail, and Terra spends her time trying to hide it: through her otherwise perfect body, through make up, through pushing herself to get through high school a year early, through her art (though she doesn’t share that). She lives a half-existence, mostly because of her controlling father (it’s flat out emotional abuse — of both her and her mother — and it’s the most hateful thing I’ve read in a long, long time); she’s never good enough, beautiful enough, to satisfy him.

That is, until Terra and her mother meet Jacob and his. It was a freak accident (literally), but it was one that will change the map of Terra and her mother’s life.

The first part was incredibly difficult, emotionally, to get through: I literally wanted to scream at Terra’s dad. Headley did such a fantastic job of portraying not only an abuser — he never hit anyone, but he was an abuser all the same — but the way the victims of the abuse would react. It was real, and it was literally very heavy to read; I can’t come up with any better way to describe it.

But the second half, when Terra and her mother get brave enough to go to China, is lighter. It feels lighter, like a weight has been lifted, and it’s amazing to watch the women bloom. Headley does a masterful job with characterization in this book, and it’s not just about Terra: both she and her mother make distinct, yet similar, journeys to find themselves. It’s a treatise on beauty, and the expectations of what beauty is. It’s an exploration of abuse, but it’s a hopeful one; perhaps healing can be done in the family. But, it’s also a real story: there are real consequences, real emotions, real characters.

And a really good book.