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Description edit
Clara’s relationship with Christian is intense from the start, and like nothing she’s ever experienced before. But what starts as devotion quickly becomes obsession, and it’s almost too late before Clara realizes how far gone Christian is--and what he’s willing to do to make her stay. Now... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Summary edit
Clara's relationship with Christian is intense from the start, and like nothing she’s ever experienced before. But what starts as devotion quickly becomes obsession, and it's almost too late before Clara realizes how far gone Christian is—and what he's willing to do to make her stay.
Now... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)
Characters edit
- Clara Oates: Protagonist. The daughter of a well known novelist who gets sucked in a bad relationship and tries to get away and move on while searching for answers, forgiveness and herself.
- Bobby Oates: Clara's father. A contemporary noir writer. He is very close to his daughter and wants to protect her from Christian. He is very easy going, cocky but in a good way but has a fear of water that he never wants to talk about.
- Christain Nilsson: He stalks clara as well.
- Finn Bishop: Works with his brother Jack on their boat, "Obsession". Meets Clara and her father when they move to Finn's town. Also they are a cute couple.
- Jack Bishop: Finn's older brother. Works with him on their boat. Is very easy going and is always joking around.
- Shakti: Clara's best friend from home.
- Annabelle Aurora: A family friend. She knew Clara's father when he was her student, years ago. She seems to know a lot about a past that Clara's father is hiding.
- Sylvie: The lighthouse keeper. She agrees to give Clara a job and is from Italy. She is a strong woman with secrets of her own and a quick temper.
- Roger: Sylvie's dog.
- Cleo: Finn and Jack's little sister. She works at a Burger place and is followed around by a Seagull who won't leave her alone.
- Dylan Ricks: Clara's ex boyfriend.
Quotes edit
-
“My father, Bobby Oates, said that love at first sight should send you running, if you know what’s good for you. It’s your dark pieces having instant recognition with their dark pieces, he says. You’re an idiot if you think it means you’ve met your soul mate.”
Clara -
“because words were hills and valleys you traveled, so lovely sometimes that they hurt your eyes.”
Clara Oates -
“Fears are the biggest bullshiters”
Bobby Oates -
“But if fate is a shape-shifter, then love is too. It can be, anyway, in its most dangerous form. It’s your best day, and then your worst. It’s your most hope and then your most despair. Lightness, darkness, it can swing between extremes at lightning speed—a boat upon the water on the most gorgeous day, and then the clouds crawl in and the sky turns black and the sea rages and the boat is lost.”
Clara Oates -
“When you’re a person whose life has mostly brought good things, you believe in goodness. You believe that things will work out. Even the worst things will work out. You believe in a happy ending. But you are naive. The mostly good in your life has made you that way. You’ve spent so much time seeing the bright side that you don’t even believe the other side exists. You are wrong about that.”
Clara Oates -
“Routine is cement for some people, coziness made solid, certainty building more certainty. For others, routine cracks surfaces with its weight, creating a boredom that presses down and down until something breaks.”
Clara Oates -
“We are the ones who haunt ourselves.”
Sylvie -
“We sat there for a long time. He stopped crying, and there was only that heavy, heavy silence of things gone wrong. That terrible place you sit in when he’s done something awful and so have you, and you now are looking at the mess of regret all around. One thing different and you wouldn’t be where you are, but it’s too late. There’s nothing to be done except sit there until the pain lessens and you can move again, though the pain of that regret will stay with you for days. You carry it on you like an open wound.”
Clara Oates -
“A mind can’t seem to hold anything too crazy for too long without finding a way to make it seem normal.”
Clara Oates -
“The most true-love words are not ones that grasp and hold and bind you, twisting you both up together in some black dance. No, they are ones that leave you free to stand alone on your own solid ground, leave him to do the same, a tender space between you.”
Clara Oates -
““I am beginning to think there are two kinds of people,” she said. I waited.“Those who forgive themselves too easily but will not forgive others.” “And?” I asked.“Those that forgive others too easily but will not forgive themselves.””
Sylvie and Clara -
“Something good, a good person, love, can be a great big bulldozer to bad things. It can shove aside a bad moment, or bad years.”
Clara Oates -
“You can forget that other people carry pieces of your own story around in their heads. I’ve always thought—put together all those random pieces from everyone who’s ever know you from your parents to the guy who once sat next to you on a bus, and you’d probably see a fuller version of your life than you even did while living it.”
Clara Oates -
“I realized that fear and guilt were both cheap and easy emotions, ready and always available, the salt and pepper to the more exotic herbs that took more effort to gather, like courage or determination or regret.”
Clara Oates -
“The words had been pressing at him from the inside for so long and long and long like words do, like secret shame does. Words must finally be said; they press their way out. Words came from his fingertips every day, onto pages that were read by thousands of people, but these private words, they stayed inside where they didn’t belong, building strength and weight, shoving harder until they were bigger than he was.”
Clara Oates -
“Even though it makes us feel better to think so, we can’t predict another person’s actions, not really. Another person is, at the heart of it, unknowable. And if you cannot know a person enough to always guess what they’re capable of, you certainly cannot know them enough to hold them in your hands, to control their behavior, to fight, manipulate, cajole or nurse or soothe them into doing what they should or shouldn’t.”
Clara Oates -
“Our memories and the events of our lives are untidy things. We wish that we could file them away and shut the door, or we wish the opposite—that they would stay with us forever.”
Clara Oates -
“We can get so wrapped up in our own misconceptions that we miss the simple beauty of the truth.”
Bobby Oates
Setting & Locations edit
First Sentence edit
First off, I've never told this story to anyone.
Table of Contents edit
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Authors & Contributors edit
- Deb Caletti (Author)
First Edition edit
Original Language: English
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Country: United States of America
Publication Date: 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0373-4
Page Count: 313
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Country: United States of America
Publication Date: 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0373-4
Page Count: 313
Notes for Parents edit
Reading Level: Young Adultsjust a heads up that there is lots of swear words in this book.
Subjects edit
- Books › Teens › Social Issues › Dating & Intimacy › Fiction
- Books › Teens › Social Issues › Suicide › Fiction
- Books › Teens › Social Issues › Being a Teen
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