Title: Bleed Like Me
Author: C. Desir
Series: Standalone
Genre: YA Contemporary, Issues
Format: Hardcover, 291 pages
Release Date: October 7th 2014
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Source: eARC received from publisher via Edelweiss in  exchange for an honest review

Purchase
Amazon | Indigo | TBD | Goodreads







From the author of Fault Line comes an edgy and heartbreaking novel about two self-destructive teens in a Sid and Nancy-like romance full of passion, chaos, and dyed hair.

Seventeen-year-old Amelia Gannon (just "Gannon" to her friends) is invisible to almost everyone in her life. To her parents, to her teachers-even her best friend, who is more interested in bumming cigarettes than bonding. Some days the only way Gannon knows she is real is by carving bloody lines into the flesh of her stomach.

Then she meets Michael Brooks, and for the first time, she feels like she is being seen to the core of her being. Obnoxious, controlling, damaged, and addictive, he inserts himself into her life until all her scars are exposed. Each moment together is a passionate, painful relief.

But as the relationship deepens, Gannon starts to feel as if she's standing at the foot of a dam about to burst. She's given up everything and everyone in her life for him, but somehow nothing is enough for Brooks-until he poses the ultimate test.

Bleed Like Me is a piercing, intimate portrayal of the danger of a love so obsessive it becomes its own biggest threat.


I went into this book expecting something completely different. I really don't know what I was really expecting was not this. The one thing I like about books that deal with issues such as toxic relationships and self harm are the ways in which the characters deal with everything and learn from it. In Bleed Like Me I didn't get the satisfaction of seeing character growth by the end of the book, it felt like she just kept living even though everything she went through was horrible and clearly effected her in ways no one really knew.

Amelia Gannon is not a likable character in the least. While reading I wanted to like her and relate to her but she made it so freaking hard. She made horrible choices and saw nothing wrong with a clearly abusive boyfriend and made no change to her life. She hated her family, which honestly made sense to me because they were not that great to begin with, and really had no friends. We only really say Amelia through her boyfriend Micheal's eyes because he was the only one she really spent any time with. I hated their relationship right from the beginning. I could see that it was toxic and i hated that no one around did anything to really stop it from going further. Her family and so called best friend tried to warn her about him but they really didn't try hard enough in my opinion.

I really liked the beginning of the story because it was very raw and felt real to me, and the writing was bang on. It was on point with Amelia's feelings and her surroundings, and I really liked that reading experience. But for me there was not enough hope. I say this a lot with books that deal with tough subjects because I always say that yes, it makes sense for there not to be a happy ending, i get that, but there should be a semblance of hope for the characters. I don't want to end a book and s=feel like they are doomed to live a life that is so horrible that they will eventually give up. I need hope, and in this case there was none at the end, and that really tarnished my reading experience.