Book Review: Lovely, Dark and Deep by Amy McNamara

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“Lovely, Dark and Deep” by Amy McNamara is a very hard-hitting YA book dealing with grief, loss, and depression. I was truly captivated by this book and highly recommend it!

“Lovely, Dark and Deep” follows 18-year-old Wren (formerly Mamie) who moves to her father’s studio in the deep woods of Maine. In her senior year of high school, she was in a car crash with her boyfriend Patrick. He has passed and she’s left with her all-consuming grief.

Near her father, lives Cal Owens. A college boy who’s also seeking refuge at home and dealing with his own problems. Now Wren has a big decision to make: risk opening up again or spend the rest of her life living in the shadows.

I found this book super raw and impactful – even if I have never personally lost a loved one. It reminded me a lot of “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion in the ways it spoke about grief and depression.

SEE ALSO: Book Review: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

The author really illustrates this grief and the pain of the main character, Wren, by using short halting sentences. It almost felt like reading poetry at some points ad you can feel the narrator’s heart drop in accordance with the text.

Although this book explores mental illness and grief, it also encompasses many other themes and emotions such as finding your future career, rebuilding your life, connecting with others, deal with guilt, anger, and self-loathing.

I especially loved how the main character wasn’t able to speak, would lose her voice when she was triggered or pushed to conjure the accident and its circumstances because that feels so accurate to me when it comes to trauma and depression: the lack of voice.

To finish off, I liked that the book used poetry and poems as a center point. (The title is a reference to Robert Frost’s poem which happened to be a book I was reading at the same time: “You Come Too” by Robert Frost.) I also discovered a new poet that I want to read more from, Philip Larkin.

Overall, I think this book was truly a great young adult read.

“I came here because it’s pine-dark and the ocean is wild. The kind of quiet-noise you need when there’s too much going on in your head. Like the water and the woods are doing all the feeling, and I can hang out, quiet as a headstone, in a between place. A blank I can bear.” 

“So this is life. Love. We spend all this time reaching for each other and mostly we end up hurting each other until it’s over.”

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