In This Way I Was Saved

For once a book that has an interesting twist manages to have back cover copy that doesn’t give it away. I love that. I love the fact that the first couple of chapters had me furrowing my brow and curious as to what was going on, and so I will again plea with you that if you are interested in this book, don’t go poking around and reading other reviews.

The narrator is interesting, and makes the telling of the story truly unique.

In This Way I Was Saved: A Novel is a dark book — a look at the effects of mental illness as it is passed down through several generations.

We follow Luke from age six through his college years (not comprehensively — there are big chunks of time left out). It is not meant to explore mental illness, but it is definitely a real theme of the plot, and instead of providing answers, it is just presented as a matter of fact, which caused me to think about it.

It has many of the hallmarks of a coming of age novel — self-awareness, striving for independence, etc, but I didn’t really relate to the story in the college years, because his experience was very different from my own, and because of this I started to lose interest in the plot towards the end.

As you may be used to me doing, I’m keeping it intentionally vague because I loved not knowing, and the author obviously intended the reader not to find out that plot point until a certain point.

This is Brian DeLeeuw’s first novel, and while it’s far from perfect, there is enough in it that did wow me to make him an author to watch in the future.

Jennifer Donovan’s husband wonders how she can possibly want to read so many different kinds of books. But she does. She blogs at Snapshot.