photo borrowed from Goodreads
TITLE: The Law of Inertia
AUTHOR: S. Gonzales
RELEASE DATE: October 1st, 2018
RATING: ★★★
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E-ARC kindly provided by the publisher.
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"Sometimes I thought silence was what I wanted. But that wasn't right. Silence left me with my thoughts, and the constant, restless feeling of unhappiness. What I wanted was relief. Relief only came with unconsciousness. If only I could be unconcious constantly, I felt life might be bearable. But that was a contradiction, wasn't it?"
I have seen this book described on Goodreads as an "LGBT Gone Girl", which sounds pretty accurate to me. In this case, this is true for the plot twists, at least.
In this book you're following 16-year-old Ashton, who wants to die. Ash lives in a foster home with his older brother Elliot, who drinks and does drugs to escape reality. They've both escaped an abusive home and with their mother dead and their dad gone, they end up living with an older couple who doesn't really want them in the first place. Where Elliot turns to drinks and drugs to handle reality, Ash, who's dealing with suicidal thoughts, depression and anxiety, cuts himself and sinks deeper and deeper into depression. In this mess we also find James, Ashton's best friend turned love interest. They're slowly, as the book progresses, slipping into a rather nice slow burn relationship. In this book the story's told from two different perspectives, where one is a "before" and one is an "after", and they both intertwine and build up to the ultimate end. In terms of settings, I have a hard time really grasping where this book is supposed to be set because I have a vague memory of it being set in England but in other ways it doesn't really read like England.
I genuinely have a hard time rating this book because I have very different feelings about it pre- and post ~big revelation.
Pre-big revelation, it's a very well told tale of depression, self-harm and anxiety in teenagers. I like how this novel deals with depression and how it lets depression be present even though the main character's found a boyfriend and *should* be happy. If there's something I hate in books, it's seeing a character's mental illness being as if washed away just because they're in love. The way mental illness and self-harm is treated in this book is very respectful in my opinion and doesn't glorify or romanticize it at all. Moreover I feel like this novel really manages to put forth the way depression is suffocating its sufferer, especially in the scenes leading up to Ash writing the school assignment that's later found by Dom and Sue. However, if you're a teen and dealing with depression, self harm or suicidal ideation I would not suggest you read this book. This book is definitely very triggering and if you're easily triggered by these subjects, I suggest you steer clear of it.
Another aspect of this book that I really enjoyed was the way bisexuality was portrayed. Ash, the main character, is bi while his boyfriend is gay. I like how this book does not diminish Ash's previous relationship with a woman and lets him continue being attracted by women even though he's with a guy now. I'm so tired of bisexuality being misrepresented in books in the way that previous relationships with people of genders different than that of the character's current partner is just something of the past and not as real as their current relationship. As a bisexual person myself, I call bull on all of that and was pleasantly surprised to see a previous relationship being shown in a positive light for once. Also, there was a passage of this book where James showed his biphobia and Ash dealt with it in a very good way, which got a round of applause from me. There's a quote from the book featuring these characters talking about bisexuality that really stayed with me:
"'How is it hard to tell? It's a simple question.' James's smile had drifted. This is why I hated discussing this with him. He appeared to consider my attraction to girls a personal insult."
THIS is the kind of biphobia I deal with regularly, so kudos for getting that right.
The romance was very sweet and made me gush inside, because I have a soft spot for one character taking care of another and comforting them.
And then, onto the big reveal.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
You spend a large part of this book believing Ash is dead, that he jumped from a bridge and ended his life. Right after Ash's funeral, Elliot ran away to another town where he befriended a girl called Louise. In the "after" section of the book, you learn that James is trying to connect with Elliot because James is trying to figure out what happened to Ash on the day he died, and somehow manages to find Louise. And here's the plot twist: Ash isn't dead. He's alive, living in the north, pretending to be Elliot, while Elliot in fact is living in the next town over.
And here is where I got some problems. I know there's nothing objectively wrong with this ending - I KNOW it, but I somehow expected a different ending? Sometimes I like being surprised or having endings I couldn't have guessed, ever. In this case, however, I didn't enjoy it. I'd hoped for an ending where Elliot and James got together and talked about what had happened and tried to move on with their lives. Basically, I'd hoped for a novel that dealt with suidice and its aftermaths since this novel was very good at handling these sensitive topics to begin with. This is not what I got. For me, this shock ending didn't really fit into the general theme of this book and in my opinion didn't add much. It even left me sort of angry with this book, albeit briefly. Again, there's nothing objectively wrong with this way of ending a book and the author's obviously got the freedom to end the book whichever way they want/I'm not trying to dictate how this book should have been written. However, I feel like by ending this book this way, a very much needed opportunity to talk about suicide and its affects was missed.
Also, I never really cared for Elliot. I knew he was messed up and also why he was and while I could understand some of his decisions, I could never agree with them. What baffled me the most was when Ash jumped off the bridge and Elliot found him alive, Elliot helped him escape instead of making sure he got the care he needed at a hospital. While I do understand why he did what he did, I sure as hell don't agree with it.
So, all in all I'm going to rate this three stars because the positives outweighted the disappointments, even though the disappointments were pretty major for me when it comes to the ending. All in all, I enjoyed this book and I do recommend it to others. Also, I feel like this book might even be a five star book for lots of other readers, if they're more 'open' to this particular ending than what I was.
Trigger warnings: suicide, self harm, depression, biphobia, abuse
