On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light by Cordelia Strube Review, Rating, and Storyline

Book: On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light

Author: Cordelia Strube
Published: April, 1, 2016 (recent!)
Rating: 5 stars
Age Group: Young Adult Fiction
Series? : Nope!
Spoiler Free? : Yes!! YAYY

A long title but a beautiful one neverless! Now just a warning before I go on to those of you who are a little bit on the sensitive side I don't recommend this book but if you're up for cuddling up and grabbing some ice cream and kleenex once in a while, this one's for you.

Now I know rating a book 5 stars is a little extreme but a great book shouldn't be defined by it's genre. For the type of book that it is, OTSODTIL is really good! (again, the title is a bit of a hand sore to type

😂)

The main protagonist is Harriet. A young 11 year old girl that lived in the GTA (ayeeee) with a troubled mind. Now, she wasn't always this troubled. Before her disabled brother, Irwin, came along. She used to be a normal kid, going to Canada Wonderland every summer, hanging out with her friends and her Mom and Dad until things started to go downhill. Once  her mother had her brother, Irwin, things changed. Because of his disability, his mom was always with him in the hospitals and taking care of him to the point where Harriet started to think that her injures were non-significant to those of her brother.(Specifically speaking, her brother would get seizures and had an abnormally sized head.)

Through the good times (Before Irwin) and the bad times (after Irwin) she was a great artist. Before Irwin was born, Harriet and her Mom would always go to the craft's store together to grab her mixed-media and art supplies. But after Irwin was born, you can only imagine what kind of stuff she started to paint. She loved her brother truly and it wasn't like she'd do  anything to get rid of him it's just that her faimly got ripped apart as soon as he came along and getting another sibling and having to share your parents is hard enough.

Now that Harriet was getting troubled because of her loss of time with her mother and her Mom and Dad splitting up (It was too much stress and work for the Dad and Mom to try and be a happy couple under the circumstances), her paintings became more troubling. Her mother started to tell her how awful she was because shes painting such grousome things.

 The book is split in two. Part one is about Harriet and Part Two is about Irwin.

!!!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!!!

Part two is about Irwin at age 14 trying to deal with the loss of his sister, Harriet (ooopss  she killed herself More on that later). What I loved about the book is that you don't know why the author got inspired to write such a story till LITERALLY the last page. 


Harriet committed suicide with the assistance of drug and alcohol use (keep in mind sh'es only 11) She ran out to the balcony and saw angels calling out to her telling her to fly and that she's a good person that never ment to hurt Irwin when she stopped trying to help him during a seizure. She jumped and sadly fell and died but Her heart and other organs were in fine condition to be donated and they were. 

Part two is also about Irwin fighting with the idea weither or not to see whomever had Harriet's heart and in the end he was glad to have met Oliver, an artist with similar work to that of Harriet's and also with her heart.

I loved the twist were it became about organ donation because that's a really interesting topic but I hate when authors make the whole book revolve around it but what Cordelia did is that she ended it with that idea so that the reader looks back at the story of the PERSON who donated then the relative missing them rather than the person just dying and their relative's journey through that without us meeting the dead character.