My Beating Teenage Heart by C.K. Kelly Martin | Teen Ink

My Beating Teenage Heart by C.K. Kelly Martin

June 17, 2014
By Teenage_Reads ELITE, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Teenage_Reads ELITE, Halifax, Nova Scotia
293 articles 0 photos 5 comments

Favorite Quote:
"So many books, so little time"


Death, loss. Grieving. The sad parts of life everyone must go through. Weather it is a parent, sibling or a not close relative, it is still a loss in your life. “Everyone grieves in their own way” a famous quote now known by all, yet some take it harder than others. Yet death is not just a once sided deal, but two. You have the person who died and who they left behind, but then you have the person who was the one that died. What happens to them? Some say you get born into another life, others say you just wander around in the dark forever. Then of course is the whole heaven/hell deal that others believe in. All these questions that people want answered that only the unspoken dead know the answer too.

Ashlyn Baptiste died. How, when and why? We do not know. All we know is that she is a ghost trapped to someone else’s life. The saddest part? She has no memories of her life. Who were her friends? Did she even have friends? What about siblings? A mother and father? Cousins? Aunts? Ashlyn could drive herself crazy with these questions. What confused her the most was being the ghost of Breckon. She has no memory of even knowing him as she was only fifteen and Breckon being sixteen/seventeen. As the book progresses Ashlyn gets her memories back, finally finding out how she and Breckon connect and how she dies.

Breckon Cody is the boy whose sister just died. On April 22 at age seven Skyler Cody died a tragic death, leaving behind her parents, friends, and older brother Breckon. Even one is taking Skyler’s death hard, but not as much as Breckon. He was the one that found her and called 911. How could someone get that image out of their head? Of their loving younger sister sprawled on the floor dead? Breckon tries to hold it together for the sake of his family and girlfriends, but there is only so long a person can fake it. Breckon is done, with life, with pain, with the never ending feeling of sadness over the death of Skyler. After all it was his fault she’s dead.

C.K. Kelly Martin took a different topic of the griever of death and an unrelated ghost and combines them together in this two point-of-view story. This book was not great, yet not completely horrible. It was very confusing at parts. Even how Breckon and Ashlyn are connected is still really confusing. I understand how, but it’s like why? Is that really how you are going to connect our two main characters? When Ashlyn finally got all her memories back the book started to make more sense. Other part I was really upset by was Skyler’s death. Yes I had known it was a tough subject for Breckon to think of that’s why we did not get the full story till the end of the book. Yet when all the details were explained and all was said and done I was left blank. The feeling of “Are you kidding me? That’s how you are going to end it?” came up. It was not that Skyler’s death wasn’t emotional it was just kind of stupid. Personally this made me not feel sorry for Skyler, but kind of angry at her for dying in a useless way for such a non-important cause. This book in good ways triggered the thought and reasons of suicide, and how even though life is hard there is always a reason to keep pushing onward.


The author's comments:
Death, Love, and Suicide.

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