How to Walk Away by Katherine Center. Inspirational and a roller coaster of emotions! #2021AudiobookReview

Synopsis

Margaret Jacobsen has a bright future ahead of her: a fiancé she adores, her dream job, and the promise of a picture-perfect life just around the corner. Then, suddenly, on what should have been one of the happiest days of her life, everything she worked for is taken away in one tumultuous moment.In the hospital and forced to face the possibility that nothing will ever be the same again, Margaret must figure out how to move forward on her own terms while facing long-held family secrets, devastating heartbreak, and the idea that love might find her in the last place she would ever expect.

Audiobook review

5 stars and exceptional narrator (Therese Plummer)

This is my third book by that author and she has become a one-click for me.

I truly breezed through that book, swept off my feet by Therese Plummer outstanding performance of bringing Margaret or “Maggie’s” live to live.

That book has so much wisdom, so many inspirational quotes that you’ll find a few in this review. Sorry but…not sorry for that.

First, I connected with Maggie on a profound level.

She had fear of flying. Like I do.

This is something irrational and paralyzing and I can guarantee you that Katherine Center wrote exactly what I felt at the idea of climbing into a plane.

When in the beginning of the story her fiancée guilt tricked her into climbing into that small and fragile plane he intended to pilot, I was sweating already!

Then, the worst happened and Maggie’s life imploded while her fiancee was good as rain after the crash.

To say that I was furious at that coward would be an understatement.

But Maggie will fight like a good soldier while in the hospital in the hope of getting her legs back.

The way Katherine Center wrote about Maggie imagining that she would walk again and walk towards her fiancée, basking in light, all strong and hips swaying and… rang so true! This was exactly the trick I used countless time as a pep talk to do things that are very hard.

Or imagine having the upper hand when someone wronged you and you see yourself all smart and brilliant and…

This was another way to make me connect deeply with Maggie.

The third aspect that had me really feel Maggie, walk in her shoes, was her optimism and chatty personality.

Here she was, in a hospital, with skin grafts, a fiancée that just left her and her legs paralyzed and Maggie was determined to see the bright side. To believe she could walk again if she worked hard enough. And she has always worked hard.

So when she was paired with Ian, the silent and very broody therapist, chatty Maggie had to fill the silence with relentless questions and observations.

That was so me too!

That story was very moving. Filled to the brim with sorrow at times and laughter the page after.

I wondered if Maggie would ever walk again.

And she switched between determination, hard working and despair.

But in these situations, all that you can do is try.

“Then he bent down in front of me and met my eyes for the first time all day. He looked straight into my pupils until he had my full attention. Then he said, “Whether you walk again or not, I’m going to tell you the one thing I know for certain.” I blinked. “What’s that?” He took a deep breath. “It’s the trying that heals you. That’s all you have to do. Just try.”

My dad has been amputated and that’s another element that had me relate so much with this story and with Maggie’s struggle.

Because when Katherine Center says that after such a tragedy, you still have to live, that’s true!

“Because that’s all we can do: carry the sorrow when we have to, and absolutely savor the joy when we can. Life is always, always both.”

And when after such ordeals your life and path are so deeply changed, you can’t help wonder if you are better for it, even if you paid a steep price.

“That’s the thing you don’t know—that you can’t know until life has genuinely beaten the crap out of you: I am better for it all. I am better for being broken.”

“Needing to find a reason to live had forced me to build a life worth living. I would never say the accident was a good thing. I would never claim that everything happens for a reason. Like all tragedies, it was senseless. But the one thing I knew for sure: The greater our capacity for sorrow becomes, the greater our capacity for joy.”

Maggie was an amazing heroine, with an enormous strength. But even being an optimistic person does not mean that there won’t be bleak days when you come out of such tragedy.

That there aren’t days when all that you want is stay in your bed, sleep and forget your new reality.

Lucky for Maggie, she had her sister’s help.

And again, that aspect of the story felt so real.

The fights between the sisters but also how your sibling gets you like no one else…

“I’m always amazed at how fast siblings can warp-speed into a state of rage. It’s like they keep everything they were ever angry about growing up shoved into an overstuffed emotional closet, and at moments like these, it takes about two seconds to swing the door open and start an avalanche.”

And if tha t wasn’t enough, you also have the slow burn romance between Maggie and her broody therapist Ian.

That love story was written to perfection. And if like me you love slow burn romances, you’ll be in heaven.

Full of wisdom, romance, inspiration and outstanding characters, How to Walk Away is a book not to be missed!

Thanks for reading.

Sophie