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Jackie (2016)
Jackie (2016)
2016 | Drama
Raw emotions and fabulous acting from Natalie Portman
This was pretty tragic, the inside story of the wife who has to witness her husband being assassinated in front of her eyes. This was about Jackie Kennedy, and the grief she felt following John F. Kennedy's death. Natalie Portman was once again magnificent, showing the raw emotion and confusion felt being a First Lady in mourning. And while there's not much else to the story, it's all about bereavement which is complex enough.
  
The Year of Magical Thinking
The Year of Magical Thinking
Joan Didion | 2006 | Biography
8.5 (2 Ratings)
Book Favorite

"I guess it’s a bit obvious to have a Joan Didion book on my list, but she is my most loved writer of all time. This book is a memoir about the year the followed her husband’s sudden death, and is one of the greatest books about grief and loss ever written. I re-read it last year, after going through a breakup, and it really helped me. I recommend it to anyone who's dealing with the loss of someone or something."

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Sarah (7798 KP) rated A Monster Calls in Books

Nov 30, 2017  
A Monster Calls
A Monster Calls
Patrick Ness | 2016 | Children
9
8.6 (40 Ratings)
Book Rating
Very emotional
This is such a heart wrenching story. As someone who has been through something similar albeit at an older age, this really rang true. It's a very stark and honest book about grief, very well written with a very relatable main character. It is pretty short, maybe too short but this doesn't detract from tbe story and considering the subject matter, it is fairly predictable. The ending really made me cry, it deals with the subject matter in such an elegant way.
  
A Ghost Story (2017)
A Ghost Story (2017)
2017 | Drama
Recently added to Netflix is 2017 movie A Ghost Story, starring Casey Affleck. From A24, the studio responsible for The Witch and Heteditary, so I was very dubious about watching this! A poignantly beautiful tale of life, death, time and grief. With minimal dialogue, it is definitely a very weird film (a 5 minute scene of someone literally just eating pie in silence?!), and many people will just hate it. For me, there was just enough thought provoking and beautifully shot scenes to keep me happy.
  
Collateral Beauty (2016)
Collateral Beauty (2016)
2016 | Drama
It's unashamedly sentimental but this was still certainly much better than I had expected it to be considering the critical slating it got. A powerful and at times emotional study of a man struggling with grief following a bereavement. It was an interesting and quite clever story and the ensemble cast all did great work (particularly Will Smith in the lead role) and I genuinely didn't see the ending coming. It's probably not something I would rewatch but it's certainly worthy of your time.
  
    Loon Lake (2019)

    Loon Lake (2019)

    (0 Ratings) Rate It

    Movie

    Eager to escape the grief and nightmares of the city, Louis Olsen travels to Southwest Minnesota,...

The Year After You
The Year After You
Nina de Pass | 2019 | Fiction & Poetry, Young Adult (YA)
8
9.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
The protagonist in this story is Cara, a seventeen-year-old girl from California, who was sent to a boarding school in the Swiss mountains. She has lost her friend in a car accident, and she was the one who was driving. Cara is a very interesting character, her life is full of guilt and grief. This book taught me a very valuable lesson, that different people deal with grief very differently. Some people find it easier and some harder to deal with someone’s death. Cara is very emotionally intriguing, she feels so much self-loath, and it is very interesting to see how she communicates with people around her. I loved this great variety of characters chosen for this book, I loved all Cara’s friends in Switzerland, they are truly amazing. My favourite character in this book was Hector, he is absolutely charming! He reminds me of Edward from The Twilight Saga, whom I truly adored. 😀

The narrative is not very exciting at the beginning, but slowly the author brings in little adventures, quite a bit of romance and plenty of Cara’s thoughts. I really loved the boarding school itself, it sounded a little like Hogwarts, surrounded by mountains, and it feels like a happy place, where people actually want to return to. I really liked that the plot was set in different locations, it felt livelier and more indulging.

I really enjoyed the writing style of this book, I can not understand how the author portrayed the grief, its effects through a confused teenager, so masterfully. The language used in this novel is easy to understand and it was a very enjoyable read. The chapters have a very decent length and it didn’t get boring, because every chapter brought in something new. I loved the ending of this book, it rounded up the story very nicely.

To conclude, I really enjoyed this novel, even though it is filled with grief and emotions, the other characters make it quite an entertaining and pleasant read. I loved the diversity and wide variety of true personalities. I do strongly recommend this book if you know someone who has difficulty of dealing with loss, it will help you to understand them in some way. (I know it helped me) 🙂 And of course, don’t forget to enjoy this amazing Cara’s story.