Book Review: Don’t Let Me Go

Book Review: Don’t Let Me Go by Catherine Ryan Hyde

A run-down apartment complex holds the most isolated tenants who live worlds apart even though they are right beside each other.

Each tenant has their own issues. Billy struggles with agoraphobia. Felipe lives with a broken heart. Ms. Hinman is nearly 100 years old, widowed, and fears the future when she will no longer be able to walk down the steps from her second story apartment. Mr. Lafferty hates all people. Eileen is addicted to drugs. And Grace is Eileen’s 9 year old daughter. She sits outside waiting to be noticed; waiting for someone to realize that trouble is all around her.

One day someone does. But is it too late?

This amazing story, by the author of the novel turned film Pay it Forward, will call out to your heart, tug at your spirit, and will pull you into the richly developed lives between the pages.

Grace is your typical poverty-stricken child who lives one day away from being removed from her family by the ‘system’ It is only when one woman, fearful of that very system and who doesn’t want to see Grace get lost in it steps up and takes it upon herself do the tenants become key players in Grace’s life. They don’t want to because a child is of course a burden and not their burden to bear but it isn’t long until Grace melt’s their hardened hearts and the phrase ‘it takes a village’ truly comes alive.

But when the system becomes a real threat, knocking at Eileen’s door and promises to take Grace away do the residents around Grace become really afraid. They plot and plan what they must do to wake Eileen up to the truth of the matter. But can Eileen get sober in time to save Grace from being taken away?

Don’t Let Me Go draws up realistic cultural and society manners. It looks deep into the heart of the tendencies of human behaviors to close ourselves off to those around us and the harm that can come from avoiding and ignoring the real problems in our very neighborhoods. The author takes a child like Grace and shows the reader how they can thrive in so many unique ways by the people around her.

Poetry in the form of a novel, this beautifully written story made me laugh, made me cry, and was a page turner from the first to the last. I would recommend this to everyone.

Verdict: 5 out of 5