What. Did. I. Just. Read.
And I mean that in a good way.
One of my favorite books so far is Lucinda Berry’s Phantom Limb.
Well, One of Our Own is another great one from this author. It starts quickly. It ends horribly.
Felicia, a single mother and lawyer by day, volunteers at a local crisis center to give back to her tight-knit community in a small Wisconsin town. One night, she answers a horrifying call: through tears, a frantic teenage girl tells her that she was a victim of sexual assault at a local house party.
Felicia is shocked, and breaking protocol, she begins communicating with the girl on her own, determined to keep her safe and hold her assailants accountable. But as she gets closer and closer to the truth, she can’t shake the feeling that she and the girl are connected by more than the phone call. As the girl shares more details, Felicia begins to think the unthinkable—someone close to her may be involved in this heinous crime.
I absolutely love how this book jumped right in. You’re immediately pulled into the crisis. Felicia, on the end of the crisis center hotline, is trying so hard to help a young girl, Chloe, who called in, on the verge of suicide. Or mass murder.
Felicia gives Chloe her personal cell number, something she’s not supposed to do. They talk off and on, and Felicia gets her to tell her what happened. Chloe explains that a video was shot of her being raped after she was drugged. The video is beyond degrading. And now it’s going around her private school. No wonder she wants out of this world. I can’t imagine my teenage years with social media and video at your fingertips.
Felicia, who has been through her own situation with a previous boyfriend, understands some of what Chloe is going through and says she’s better off going to someone she trusts, like her parents. But that makes things worse when her parents go to the media.
Near the end, Chloe is at the police station and asks Felicia to help her through the process. Obviously, she wants nothing more than to help Chloe. But fear strikes her heart when she realizes Chloe mentions her missing underwear. And when she describes them, Felicia knows where they are. And Chloe’s aren’t the only ones.
It turns out, her son, Hunter, is a horrible person. This smart, genius-level kid is also a sociopath. He was the one laughing and tormenting Chloe just off camera. And she’s not the only one. He was a serial rapist. Did he become like this from his father, the man Felicia put in prison for nearly killing her? It’s an excellent question.
I love that Felicia wrestled with everything in this book. She was desperate to help Chloe and stuck with her no matter what. And she wrestled with the fact that Hunter might be part of the group that raped Chloe. She eventually turned her own son in. But how did he become like this when she felt she did everything right?
This book seriously started out so bad and just never got cheery! I was really hoping for a happy ending. Hoping that Hunter wasn’t involved. Boy was I wrong.
Felicia knows all about suicide. Her sister took her own life years ago. And no one knew she had been so sad. So, I highlighted this in the book because it really stuck with me:
My therapist explained that depression was a cunning beast, and it could sneak up on you slowly. It didn’t always happen like you might see it portrayed in the media: visible despair, days in bed, withdrawing from life. There was a kind of depression that couldn’t stop moving or working. That got up every day and wore a big smile so the ones the person loved didn’t worry. The depression that needed more and more until it became intolerable, like being force-fed something you could no longer keep down. And in that moment, the person didn’t want to die-they just wanted to feel nothing.