Hello friends and happy Friday! I hope you’re all doing well! Now that I’ve shifted back to monthly wrap-ups my Fridays have become open so I plan to fill them with reviews for the foreseeable future as I’m very behind on posting them! Today I’ll be posting my review of Robin Roe’s novel A List of Cages.

A List of Cages by: Robin Roe: Adam has become the school psychologist’s aide during his elective period and his first job is to track down a freshman who keeps dodging her; he soon finds out the boy is Julian, his foster brother who he hasn’t seen in years. As the two become friends again, Adam soon learns the secrets Julian is hiding and wants to do everything in his power to help, no matter the costs. This novel was an emotional rollercoaster. In the beginning, the reader didn’t expect much from this story, but wow were they wrong. This story brought so much heart and soul to it. It took a little bit for the reader to actually get into this novel, but once they were invested it was hard to put down. This started off slow, which didn’t help trying to get into this, but after the first third of the way through where the reader was finally starting to understand the dynamics between all the characters did the pace pick up. This was well written and the reader found themselves getting lost in this world. This dealt heavily with both physical and mental abuse and Roe handled the topic with care; on the flip side it also talked about love and the power of friendship which was also powerfully written. The characters were strongly created and developed, even though some of them were so infuriating to read. Her characters felt real and raw; they weren’t perfect in any way, but seeing the love they had for one another across the pages felt perfect. This was a heartbreaking yet between it all, it was a powerful story about love and friendship.