Rosario’s 500 Words or Less is a poignant, raw look into the heart of one young woman’s senior high school year. Told entirely through free verse poetry, Nic Chen’s story is one of unbearable loneliness and devastating loss. Two years ago, Nic and her best friend Ben became more than just friends. In one drunken night, all that changes. In the aftermath, Ben leaves, transferring to a different school. Throughout senior year, Nic remembers the past, consumed with what might have been. With Ben. With her own broken family. With the friends she lost. In writing college essays for classmates, Nic discovers things about herself, things that let her slowly begin to heal. Come second semester, Nic learns Ben has returned to her school. As she’s learning to adjust to these changes, the unthinkable happens, and Nic is never able to find a reconciliation with Ben.
This is such a sad story! It really captures the feel of crushing loneliness that can come from been different, and being shunned. It really made me sit back and recall my own high school/college friends. And how we hurt one another rather badly, in different ways. I thought about what might’ve been, how we could have done things differently. I tend to get stuck in the past, with the might have beens. I don’t like change, even though I know it is inevitable. It is the way of all things. Everyone has to grow up, has to change, to evolve.
And quite often, that change around, and to, us is immutable, irreversible. We can go with it, or be crushed by it. The choice is ours. Reading this prompted me to reconnect with someone who was once my best friend, someone who betrayed me badly, yet who I forgave. Someone I hurt badly because I was not mature enough to process my deepest inculcated behaviours, to act from a place of calm, instead of react in the moment. When a simple, yet deep, story can affect the reader so, well you know it must be a good one! Highly recommended!!
***Many thanks to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster/ Simon Pulse for providing an egalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.
