Sometimes you discover a book and wonder why you didn’t read it sooner. In the case of Phantom Limbs, I know why, yet I wish I had read it a year ago so I could justify re-reading already.
Last year, a couple weeks before I was scheduled to close on my house, we went to BookCon. As you may guess from the name, they were books involved – in large quantities, and mostly free. With an impending move, almost all of them were promptly packed, where they stayed until I bought (& assembled) bookcases in the fall. At that point, Phantom Limbs was sorted onto the shelf with other G authors, where it stayed until this summer when I went looking for a book I could put down. (Cause I couldn’t write a black belt essay in the bath.)
Oops!
As it turns out, it wasn’t that type of book. It’s more of a stay up late, read snippets at every opportunity type.
After the sudden death of his younger brother, followed by his best friend moving out of state, Otis turned to swimming as a distraction from his grief. He is driven to compete by Dara, an amputee whose own tragedy prevents her from competing at her former level. In the midst of training (Dara is convinced he can make it to the Olympics if he just pushes harder), Meg comes back, and the two of them work to rekindle their friendship while addressing their unresolved issues from Mason’s death.
What makes this book memorable is the level of depth Paula Garner puts into each character. Each of them has issues that are being dealt with – or deliberately ignored – that the others can help them with. They make mistakes, just like any teenager, that seem like the right choice at the time. And there are limits to what they can fix. Most importantly, the main characters evolve throughout the story.