A sixteen-year-old girl’s road trip across the country to get an abortion becomes a transformative journey of vulnerability, strength, and above all, choice. From the acclaimed author of A Heart in a Body in the World , this is both an achingly tender love story and a bold, badly needed battle cry about bodily autonomy and the experiences that connect us.
Ivy can’t entirely believe it when the plus sign appears on the test. She didn’t even know it was possible from . . . what happened. But it is, and now she is, and instead of spending the summer working at the local drugstore and swooning over her boyfriend, Lorenzo, suddenly she’s planning a cross-country road trip to her grandmother’s house on the West Coast, where she can legally obtain an abortion.
Escaping her small Texas town and the judgment of her friends and neighbors, Ivy hits the road with Lorenzo, who, determined to make the best of their “abortion road trip love story,” has transformed the journey into a whirlwind tour of the all the way from Paris, Texas, to Rome, Oregon . . . and every rest-stop diner and corny roadside attraction along the way.
And while Ivy can’t run from the incessant pressure of others’ opinions about her body or from her own expectations and insecurities, she discovers a new world of healing and hope. As the women she encounters share their stories, she chips away at the stigma, silence, and shame surrounding reproductive rights while those collective experiences guide her to her own rightful destination.
❀❀
I love this author. Despite what her books do to my emotions at times, there is a reason that I have loved this author for years. Every time that I read a new book of hers, I wonder what she is going to write about next. I saw Plan A on Netgalley and I had to request it and was very happy when I got approved for early copy. I couldn’t wait to get started on this book, knowing that I was going fall in love again. I was right. Plan A is a hard book to not fall in love with, it’s real, it’s what happens in real life, and I’m sure a lot of women can relate to. I never had this experience or have deal with a traumatic experience like Ivy. However, while reading Ivy’s story, I felt as if I experienced everything that she experiences, her emotions were so vivid, i felt all the emotions that she experienced: anger, sadness, fear, hope.
Plan A was one of the most emotional books that I have read, I haven’t read a book like this in a while. The emotions that went through Ivy during her journey, they were real. I have a feeling that few teenagers would be able to relate to what Ivy was feeling, especially when others tried to stop her, try to convince her that abortion is not a way. I don’t think Ivy would been as strong as she was if it wasn’t for the support system that she had: her mother, her brother and Lorenzo. Besides her grandma, they understood, and they didn’t try talk to her out of it, they let her make the decision. I loved how close her and her brother were, not many books that I have read where there is close relationship between brother and sister. I loved the bond between the two of them.
Lorenzo. How can you not love him? He did so much for Ivy. If that’s not love, then what is? I loved the relationship between the two of them. Lorenzo was so supportive to Ivy through it all, even though I knew that it couldn’t be easy for him. I loved how he tried to make this ‘road trip’ fun even if that’s not what the road trip was about. I loved going on all the roadside attractions along with Ivy and Lorenzo, meeting all her relatives. There were times when this book had me crying because of all the emotions. Like Lorenzo and her family, all I wanted was for Ivy to be happy. My feeling are destroyed right now, and yet I can’t get the story out of my mind. Plan A is a story that needed to be told. A story that is worth reading.
0 comments:
Post a Comment