Anna hashtag doing to much

4.5 starsIt's with these kind of stories why I fell in love with Young Adult books even more so in YA realistic fiction. The messages they try to give out is incredible; prepubescent and barely adolescent characters be the bearer of unfathomable potent emotions and imposing wisdom that could put your grave trouble to shame. My Beating Teenage Heart is anything but fun, happy, or romantic. While this book is about two teens that fell in the dark times of their lives, they were never that involved in what my mind had. But they were connected in what I think was something powerful though it was a fleeting encounter, it was still momentous.It's hard to know the story just by its blurb or by having someone telling it to you without giving out some spoilers. I think it's nice to dive directly to this novel and imagine getting two beautiful stories in one. You get to decipher what these two narrators are to each other and what made them that way. In the slow unraveling of their lives, it would gently have your heart torn, broken, and at some point be mend back together again. What Breckon was feeling, the blame for himself, you could really feel it. You'd want to tell him to stop and enough with the self-loathe, that time will come and it will be okay. Yet you could also understand why he is that way. It was heartbreaking seeing him fall without gaining momentum. And for me to see him like that was hard and painful.Ashlyn was a different story. It took me too long to know what her role was to Breckon. The reason why she's spending her consciousness in a boy she didn't even knew was told by degrees. The way her memories moves slowly through her in pieces that somehow helped her realize what really did happen to her. Was she dead? In a coma? It all came down to her until the last moments of her life and what of Breckon was involved. And it's on a much later part you'll know about their enigmatic connection. I can say that what Ashlyn went through in her last days was as painful as watching Breckon about to do to his life. Their character was sublime. The out-pour of feelings were striking in both glad and morose and too much grief that I don't know whether I could still handle. Parenthetically, it should be noted that Aritha Franklin's song somehow, in a subtle way, plays a large role in the novel and that when you really listen closely it does say a lot to them. It was sad and I can't believe they manage to have me teary by the end but it was a broken-beautiful thing to experience that in the end I feel very hopeful. xx