Hey Look! A Book Review! : I Will Find You by Joanna Connors

So for a book blog I really don't write about the stuff I'm reading that much any more. This isn't deliberate and it definitely isn't due to lack of subject matter - I've been reading tons recently and loads of great stuff, but just because every time I sit down a start writing a review my head just goes 'oh blah blah blah more of the same'. I feel like reviews aren't very exciting and a lot of them read very samey so I kind of don't write them anymore because I feel like if I'm bored writing them then you'll probably be bored reading them, but I'm trying to find a new fun way to write about the things I'm reading so you don't miss out on me shouting about the great stuff. Watch this space.

In the meantime I'm making a huge exception for I Will Find You by Joanna Connors, which absolutely isn't the book you think it is from hearing the title. I reserved it at the library on recommendation from Book Riot's All the Books podcast and it was seriously good call. This book is not comfortable reading, I'll warn you that straight up, but it is so good. The last time I felt this uncomfortable and fired up at the same time was when I read It's What I Do by Lynsey Addario last year, it's that kind of book.

When Joanna Connors was 30 and a reporter for a local newspaper she was raped when she went to a university campus to review a show. After she'd reported it to the police and the guy was sent to jail she put it out of her head and pretty much never talked about it again until her daughter was going to college and she felt she needed to bring it up with her. She then realised that she hadn't really dealt with what happened to her properly, and so she begins trying to find out about the guy who raped her; what his story was, and what could have made him do a thing like he did.

This book is incredible. Just the fact that it exists - my mind boggles that Connors could have that much humanity that she actually wanted to go into the jail and talk to the guy who did that to her so that she could try to understand what might have happened to him to make him do what he did, but then she ends up having to go further into his story and meet his siblings and hear some horrific things. It's such uncomfortable reading at so many points. I made many 'this is awful' kind of screwed up faces at unsuspecting people on the bus during the one day it took me to get through this book, but oh please read it, it's so powerful and fantastic. Like, it's about a horrible topic and I read it in maybe four hours? That says something I think. Go get it.