Something Like Normal Review

TITLE Something Like Normal
AUTHOR Trish Doller
PUBLICATION June 19th 2012 by Bloomsbury
READ November 16 to 17, 2012
SOURCE Purchased

When Travis returns home from a stint in Afghanistan, his parents are splitting up, his brother’s stolen his girlfriend and his car, and he’s haunted by nightmares of his best friend’s death. It’s not until Travis runs into Harper, a girl he’s had a rocky relationship with since middle school, that life actually starts looking up. And as he and Harper see more of each other, he begins to pick his way through the minefield of family problems and post-traumatic stress to the possibility of a life that might resemble normal again. Travis’s dry sense of humor, and incredible sense of honor, make him an irresistible and eminently lovable hero.

With Something Like Normal, Trish Doller has weaved a story that is about as raw and real as it gets. I've always had a fascination with books that deal with mental conditions and PTSD was a territory that I had yet to venture into. Here, we are in Travis Stephenson's head as he comes home for his one month leave after serving a year in Afghanistan. He comes back to shocking feelings that home no longer feels like home and he has a tough time dealing with the day to day mundane of his old suburban life.

Doller's writing was spot on for Travis, I felt every emotion she attempted to convey and it all felt perfectly real. I felt his grief in his tragic loss of his best friend and his anger at his father for being such a crap husband. I always find it tough to be in a guy's head and deal with such raw emotion, I don't know why, maybe it's because men are made out to be hard as rocks and it always affects me a lot to see them at their most vulnerable. I think that is what affected me the most here, Travis was a tough guy, but we see him in these terribly sad moments that had me reaching for tissue quite often. We also get to see a softer side of Travis as he embraces his new infatuation with Harper. I loved Harper! She was so comfortable in who she was and she had so much love and understanding toward everything Travis was dealing with. The contrast of the beautiful, budding romance and the darkness that followed Travis home from Afghanistan made for an intensely engrossing read.

The effects war has on a soldier are staggering, and I don't want to get into the psychology of it all but I think Doller handled it great and definitely brought some things to light about PTSD that I wasn't aware of before. It makes me sad how soldiers are affected mentally for the rest of their lives by the things they have to see, have to go through and have to do overseas. This is a beautiful story, and I really wish that I had more to say about it but nothing I could say could even do it justice anyway.