The Fix by Natasha Sinel

Publication Date September 1st 2015 by Sky Pony Press

Young-Adult, Contemporary, Mental Health, Sexual Abuse, Family Issues

eARC provided by Publisher via Edelweiss

My Rating 4 Stars

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One conversation is all it takes to break a world wide open.

Seventeen-year-old Macy Lyons has been through something no one should ever have to experience. And she’s dealt with it entirely alone.

On the outside, she’s got it pretty good. Her family’s well-off, she’s dating the cute boy next door, she has plenty of friends, and although she long ago wrote her mother off as a superficial gym rat, she’s thankful to have allies in her loving, laid-back dad and her younger brother.

But a conversation with a boy at a party one night shakes Macy out of the carefully maintained complacency that has defined her life so far. The boy is Sebastian Ruiz, a recovering addict who recognizes that Macy is hardened by dark secrets. And as Macy falls for Sebastian, she realizes that, while revealing her secret could ruin her seemingly perfect family, keeping silent might just destroy her.

The Fix follows two good-hearted teenagers coming to terms with the cards they were dealt. It’s also about the fixes we rely on to cope with our most shameful secrets and the hope and fear that comes with meeting someone who challenges us to come clean.

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MY THOUGHTS I should have known that this book would upset me, after I got to a part where the main character has a flashback of her seven-year-old self. This one’s a little too close to home for my liking, but I couldn’t stop reading it. This is an emotional book, and by the time I was done, I was just angry about Macy’s situation. The ending was a little too rushed and not what I expected. Still, I really enjoyed reading it; no matter how hard it was.

The Fix is one of those books that carry a heavy load. I tried not to over analyze every little thing that was done and said with these characters. Especially Macy. This girl comes off as a little slutty, but you quickly realize that it’s just not as simple as her sleeping her way around town. She’s seventeen for God’s sake! And after her conversation with Sebastian, everything starts to unravel. She has tried so hard to keep everything bottled up, but when someone calls you out on your s**t, those carefully placed walls come crashing down. Sebastian is in his own world of pain and I’m glad that he has a mother who takes her role seriously. Otherwise, he could have kept on until the only thing left to do was eliminate the problem altogether. Their connection was so powerful – it’s like fate decided that these two teens needed each other to Fix everything that was troubling them.

The secondary characters are pretty much likable. Chris, Macy’s boyfriend, was nothing like I think a seventeen-year-old boy would be. They’re best friends, and I’m glad that when the time came to call the romance off, he didn’t get all dramatic about it – just that he needed time to go from boyfriend back to best friend. These teens partied too much and had lots of sex in between; yet, they all had goals of becoming something. At least they weren’t complete f**k-ups. And there was no showing of said sex, just that it happened. This book is YA to it’s core, so don’t think that it gets X-rated, because it doesn’t.

My problem stemmed from the short ending and the fact that Macy’s dad needs his axx kicked. Seriously, I just don’t get why the author chose to let his character get off so lightly about his impassiveness with what happened to his daughter five years prior. This whole time, Macy has been a b***h to her mother because of it. And, yet, Scott got away with everything. If Macy’s dad had told her mom, the last five years of life for this family would have been different. I felt so bad for Macy, and it was just all too much for me. More questions should have been asked. I really like Kevin – the gay family friend who gave Macy just what she needed. For her to see him so upset about what she went through, that was powerful. All the years Macy blamed herself, and she was only a victim – she finally realized that she did nothing wrong and she had no choices because someone did a bad thing to her. She needed an adult to tell her that, and it didn’t come from the most important grownups in her life until all was said and done. A great read that I enjoyed, but it’s some hard stuff to get through; especially for me. Even with the bad, I still recommend reading this book.