Book Review: Ten Below Zero by Whitney Barbetti

Title: Ten Below Zero
Author: Whitney Barbetti
Publisher: Whitney Barbetti
Release Date: August 28th 2014
Pages: 210
Format: eBook
Source: Bought/Amazon
Age Group: New Adult
Genre: Contemporary

“In here,” he said, pushing on the skin above my heart, “you're ten below zero. And you’re closer to death than I am.”

My name is Parker. My body is marked with scars from an attack I don’t remember. I don’t want to remember. I choose to live my life by observation, not through experience. While people are laughing and kissing and connecting, I’m in the corner. Watching them live. I’m indifferent to everything, everyone. The only emotion I feel with any kind of depth is annoyance, and I feel it often.

A text message sent to the wrong number proves to be my undoing.

His name is Everett, but I call him rude. He’s pushy, he’s arrogant, he crowds my personal space, and worst of all: he makes me feel.

He chooses to wear all black, all the time, as if he’s waiting to attend a funeral. Probably because he is.

Everett is dying. And he’s spending his final days living, truly living. In doing so, he’s forcing me to feel, to heal. To come face to face with the demons I suppressed in my memory.

He hurts me, he fulfills me, he completes me. And still, he's dying.

I've heard so many great things about Ten Below Zero and I finally had the chance to sit my ass down and devour it. But you guys . . .I hurt. My heart hurts. My eyeballs hurts. My everything hurts. Ten Below Zero gutted me. Whitney Barbetti gutted me and I don't know how to move on from this story because it was oh-so-good. The whole book made my emotions go haywire but those last few chapters had me bawling and then I got happy tears and then I would ugly cry and I was just a mess.

Parker and Everett are like no other fictional characters I've ever read about and I liked that they were different from what I expected. Parker has her reasons for being closed off but no one has really tried to get to know her, and yet I liked who she was. I liked that everything annoyed her. I liked her rudeness to Everett. I liked that Everett saw Parker and helped her the see the importance of living . Everett-oh-Everett, the things he would say to Parker had me swooning like crazy. Seriously I highlighted so much of his words and their scenes together.

Ten Below Zero made me feel so much and now I understand why so many of my friends loved this book. I loved loved loved Ten Below Zero; I loved the story and the writing and the characters and the message and the intense-ness, basically I loved everything about Ten Below Zero. Btw, next time I get a wrong number I'm going to pull a Parker.