Forever Obsession: Making Faces

ISBN: 9781301673872
Pages: 405
Source: Own
Appearance:

Summary:

Ambrose Young was beautiful. He was tall and muscular, with hair that touched his shoulders and eyes that burned right through you. The kind of beautiful that graced the covers of romance novels, and Fern Taylor would know. She'd been reading them since she was thirteen. But maybe because he was so beautiful he was never someone Fern thought she could have...until he wasn't beautiful anymore.
Making Faces is the story of a small town where five young men go off to war, and only one comes back. It is the story of loss. Collective loss, individual loss, loss of beauty, loss of life, loss of identity. It is the tale of one girl's love for a broken boy, and a wounded warrior's love for an unremarkable girl. This is a story of friendship that overcomes heartache, heroism that defies the common definitions, and a modern tale of Beauty and the Beast, where we discover that there is a little beauty and a little beast in all of us.

Hello everyone! So I've raved on and on about how amazing Amy Harmon is and I've only read/reviewed one of her books! That's completely tragic (Rithmatist reference right there

) so today I'm finally going to bring you my second review of an Amy Harmon book and believe me when I say it was just as fantastic as the first.

I can't even attempt to summarize this book into words because my brain is still attempting to recover from the massive impact this book has had on me. First off, DAMN YOU deceiving book cover! It took me forever to convince my dad to let me buy Making Faces because he was put off by that half naked dude on the cover, but now that I've finished it, it makes so much sense now! But seriously...that cover is so deceiving and so many of friends are already put off by the book. WHY???

Okay, now that I got that out of the way, this book is absolutely beautiful. Like A Different Blue, it's not just a love story, it's something so much more and teaches you so much. The freaking characters in this book are so freaking beautiful and scarred and wonderful that I can't even put how much I love them into words. Making Faces is about a love that goes beyond what's outside to the beauty that lies within. It's about not looking at one's appearance because what is inside is so much more beautiful.

Bailey Sheen. He is my new superhero and I love him so freaking much. Diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, he lives his life slowly getting weaker and weaker BUT that doesn't deter him even the slightest from living his life to the fullest. He is so unbelievably wise about some things that you just fall in love with him. He's so optimistic and happy and takes every little thing into account and is thankful for it. He's the light in the story, the one who makes you look deep inside yourself and then makes you laugh out loud.

Ambrose Young, oh I can't even put my feelings into words. he's this beautiful but tortured person. Son of an Italian underwear model, he definitely has the good looks. After 9/11 he feels the urge to do something more and enlists in the army. His best friends join him and they go off to war. Only he returns, scarred and broken. This story just explores his healing, his acceptance of his "disfigurement," his finding of love, and letting go of the past. I think he'd be great friends with Blue, like just friends because he belongs with Fern.

And that brings me to Fern Taylor, my beautiful heroine. Fern's had a massive crush on Ambrose for the longest time and after the war, she's one of the only people who actually understand him and reach out to him. She's strong, willful, and so unbelievably happy. She loves romance and has been writing romance novels since she was young. She's the rock for Bailey and Ambrose, but there are times where she needs a rock herself.

The title, when I made the connections completely blew my mind. Making Faces not only is Fern's connection to her "lack of beauty" or Ambrose's war scars/former Adonis self, but it's also something as simple as a game that Fern and Bailey made up to keep each other laughing at wrestling games when Bailey was sad that he couldn't take part of the sport.

This book is so raw, beautiful, and teaches you to appreciate the little things in life. Amy Harmon once again creates amazing characters, gives you a truck full of feels, and makes you want to hug every single person you see. This book is just amazing, so highly highly recommend. And one note: screw you Becker. (Read and you'll know what I mean.)

Everybody is a main character to someone. There are no minor characters. Think of how Ambrose must have felt watching the new in Mr. Hildy's class, knowing his mom worked in one of those towers. He's sitting there, watching it all on TV, probably wondering if he's watching his mother's death. She might be a minor character to us, but to him she's a leading lady. (Bailey's Wisdom right there)

Everyone who is somebody becomes nobody the moment they fail.

I have no pride left, Ambrose. No pride. But it was my pride or my life. I had to choose. So do you. You can have your pride and sit here and make cupcakes and get old and fat and nobody will give a damn after a while. Or you can trade that pride in for a little humility and take your life back. (Go Bailey!)

I'm not Bailey, Fern. And I'm not going to ever replace him. You two were inseparable. That worries me a little because you're going to have a Bailey sized hold in your life for a long time...maybe forever. I understand holes. This last year I've felt like one of those snowflakes we used to make in school. The ones where you fold the paper a certain way and then keep cutting and cutting until the paper is shredded. That's what I look like, a paper snowflake. And each hold has a name, And nobody, not you, not me, can fill the holes that someone else has left. All we can do is keep each other from falling in the holes and never coming out again. (Ambrose

)

True beauty is the kind that doesn't fade or wash off. It takes pressure. It takes incredible endurance. It takes the slow drip that makes the stalactite, the shaking of the Earth that creates mountains, the constant pounding of the waves that breaks up the rocks and smooths the rough edges. And from the violence, the furor, the raging of the winds, the roaring of the waters, something better emerges, something that would otherwise never exist. And so we endure. We have faith that there is purpose. We hope for things we can't see. We believe that there are lessons in loss, power in love, and that we have within us the potential for a beauty so magnificent that our bodies can't contain it.

If God makes all our faces, did he laugh when he made me?

Does he make the legs that cannot walk and eyes that cannot see?
Does he curl the hair upon my head 'til it rebels in wild defiance?
Does he close the ears of the deaf man to make him more reliant?

Is the way I look coincidence or just a twist of fate?

If he made me this way, is it okay, to blame him for the things I hate?
For the flaws that seem to worsen every time I see a mirror,

For the ugliness I see in me, for the loathing and the fear.

Does he sculpt us for his pleasure, for a reason I can't see?

If God makes all our faces, did he laugh when he made me?

~Fern Taylor