Before I Let You Go, Kelly Rimmer
Rating: 9/10
Publishing: Graydon House
ISBN: 978-1-525-82084-7
Copyright: (C) 2018 by Lantana Management Pty Ltd
There is a lot to talk about how much I love this novel by Kelly Rimmer. To begin with, it’s about two sisters, Alexis “Lexie” and Anne “Annie” Vidler. Lexie is a doctor who is engaged with her surgeon fiance, Sam Hawke, and Annie is an aspiring writer and a drug addict. There is a heavy theme of codependency between these two sisters and how much it has affected their lives and relationship.
In the middle of the night, Annie called Lexie crying and telling her that she is pregnant, and to make matters worse, Annie has been taking heroin while she is expecting. Lexie has been ordering Annie to go to the hospital but Annie refuses because she is aware that she would fail the drug test and have her baby taken away. Lexie and Sam forced her into the hospital anyway. During Annie’s examination, both Annie and Lexie find out that Annie is at risk of child endangerment due to the heroin inside the unborn baby. Fearing for the worst, Lexie has been defending and enabling Annie, which is a major symptom of codependency. Lexie even forced Annie to go to rehab in the past, but Annie left due to her hatred of being sober and dealing with other drug addicts.
What makes this novel interesting is that it has two character perspectives: Lexie and Annie; due to Annie being a writer, her entire is in her journal perspective. In Annie’s journal, she has been writing entries to a man named Luke, which has been a mystery at first, and later turned out that Luke is the director of the rehab that Annie checked in after she gave birth to her baby daughter, Daisy.
I have been curious why Annie turned to heroin and other drugs; as I read her journal entries within the novel, I found out about the tragic past of both Lexie and Annie. The sisters’ father passed away during a fire rescue and before he died, the father gave Annie a journal. Realizing how much the journal means a lot to her, Annie has carried it around with her all the time and she has not written anything in it until she goes to rehab under court order. The father’s death has affected Lexie, Annie, and even their mother. Later on, the mother meets Robert, a religious man, and they remarried and moved into a religious community despite the sisters’ protests. It turned out that Robert is an abusive fundamentalist and every time the girls did anything that is considered as a “sin,” Robert would beat them up by whipping them with a leather belt. It is revealed that both Lexie’s and Annie’s past turned abusive after their father’s death and being forced to move into a community.
As they lived in the religious sect, Annie rebelled by not saying “grace,” cutting her hair short, and even wore a skirt that was torn up to the knees (in the sect, women and girls are forced to conform by having their hair long underneath a headscarf and always wear skirts that are below the ankles). Annie’s rebellion led Robert to go to extremes by beating her and forcing her to fast to cleanse herself from the sin. One day, Annie couldn’t take it anymore and she ran away from the sect. When Annie goes to college, she met one of her boyfriends there and that was when she started taking heroin out of peer pressure from the boyfriend.
As I read along, I realized that Annie hated being sober because of her traumatic memories. This means that Annie has been taking heroin as escapism, which gave me some sympathy for her. Annie gets pregnant by her drug dealer and she went as far as taking heroin during her pregnancy.
Honestly, I don’t like the idea of Lexie enabling her little drug-addicted sister, but then I understood that this is part of codependency. I may have gotten a C in my psychology college course, but I was able to understand the meaning of codependency and how much it affects the lives of people who are codependent with one another. Lexie was only protecting Annie and Lexie is aware of what Annie went through in rehab and she didn’t want her to go through the same issue as before.
I even learned about NAS in infants. When Daisy is born, she had to undergo withdrawal when the heroin went inside of her during the pregnancy, so she had to take certain doses to prevent that. When she finds out that Annie is forced to go to rehab under the court order, Lexie finds out that she has to become a legal guardian for her baby niece while Annie becomes sober. And if Annie fails to complete her rehab, she will be sent to jail for child endangerment, and Lexie fears having to take Daisy under her care for the rest of her life.
When I have reached the end of the novel, I was in tears. I won’t explain what happened to Annie and Daisy, so I leave that for you to read yourselves.
I love this book. I love the sisterly-relationship between Lexie and Annie. It even lectured me about NAS babies and how illegal drugs can negatively affect the infants. I love the loyalty Lexie has for Annie despite they were codependent with each other. I even loved how Lexie has already reached “motherhood” when she became Daisy’s legal guardian. I give Kelly Rimmer an A for this novel. It has touched me emotionally