BOOKS TO READ
Category:Book Reviews,Coming of Age,Creative Writing,Fiction,Grief & Healing,Young Adult FictionThe World on Either Side by Diane Terrana
This Book Will Wreck You. In the Best Way. A Review of The World on Either Side by Diane Terrana
Some books you finish and set down gently. Like you’re afraid to disturb what just happened inside you. Diane Terrana’s debut is one of those books.
I’ll admit I’m not a neutral reviewer here. Diane was my creative writing instructor, and watching a teacher you admire put their own work into the world… it means something. This one I read with my whole heart.
Valentine is sixteen, gutted by grief, and done with the world. Her boyfriend is gone and she’s gone with him. Just a body in a bed. Her mother does the only thing she can think of: she books two tickets to Thailand and hopes the world is big enough to pull her daughter back into it.
It is. Barely.
What Terrana does so beautifully is refuse to rush Valentine’s healing. The teenage angst here isn’t dramatic for drama’s sake. It’s raw and recognizable and real. The self-imposed invisibility, the exhausting weight of pretending to be okay, the way grief makes everything feel both unbearably loud and completely silent at the same time. Any teenager who has ever felt like they were watching life from behind glass will find themselves on these pages.
Then comes Lin. A mysterious elephant keeper with his own hidden damage. And an orphaned elephant calf that needs saving. And suddenly Valentine, who couldn’t get out of bed, is running for her life through jungle… and somehow, inexplicably, running back toward it too.
The setting is lush and transporting without being a postcard. The adventure is genuinely breathless. The romance is earned rather than convenient. And Terrana’s prose moves the way grief actually does. Not in a straight line, but in unexpected spirals, with grace arriving sideways when you least expect it.
This one stays with you. Pick it up.
Published by Orca Book Publishers, 2019