Save Yourself

by Kelly Braffet

Save Yourself has the narrative flair of Gillian Flynn and Adam Ross, the scruffy appeal of Donald Ray Pollock, and the addictiveness of Breaking Bad.

Patrick Cusimano is in a bad way. His father is in jail, he works the midnight shift at a grubby convenience store, and his brother's girlfriend, Caro, has taken their friendship to an uncomfortable new level. On top of all that, he can't quite shake the attentions of Layla Elshere, a goth teenager who befriends Patrick for reasons he doesn't understand and doesn't fully trust. The temptations these two women offer are pushing him to his breaking point.

Meanwhile, Layla's little sister, Verna, is suffering through her first year of high school. She's become a prime target for her cruel classmates, not just because of her strange name and her fundamentalist parents: Layla's bad-girl rep proves to be too huge a shadow for Verna, so she falls in with her sister's circle of outcasts and misfits whose world is far darker than she ever imagined.

Kelly Braffet's characters, indelibly portrayed and richly varied, are all on their own twisted paths to finding peace. The result is a novel of unnerving power-darkly compelling, addictively written, and shockingly honest.

Genres: Fiction, Thriller, Mystery Thriller, Mystery, Dark, Contemporary, Suspense

320 pages, Hardcover

First published August 6, 2013

About the author

Kelly Braffet writes stories about unhappy people making bad decisions, occasionally with magic. She is the author of The Unwilling (available 2/20 from Mira Books), Save Yourself, and Last Seen Leaving; her first novel, Josie and Jack, has been made into a feature film starring Olivia DeJonge, Alex Neustaedter, and William Fitchner, and directed by Sarah Lancaster. Her writing has been published in the Fairy Tale Review, Post Road, and in several anthologies, as well as on Salon.com. She is a graduate of Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College.

She is married to the tall and immensely talented writer Owen King. He's dreamy. For more, see www.kellybraffet.com.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book surprised me, in a good way. i don't know what i thought it was going to be, but i definitely wasn't expecting what i got. and i like that i can still be surprised by books, this far along in my reading career.

it's the story of two brothers, patrick and mike, whose father is in jail after he killed a little boy when he was driving drunk. it's the story of mike's live-in girlfriend caro, whose desperate trapped boredom in her housewife-without-the-ring life leads her into patrick's bed one night. it's the story of layla and verna, two sisters whose ultra-religious parents (no sex ed in this school, kids!) lead them into typical teenage rebellion that quickly escalates into a dangerous place when they come under the sway of a charismatic and sociopathic boy. but mostly it's the story of how quickly things can spin out of control when impulsive decisions are made without considering or understanding the motivations or expectations of others. especially when people are as fucked up as the characters in this book.

i said i was surprised with this book, and i meant not only that i was surprised by the story's arc, which i was, but what most surprised me was where my sympathies as a reader ended up, and also with how subtly and perfectly patrick's character was written. you would think i would have felt the most affection for the 17-year-old gothed out lolita/layla, but for her i felt pity and dismay, with no love at all. caro was my favorite, and she managed to redeem the name for me - a still-young waitress who comes home defeated every night smelling of fish to tend house for two overgrown boys without ambition or prospects for excitement

And even as she thought that, Mike was in the kitchen, wasn't he, filling up the red cooler that lived next to the armchair in the living room with beer. She could hear the clatter of ice, the muted clink of beer cans. Caro hated that cooler. The uncleanable (she'd tried) pebbled surface of the thing, the old man's name written in huge Magic Marker letters on the side; the way that Mike sometimes came home with a bag of ice and a case of beer and she would instantly know that once again they were going nowhere, once again they were staying exactly where they were.

that cooler, leaching a steady, constant trickle of despair, made me sadder than almost anything in this book. and caro's exhausted brave face in her circumstances quivered my cold black heart.

but the real star here was the atmosphere. she captured the small hopelessness of the town perfectly, with its molasses-futility of existing without living. its tone reminded me a lot of out of the furnace, which was a very mediocre movie with a great cast, but whose strength is its powerful sense of location; a dying town whose inhabitants are trapped in their small lives going nowhere, day after day.

utterly bleak and nearly perfect.

my only real complaint is that layla doesn't read like the same character in "her" chapters as she does in the patrick or verna chapters. and it's not simply a matter of different perspectives - her dialogue and actions just don't mesh, even with the latitude i allow for the naturally inconsistent behavior of a troubled teenage girl still trying to figure out who she is.

but quibble, quibble. this is a great one, particularly for someone like me, who skews dark.

read it and weep.

come to my blog!

[Shelby *trains flying monkeys* · Rating 5 out of 5]

Patrick and Mike's dad ran down a young boy. Drunk driving. They are now on their own and live with their own demons.

Mike was strong and good-looking and he made her feel safe, but that wasn't the kind of thing he thought about. Patrick might have understood, but Caro thought Patrick had grown acclimated to misery, and even as he knew the beer cooler was poison he wouldn't have been able to get rid of it.

This book was so personal for me. My dad spent 26 years in prison. I know that feeling of your demons eating you alive. I'm not throwing this into the review as a pity party. He is a great man and I'm proud to have him as my dad. I just know the feelings these kids are having.



Caro grew up with a mentally ill mom. She sleeps with too many men in order to just find someone that wants/needs her. She ends up as Mike's girlfriend.

it was a nice thing for him to say, the sort of thing that always got to her. Caro needed to be important. It was boring and typical and transparent as hell, even to her, but she couldn't turn it off any more than she could quit having arms.

Patrick works nights at a 7/11 type store and ends up kinda getting stalked by Layla. A goth type girl with so much going on in her head that I couldn't decide if I wanted to smack her or cry for her.
Her parents are those type parents who fight the school board to keep sex ed out of the school. Purity rings. The whole nine yards.



Her little sister Verna has so much to face starting high school. A sister that was involved with a favorite teacher that was involved in the sex-ed scandal, she is super religious, no friends other than her sister. The bullying in the book could be a trigger if you've ever been bullied. I wanted to smash and roar.



Little sister Verna gets involved in big sister Layla's world.

You have to read this book!!
Dark fiction at it's finest. I didn't know when I started reading this book that the author was Stephen King's daughter in law..What the heck is up with that family. Do they just ooze awesome in the pages they touch?


I received a copy of this book from blogging for books in exchange for an honest review.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

There must be something in the water that Stephen King's family is drinking.

King is currently in a bit of a second renaissance, producing some of the best work of his career. Then there's his son, Joe Hill, who with Horns and NOS4A2 has rocketed onto my authors to watch list and earned the same distinction has his famous father of "I will read everything he writes."

Add to the list of talented authors in the King family tree, his daughter-in-law Kelly Braffet. Her latest novel Save Yourself wasn't just one of the best novels I've read all year. It was one of those books that is so good, so absorbing and so utterly readable that it set unrealistic expectations for the next book or two I read to try and equal or top.

Save Yourself is kind of like watching a season of Breaking Bad on DVD or streaming. You keep telling yourself you'll just do one more chapter or episode, only to find yourself still going hours later, even though you've got other pressing things that need to be done like eat, sleep or continue to be gainfully employed.

Yes, Save Yourself is just that good.

And yet, it's not a story that you'll necessarily feel better about yourself or humanity as a whole after you're done reading. Packed with anti-heroes, the novel follows several threads all through to their inevitable and violent conclusion. Patrick Cusimano is facing some demons including a drinking habit, a dead-end job and the fact that he's in love with his brother's live in girlfriend. It doesn't help that Patrick and the girlfriend have slept together and that neither of them can stop thinking about their (what should have been) one time indiscretion.

Patrick's dead end job at the local convenience store brings him into contact with Layla, a goth wannabe who is rebelling against her ultra-Christian parents. Layla and her sister, Verna, are used by her father in promotional material for his family ministry. Verna is bullied at school while Layla has turned to rebelling through her clothes and lifestyle against her parents. That includes hooking up with several older guys, including Patrick.

Braffet ably and compellingly weaves together her plot threads and builds each character up as the novel winds its way to its inevitable and devastating conclusion. As I said before, this novel is next to impossible to put down, despite the fact that there are few redeeming qualities to any of the characters Braffet has created.

Simply put, this is one of the best novels I've read in a long, long time. Pick it up, read the first two chapter and then just try to put it down. If you're like me, you won't be able to.

[Ash Wednesday · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 STARS

Who made God’s washing machine?
Who made the pointy things that stuck in God’s feet?

Let’s draw comparisons as a jump off point for this one. This book was like that movie Love Actually without the Wet Wet Wet Christmas and with every character living out their own personal versions of hell, taking a trajectory without any conceivable escape. I think I was expecting something along the lines of R-rated Courtney Summers or Hannah Harrington but ended up feeling like I read an exploded, novelization of Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun. Which is all sorts of fucked up, intense, discordant and crazy and will hopefully put off those who get offended by cheating (between siblings no less), statutory rape, underaged sex, bullying, animal cruelty (those poor lobsters!), cults and high school violence. But you, yes you with an appreciation for all things taboo, miserable and dysfunctional characters, you and Chris Cornell will have a field day with this one.

Save Yourself is about two families living in the polar opposites of a town that sounds suspiciously like those TV/movie towns where law enforcement exists in the periphery, and only comes in when the protagonists have already made a mess of themselves. So yes, hell.

Living in the shadows of the crime committed by their father years ago, the Cusimanos are Ratchetsburg’s pariahs, reducing Mike and Patrick to nothing more than the sons of an alcoholic child killer. The brothers try to carry on, strive for some semblance of normalcy with Caro, Mike’s girlfriend who lives with them in the very house where their family’s demise began. But the town is long on the forgetting and forgiving department. While Mike chooses optimistic oblivion, Patrick carries the burden of being the one to call the police on their father all those years ago. He ends up committing the Great Apocalyptic Mistake of sleeping with Caro and because that’s not enough fun for one plate, he eventually gets entangled with a seventeen year-old goth stalker, Layla Elshere.

Verna Elshere is a high school freshman, stepping in to a life bearing the shadows cast by her sister Layla. They are daughters of a basement minister, the good kind of girls who wear Ruby Promise rings, pray to God and loves everybody. When once Layla was ridiculed to being a Jesus kind of girl, she got worse and widespread abuse from school when she inadvertently kicked off the publicised battle of her father’s worship group against sex education. This leads Layla to lash out against her parents and the world at large, finding shelter and acceptance instead in the fringe goth group led by a charismatic and mysterious boy Justinian. The same boy Verna’s growing more and more drawn to as the harsh reality of high school continue to punish her for Layla’s perceived faults.

Alone in her bedroom, Verna was Bathsheba. She was the Whore of Babylon. She was all four of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, she was Salome, she was the Beast, she was the apple. She was one of the nameless children who died in Sodom when fire and brimstone rained down the sky.

I’ve read a lot of edgy authors (for the first time) this year but very few actually impressed me quite as much as Kelly Braffet. At the end of the book, she provided the short story (Hung Up) from which this novel was based from and it was quite interesting to see the bare skeleton from which this was moulded from. I thought it was brilliant, how well placed the meat and flesh she added on to make it into a novel, because in my humblest opinion, this was some piece of work. One that was disturbing and awkward and depressing delivered with impressive control and depth. It did take me a while to piece together half of the story with the other, connect the dots and find the underlying pulse where this was coming from. And to be honest, I’m still not quite sure I’ve made every crevice, figured each nook and cranny of hurt and structured anger this made me feel. Because for a stretch the switching perspectives between Patrick, Caro and Verna were independently powerful but the overall picture was hard to discern for me. Each had its own charm that made you want to savour each chapter, not quite ready to yield the reins back to the other third of the narrative while also excited to pick up the other loose thread, dread and excitement simultaneously preventing you from looking anywhere else but forward.

It was THAT kind of a read.

The kind that made you involved for each character’s arc. The kind that will make you want to slap and hug these people. It was atmospheric, pervading and tangibly familiar: the smell of loss and defeat wafts through the pages and it smells like a high school bathroom and a convenience store at midnight, while hope and comfort smells like scotch tape. I ended up having a headache after putting this down because it’s been a while since words have punched me so effectively in the gut, the powerlessness of the characters so potent that it transports you to a place that’s familiar: harrowingly nightmarish and real.

All she had ever wanted was a world she could count o and every time she thought she had it somebody took it away from her, somebody kicked her out or traded her in or walked away without a word. She never learned. Nothing ever changed.

I’ve read my share of disturbing but this just upped the bar a little higher. You know how awful high school can be? You may just know a little more with this one. And you might have some preconceived notions about this book, some expectations when your interest was piqued with the brotherly cheating and all those things I listed above. I don’t think one would be disappointed but I don’t think it would be anything one would expect either.


For all its triumphs, I thought this book ended rather abruptly, tying some ends haphazardly and not tying some at all. Though it could probably be explained as ambiguous at best in which case, I’m charting this as one of the most depressing non-endings I’ve read in a while. Layla being the hinge character that joins both half of the story felt a little too volatile and disjointed from the character in her world and Patrick's world.. It could be argued its a facet of her personal conflict, of a troubled teen working out the kinks of her angst and the consequences of her choices and I suppose I’m reluctantly willing to accept that as an excuse. And I thought the last few climactic chapters lacked a certain degree of urgency. Justinian, who gave off such an intense and brilliant Jim Jones vibe, lacked the necessary weight and punch in the threat department that all that rapid-fire intensity felt a little dulled and muffled.

I swore I wasn’t going to talk too much about this book because it’s really one of those that will take you for a ride if you let it.

And I do hope you let it.

Review Copy courtesy of the publishers thru BloggingForBooks.

Also on Booklikes.

[Adrianne Mathiowetz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pure entertainment with no meaty reward. You will learn nothing from this book, about humanity, or yourself, or timespace, or plants, even, you definitely won't learn anything about plants. The writing is perfectly adequate without ever being beautiful. You will continue to turn the pages in a kind of ambivalent horror, wondering what could possibly happen next, and that is the biggest selling point of this book -- its plot darts unpredictably like a frightened or possibly rabid animal, and you can't help but be cast under the spell of its savageness.

But, in the end, the animal bites your hand, poops itself, and flops into the dust, and suddenly you're standing there in the woods wondering if someone's been waiting for you to come home, all this time -- if there had been some better conversation to be had elsewhere.

I will not lie; I totally enjoyed this book.

[Patrice Hoffman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't read any book recently that I can recall that has as many seriously messed up people as this one does. Patrick, Layla, Mike, Caro, and Verna all live in the small town of Ratchetsburg, PA. Their lives intersect because of another even worse pscyho. Enough about that.

Save Yourself begins with recounting the circumstances of Patrick's life. The son of a murderer. His father killed a boy while driving drunk. The town won't let Patrick forget that he and his brother Mike, need to pay for not reporting the crime sooner. The religious zealots, I mean parents of the dead Czerpak boy, want them to pay with everything physical that they have. Not only are his problems stemming from his father going to maybe leave him homeless, he's got quite crush on his brother's girlfriend, Caro. While on shift at Zoney's, a 7-Eleven type place, Patrick meets Layla.

Layla was once a semi-normal teenager, with the overbearing, religious phanatical parents. We meet her as the coffin ring wearing, totally gothed out 17 year old who is drawn to Patrick for some reason. Maybe she feels sorry for him, or maybe she just wants to piss off Daddy. She's abandoned her life as a bible-toting nut for practices in sadism, masochism, and any other crazy -ism there is. Her younger sister Verna seems to be following that path.

No longer interested in being called Venereal or bullied at school, the last hope of Layla's parents, Verna, begins to search for truth and understanding in places beyond her Bible. She slowly tries to transform into a person that is better equipped at handling the teasing and bad behavior from classmates. She looks to her sister's newfound independence and group of friends in an effort to save herself.

These people all are searching for something, although they aren't quite sure what it is. We readers only know that they are all stuck in a rut and no one quite knows what to do to get themselves out. The sister's think they found their answer in a group of people that claim to have the answers to enlightenment.

Kelly Braffet does a great job at making this novel dark from the beginning to the end. There's always some sense of tension. I will admit to being quite bored with the middle of the book. I didn't know where this was leading or what the purpose of the book was. All the characters seem so unstable that the plots plateau could be supplied by any of them. I was very shocked by the ending but wondered for the whole time does no one have a cell phone.

Essentially, I'd be interested in reading more by Kelly Braffet. This is my introduction to her writing and it's all right. The plot is intelligent and the characters more than interesting. There's depth to all the characters introduced with no unnecessary characters coming in just for the sake of making the novel lengthier. Save Yourself is a quick read that I'm sure fans of dark fiction will enjoy.

[Ellen Gail · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy. Shit.

Do me a favor.

Drive out away from the city and find yourself an isolated patch of countryside, away from streetlights and cars. Wait for night to fall. Look up at the night sky. Look at allllllll those 500 kajillion stars chilling up there. See those?



I'm hereby awarding every single one of those (stars, fireflies, great kings of the past, whatever) to this book.

Bravo. I think I'm broken.

[Kelly (and the Book Boar) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/

3.5 Stars

"Families were like oceans. You never knew what was under the surface, in the parts you hadn't seen."

The Cusimano family consists of brothers Patrick and Mike (whose greatest claim to fame is having an incarcerated father who was jailed for killing a little boy while driving drunk), and Mike’s live-in girlfriend, Caro. The Elshere family is comprised of sisters Layla and Verna and their “God Warrior” parents. When Layla begins pseudo-stalking Patrick, the two families’ paths will cross in some very twisted ways.

I’m going to blame the blurb for making me drop the rating a bit on this one. Once again, this is not comparable to anything by Gillian Flynn. Flynn makes you buckle up on Page 1 in order to take you on a rollercoaster ride of mindfuckery that will leave you reeling months after you’ve finished her stories. This book will not do that.

If I had to choose an author to compare Braffet to, it would be S.E. Hinton. Save Yourself is a book that could potentially have been categorized as a YA and would easily be banned from schools if it were, just like Hinton’s stories. The subject matter was current and relevant and the main characters were people you really wanted to route for, but realized early on they might not be able to be saved.

This book has no mystery to solve and the characters you hate are characters you are supposed to hate. It's just about life . . . No, not even that – it’s just about existing. It’s about being poor and from fucked up families and being bullied (real bullying that makes you contemplate suicide) and probably having a case of some seriously untreated PTSD due to your upbringing and repeating the past and having no future to look forward to. It’s bleak and it’s written with a brutal honesty that hits you like a punch to the gut and makes it hard to regain your breath.

And to top it all off, you won’t really feel better at the end.

"Life shouldn't be so fucking hard, you shouldn't have to give so fucking much up."

At most, you can only hope that the Cusimanos and Elsheres somehow find a way to "stay gold" . . .




This book was provided by Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review

[ᒪᗴᗩᕼ · Rating 4 out of 5]

MY RATING⇢ 4.25 ✰STARS✰

BOOK TAGS⇣

⤏ REALISTIC GRIT-LIT ⤏ DARKISH AND COMPELLING ⤏ YA-ISH MIXED WITH ADULT-ISH ⤏ DEALING WITH MANY HOT-TOPICS ⤏ WITH EVERYTHING FROM BULLYING TO SOMETHING LIKE MASOCHISM

MY THOUGHTS⇣

The lives of all these people are on a collision course...and this is the sorted story of how they arrive there. You know some shit is going to hit-the-fan in a town called Ratchetsburg...

While some of the characters are teens, the story itself is rather heavy. If you are looking for a happy ending...this isn't it. It's all about getting the short-end of the straw in life. It's raw and not pretty. It's both deeply disturbing and deeply affecting at the same time. It even almost pulled me out of my slump (I haven't been moved enough to give anything 5 stars lately)...not quite, but close. Hopefully, I find a book that does, soon.

The Audio is performed really well by Michael Goldstrom, they just should have had a female narrator for the female voices. It would have upped the narration rating to a full five stars, then.


BOOK DETAILS⇣

AUDIO PERFORMED BY⇢ MICHAEL GOLDSTROM
NARRATION RATING⇢ 4/5
BOOK COVER⇢ MEH...
SETTING⇢ RATCHETSBURG, PA
SOURCE⇢ LIBBY AUDIOBOOK (LIBRARY)
AUDIOBOOK LENGTH⇢ 11 HOURS, 40 MINUTES

BREAKDOWN⇣
Plot⇢ 4.2/5
Characters⇢ 4/5
The Feels⇢ 4/5
Pacing⇢ 3.5/5
Addictiveness⇢ 3.5/5
Theme or Tone⇢ 4.2/5
Flow (Writing Style)⇢ 4.5/5
World-Building⇢ 4.3/5
Originality⇢ 4.3/5
Ending⇢ 4.5/5

[Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prepare yourself for a poetic inferno of a ride.

This author has successfully created an inferno here on earth amidst people, characters you know and see everyday, characters whom whilst not quite understanding the real deal trapped in a vicious circle of love, pain, submission and rebellion.

Betrayal, murder, revenge, ties that bond with serious consequences, parents failing their kids, parents that want control and order, others that had lost it, young girls, sisters in rebellion whom want to understand each other and find someone who attains control over them, this someone insidiously spins a web and has them seeing things very foggily.

In this seat of power lays Justinian, he seeks to have those around him find pleasure through pain and power through submission and wisdom through doing stupid things.

The author has you total immersed in these believable characters she has cast, tied in viscerally with great writing, sentencing, and the dying need to know how they all end up in their little bubble of finding themselves through the lies, betrayal and darkness.

A story that will have you thoroughly satisfied in what being caught up in a great tale was once like.

One for the must reads of 2013 list.

“Here, with Justinian and his people, was the only place she would ever feel safe again.”

”I’m not normal. I’m not like them. I’m like you. This is where I belong.”

Review also @ http://more2read.com/review/save-yourself-by-kelly-braffet/

[Mollie · Rating 2 out of 5]

It wasn't until about three quarters of the way through this book that a light bulb went on for me: wait. This isn't some coming of age novel with redemption and learning at the end. This is a sick, twisted novel that preys on everyone within it. I didn't know much of anything about this book going in (obviously) and I wonder how different my opinion would be if I did. As it was, I felt cheated and misled.

*Spoilers*

The fact that the goth kids are really the evil, fucked up blood-sucking (OH COME ON YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING ME) followers of a sociopath was the icing on the cake for me. Seriously. I thought this was going to have some intelligent insights into bullying and its consequences but no. It just took the stupidest, silliest way out. Ugh.

Layla was problematic throughout the novel, as well. To be as sexually aggressive as she was with Patrick (a problematic theme unto itself) while at the same time captivated by Justinian rang false. Verna seemed a much more realistic character.

All that being said, I did think this was well-written. I was impressed by the inconsistencies in the descriptors of the characters from different perspectives (i.e. was Patrick shrew-like and greasy or good-looking if a bit lanky? Was Caro cool, clean, and gorgeous or frumpy and unsophisticated?). I feel like that is a hard thing to with subtlety and Braffet did it really well. It made the characters evolve and shift in my own imagination and I found it quite powerful: much more powerful than the stock characters (Justinian, Criss, Mike) changing (or not, AT ALL) with such violence.

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kelly Braffet’s Save Yourself will eat at you. It’s dark, it’s brutal, and it doesn’t quit. It only tightens its grip on your windpipe like a python, squeezing harder and harder, tighter and tighter until it reaches its breaking point. And when you do reach its end, it won’t leave you feeling great, but it will make you feel better for having read it.

There’s Patrick, who works the overnight shift at the convenience store, Zoney’s, who quit his previous job because he couldn’t take the whispers and stares from the people around him after his dad killed a kid in a drunken hit and run; there’s Verna, incoming high school freshman, who’s struggling to find her way, especially since she’s having to contend with her older sister Layla’s reputation as the teen goth sexpot, and their dad as the town’s religious mouthpiece; and Caro, who’s worked all over the country waitressing tables, battling demons no matter where she goes, and now lives with the much-looked down upon Cusimano brothers, one of whom is her boyfriend, the other who she’s finding more and more drawn to, and who’s room is just down the hall.

It’s not often that a novel focuses on the mundane. But here, it does. Each of the featured characters’ lives are so affected by a previous experience outside of their control; a family member, in some way --that they’re tied to-- knowingly or not, set them on path outside their choosing. And Braffet depicts this well. It takes place in a shitty suburb outside of Pittsburgh, and we’re shown ordinary scenery through Patrick’s isolated late-night and early morning walks to and from his meaningless job; the familiarity of the local dive bar; and the narrow-mindedness of the stereotypical small town folk that they would rather avoid than have to interact with. Routines are emphasized -- the cop who comes in for the Snickers bar; Mike’s beer cooler next to the recliner for his after work television watching; Layla’s drive-by’s; and the high school’s loading dock meet-up spot. Braffet’s world is not an exciting one, but that’s what she wants --and it only serves her story for the better. She has her characters live and operate in this endless purgatory on Earth, where everyday offers the same terrible existence, and they’ve come to accept it, and in a way, grown to believe that they deserve it.

But not only that, some of the things that happen to them, and that they put themselves through, is devastating. And at the same time, you understand these motivations. It’s why that when these things do happen, it hits you like a bag of bricks. You finish the chapter, set the book down, and take a breath. Patrick’s desire for love. Layla’s self-destruction. Verna’s need to find her way. Mike’s want of normalcy. Caro’s urge for stability and happiness. And yeah, it’s relatable, but Braffet sets the stage skillfully as well.

And man… Layla just KILLS me. The only thing that I wish was different was that final, short chapter. [SPOILER] I like that Patrick and Verna got to have a conversation. However, I just wanted Patrick to show a little more empathy than he did. Because, yes, he was being honest with her. But at the same time, I think that he cared about Layla --at least a little bit. It would’ve been nice if he could’ve shown it there.

It’s an unsettling little story. Be prepared for it to sit in your gut days after you’ve finished.

[Autumn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The publish date on this book is a while off, but I picked this book up and couldn't put it down. I was really impressed by it. I've been in a bit of an "actual book" reading slump for awhile. I've been tearing through audiobooks like crazy, but when it comes to an actual book in hand, nothing has held my interest in quite awhile. The little blurb about this book said it was like Gillian Flynn and Donald Ray Pollock, and I happen to enjoy the darkness of both of those writers so I was really interested in reading this book.

Save Yourself tells the intertwining stories of Patrick and Layla. Patrick is stuck in a dead end job in a town where everyone knows his family's terrible story. He is the son of an alcoholic that killed a boy while drunk driving, and he turned his own father in to the police, but not fast enough for the town's forgiveness. Layla is a preacher's daughter gone goth and fallen under the spell of a sadistic psychopath. Layla is dragging her perfectly obedient little sister down with her and gets Patrick involved in all of their drama as well.

I read almost this entire book in one sitting. If it wasn't like 2 am and I wasn't utterly exhausted I would have stayed up and read the whole thing. Next day, I flew through the rest of it. I loved this book. It was the first book by Kelly Braffet I've read, and I'll will definitely be adding her name to the list of authors to keep an eye out for.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book: Save Yourself

Author: Kelly Braffet

Published: August 2013 by Crown, 320 pages

First Line: "Patrick worked the day shift at Zoney’s GoMart one Wednesday a month: sealed into the vaccuum-packed chill behind the convenience store’s dirty plate-glass windows, watching cars zoom by on the highway while he stood still."

Genre/Rating: Literary fiction; 4/5 lost little girls dying their hair maroon and silver just to fit in somewhere...anywhere

Recommended if you like: Owen King, Gillian Flynn, Rick Moody, Peter Straub, books about people who are broken, Sofia Coppola movies

Review: Years ago, I read Kelly Braffet’s Last Seen Leaving, and loved it. (I’ve always meant to read her other novel, Josie and Jack, and don’t know why I haven’t. I plan to rectify this soon.)

When early buzz started circulating about this book, I was interested. Very interested. See, Braffet understands what’s at the heart of all of us: that we’re scared. And we’re broken. And we’re trying like hell not to let anyone SEE how scared and broken we are, but we’re not always successful. And it’s at that place, where we’re at our most broken, that we can either become something great, or we can completely fall apart; it’s in our hands to go one way or the other.

Patrick and Mike’s father killed a young boy in a drunken hit-and-run; they are now looked at with suspicion as the children of the town drunk. Mike greets this with a kind of blindness; he refuses to see any ugliness. Patrick, however, greets it with anger, with an inability to move on – and with an all-encompassing desire for his brother’s girlfriend, Caro. Caro, in turn, is on the run from an unhappy childhood, and is torn between the two men, neither of whom can save her, but both of whom seem to need her to save them. Layla and Verna are children of the town’s most vocal “home church leader” (think the kind of guy who gets the reproduction chapter cut out of the high school biology textbook); they are also terribly bullied at school because of this. Layla falls in with a group of goth kids, who seem to be her salvation, and brings Verna along for the ride.

These people, these lost, terrified, broken people, all circle each other like planets; they all bump into each other, randomly, like moths dangerously close to a flame. And there is flame. And people burn. They burn with longing and desire and hatred and insanity. You know, you just KNOW, that someone’s going to go up in flames; you just don’t know which character it will be. Angry Patrick, who seems to have given up? Fishnet-clad Layla, who’s walking the knife’s-edge between childhood and adulthood? Scared little Verna, who just wants so, so badly to belong, to be like her big sister, to have people stop calling her names and start seeing her for who she really is? Caro, with her dead-end job and her boyfriend who does very little but drink and watch sports all night long and talk sadly about the old days while looking through boxes of his incarcerated father’s belongings?

I read this book like it was my job. It reads like a gorgeous indie film. I had to know what happened; I had to know if anyone got out of this, if anyone was able to pull themselves up and out of this dusty little town. Every time I had to go back to the real world I felt cheated. I lived among these people for the past few days. I rooted for them and I felt their disappointment and I cried on midnight back porches with them, the moon hanging high in the night sky turning a blind eye to everything going on down below.

Kelly Braffet understands the parts of us we hide from everyone else. Not only does she understand them, she shines a light on them until we almost understand them; until we can almost pin down where, exactly, those parts of us come from. And in understanding them, we might be able to overcome them.

(Originally published at Insatiable Booksluts)

[Rory O'Connor · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review in its entirety appears here:

http://fourthstreetreview.com/2013/07...

Are you interested in getting me to read a particular book? Tell me it has the scruffy appeal of Donald Ray Pollock (my most favorite among favorite authors) and the addictiveness of Breaking Bad. I’ll read it. When I read that Kelly Braffet’s latest novel, ‘Save Yourself’, had both of those attributes – consider me sold.

Patrick Cusimano’s life is not the way anyone would want their life to be, let alone Patrick himself. His father, an alcoholic, finally went too far, hitting and killing a little boy – then fleeing the scene of a crime. He returns to the home he shares with his two sons. Older brother Mike wants to sweep the incident under the rug. Patrick knows that is impossible and calls the police, turning in his dad. He waited 19 hours to do so, earning the scorn of Rachetsburg, PA. To make matters worse Caro, Mike’s troubled girlfriend, took their relationship far beyond platonic, straight to sexual.

Patrick’s status as town monster attracts the attention of local goth teenager Layla Elshere. Layla and her little sister Verna are outcasts at school and the victims of intense bullying. Their strict, religious father campaigned successfully to remove sex education and a favorite teacher from the school system. The school hasn’t forgotten or forgiven either girl. The sisters turn to a group of outcasts to form their own version of a family, only belonging to that family has far darker consequences than either girl could have imagined.

‘Save Yourself’ is very much a novel where the sins of the father are visited up the children. Despite the elder Cusimano’s 15 year prison sentence, Mike and Patrick take the brunt of the blame publicly. Turning in your own father is not enough. The two sons needed to have done it swiftly and immediately. Layla and Verna Elshere are publicly targeted for their father’s outspoken beliefs. All are facing dark paths that they are not responsible for choosing.

The novel primarily intertwines the lives of two very different, very dysfunctional families. Nearly each of the five main characters is capable of arousing both sympathy and revulsion, making the story remarkably touching, yet compellingly dark. Braffet’s prose has a gritty, unsettling elegance, creating vivid, page turning scenes that are just as likely to entrance you as they are to turn your stomach. Naturally I mean this as a complement. The novel is atmospheric and foreboding. As you read, the tension between the characters themselves and the town they inhabit relentlessly builds, as does the suffering the characters endure. The most twisted character in the novel, although a rather minor one, reinforces and perpetuates the idea that salvation and peace come only from pain, sacrifice, and suffering – which he feels is his right to inflict. Layla, who only wants to be noticed and loved, willingly confuses this sadistic torture for true love. Patrick is angry and tired of his father, yet unable to be free of him in a town he cannot seem to leave. He hovers between anger, despair, and nothingness. He is the character I loved most. The others have their own suffering to endure, from a schizophrenic mother to extreme public humiliation to using optimism as ignorance.

The novel reaches a violent, satisfying, yet believable conclusion. I loved it. If I have to give a less than stellar opinion on something, I don’t love the cover (the font’s appropriate though). ‘Save Yourself*’ is as addictive as the aforementioned recommendation promises and has the grittiness of ‘The Devil All the Time’. While it lacks the overwhelming despair of Pollock’s novel, it is no less enjoyable to read. It’s dark fiction done very well. 4(edging on 4.5)/5.

[Brenda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Patrick and Mike Cusimano were finding that life after their alcoholic father had been sentenced to prison for the hit-and-run death of a child was much worse than they had imagined it would be – if they had even thought about it. But the misguided guilt that Patrick felt was made worse by the nineteen hour gap between finding the damaged and bloodied car in their garage and going to the police. The blame directed toward Mike and him was such that their lives were made very uncomfortable to say the least. The days the two men spent in a haze of alcoholic stupor were many.

Layla and Verna Elshere were children of parents who were deeply religious – they had been brought up with their father’s Christianity from birth – when Layla was forced to run a campaign at her school, the end result caused a deep rebellion within her – and goth Layla was born. Verna at fourteen was struggling in school – she had been home-schooled until recently and the verbal and then physical abuse she was subjected to at the same school that Layla (occasionally) attended was horrendous.

Justinian, Layla’s deeply goth friend and leader of their other group of friends gradually and insidiously took Verna under his wing – slowly changes began to happen within Verna. But were these changes that she wanted? She knew she wanted her sister back; she desperately wanted things the way they used to be – but could it ever be that way again?

I struggled with this book. Misguided loyalty, bullying, abuse, grief, anger, the uncertainty of teenage years – what a mixture! But three quarters of the way through it hit an even bigger low! I can’t in all conscience, give this book a high rating, and I’m afraid I can’t recommend it either.

With thanks to The Reading Room and the publisher for my copy to read and review.

[Rachel Smalter Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once upon a time in a faraway land I denied being the "thriller-reading type" — but then I started reading the really dark and twisty stuff; the kind where everyone wriggles and squirms and NO ONE gets to be the good guy. Sold! Kelly Braffet's wonderful new book is about as dark and twisty as it gets. Eight attractive teenagers with shitty lives scramble to fend for themselves in a miserable world where grownups turn their backs just when their protection is needed most. At the story's core are two very different, very damaged families whose kids are left to atone for their parents' sins, with new sins of their own piling on at top speed. Braffet gives us a beautifully realized cast of the downtrodden and exiled in suburban Pittsburgh: exhausted waitresses, metalhead gas station attendants, blithe drunks, bullied goths, churchy fathers, schizophrenic mothers, all in a creepy, squirmy, steamy, scary stew that simmers to its punishing but perfect conclusion. All the fancy thriller writers with literary cred are calling Kelly Braffet the hottest new thing, and I'm SO on board.

[Taylor Caitlyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was dark and twisted, the characters broken and flawed. This is the only book I’ve ever read where the POV changes from chapter to chapter where I’ve equally loved all three narrators (Patrick, Verna, and Caro). Braffet is excellent at writing anti-heroes.

Save Yourself made me feel things, and while I've been fortunate enough to not have personal experience with most of the book's subject material, Braffet made it quite easy for me to identify with each character. Caro's monologues in particular hit home for me, and expressed feelings that I've never found an accurate description of.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Save Yourself is very good novel from Kelly Braffet. Crisp writing, smooth, easy dialog and a slow churn of a story. I dug it. With that said, my only peeve is that I could have done without *Major Spoiler Alert* the Justinian blood drinking cult mind fuck thing I realize that the story was supposedly building up to it the whole time, but it felt forced to me and it did not “fit” the rest of the story in atmosphere or tone. I would have preferred a simpler, less “shock” ending. It didn’t need it. Still a very fine read.. 4 Stars. Highly Recommended.

[Julia Fierro · Rating 5 out of 5]

BEST NOVEL I READ ALL SUMMER. So great. I loved this author's previous books, but Save Yourself was even more thrilling, complex, masterfully written. A 2013 must-read.

[Carrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a little twisted, a little a dark. I really can't say what I think, still trying to let it sink in. It felt like there was a horrible accident that had taken place and I couldn't look away.

The story is given to us from the many sides, we get to see the messed up lives of each character, Patrick, Caro, Mike, Laya and Vera, and how they handle the misery that they feel their life is. And misery is a good word for it, some of the stuff these people deal with daily is shocking and hard to swallow. So much corruption, brainwashing and darkness.

When I first picked this up I thought there was going to be more of a mystery/thriller. It was more the darkness that we live. You know whats the scary and well sad thing is? There are people who lives are like those in this book, they are suffering from the brainwashing from family and other loved ones. They are suffering from corruption, they feel like they have no one to turn too. Working in dead end jobs, being picked on in school to the point you just want to run away and change who you are. Go somewhere no one knows who you are. Being with people who make you feel that you need to do what they say to belong. The world is a messed up place and this book, Save Yourself gives us a little glimpse of what life is like for some.

The last 20% or so I would have never said or even guessed was how the book would unfold. I'm not going to spoil the ending but I was actually shocked and then glued with my jaw dropped, literally it dropped open and I said "wow".

Blog:
http://icanhasbooks.blogspot.ca/2013/...

[Elaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finished this book last night as I just could not put it down as it raced towards an unpredictable climax. Although not an easy read with themes that were quite dark and depressing, it was compelling. It did seem to bring out a lot of raw emotions and there were times I cringed and others when I felt, just like the characters that I was struggling to breath. I felt both empathy and despair for Layla, Patrick and Verna and as awful as it is to admit it rage and anger towards Justinian, Eric and Layla's parents. The characters and their relationships were quite dysfunctional and destructive. I did feel there was bit of hope at the end but this may be open to your own interpretation. This book may not be everyone's "cup of tea" but for me it showed the horrible side of human nature, the cruelty that can exist and the way certain decisions can spiral a life out of control. A 3.5 star read for me.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kelly Braffet leads her characters through a sinister court dance that winds in tighter and tighter circles until neither you nor they can breathe. Their very human mistakes stem from a quest for affection and validation; their paths predictable and inescapable, yet heartbreaking and apprehensible. Save Yourself is not devoid of surprises, but its dramatic effectiveness is rooted in the suspense of knowing the horrors ahead of Patrick, Mike, Caro, Verna, and Layla; in wishing them the best despite that knowledge; and in helplessly watching them slide into the abyss.

[r.b. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Goodreads has taught me that I'm really bad at writing about books, but this one had a slow burn, filled with characters that felt like people I've known throughout my own life. Once things come together you are IN it speed reading through to the end. So, yeah, READ THIS.
I've got to go add more of Braffet's books to my reading list.

[Cody | CodysBookshelf · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is going to be a hard review to write, and that's not because Kelly Braffet's Save Yourself is bad -- quite the opposite, in fact. It's so good that I feel like any attempt on my part to sum up the book and talk about the feelings it stirred within me would do nothing but undermine the story and the characters and the struggles they go through. Still, I'll try to press on but it's gonna be a short one -- I'll give myself just enough rope to hang myself with, nothing more and nothing less.

Save Yourself opens on a note of despair and doesn't get much more optimistic from there. Mike and Patrick, brothers in equally menial and mindless jobs, are the sons of a drunkard who hit and killed a local kid and is now doing time in jail. For this, they are social pariahs and just try to do their best to get through each day. They live together in their parents' home (side-note: their mother passes away due to cancer a year before the story's happenings) with Mike's girlfriend, Caro, making ends meet and not much more. They are living, but not existing. Mike is content with this, but Patrick isn't. He longs for more, but he can't crawl out from under the long shadow his father's reputation has cast. To make matters worse, he and Caro have drunken sex early on in the novel while Mike is away, and things only get more depressing and awkward from there.

In another part of town, a teen-aged girl named Layla and her group of friends participate in ritualistic activities (not wanting to go into spoiler city here) and her younger sister, Verna, is just trying to get by in her first year of high school. These girls are the daughters of extremely conservative evangelists who became well-known after they caused a big stink because the high school was teaching sex education. It became a big thing because that's how small towns work -- small things turn into big things. For this, Verna is mercilessly bullied by classmates to the point that I felt physically sick at times while reading what she had to go through.

These two stories eventually merge into one, leading to a thrilling (and very rushed) climax. It's truly exciting to see the way Braffet sets her characters up only to knock each other down . . . and when they get up again, you hope they'll stay up but deep in your heart you know they won't. Ah, tragedy.

Perhaps Braffet's biggest strength here is her character work. This woman is only three novels into her career, but she writes people like she's been doing it for at least a decade. Characters that should have been paper-thin cliches, such as Layla's gothic friends or the girls' parents, come off as totally believable and real -- like people you'd live next door to or meet on the street. That's a major sign of a talented author -- making the reader genuinely care about the people on the page. Oh boy, does Kelly Braffet ever accomplish that! As I said, at times I felt physically sick when reading about Verna being bullied. I winced when she cut off and dyed her hair to fit in with her older sister's group of friends. I felt for Mike, suspecting that Caro was cheating on him but not realizing it was with his own brother. I could see myself as Patrick, Layla, Caro, Justinian, all of them. Braffet made me believe in these characters so deeply that I became them.

So, why doesn't this novel earn 5 stars from me? Well, as I mentioned earlier, the climax and resolution felt way too rushed for me. It seems like Braffet was ready to finish the novel and put it aside, which is a real shame -- she has created some outstanding characters and situations here, and could have gotten even more mileage out of 'em. Still, I suppose it's better to be left wanting more than wishing the author had chopped off fifty or a hundred pages. What we're left with is a novel that's just over 300 pages and touches on every genre from comedy to horror to young adult fiction. Not bad, that.

In conclusion: READ THIS BOOK. You won't regret it.

[Rafe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this in one long sitting this afternoon. I am now tired and sad.

Save Yourself is one of the saddest books I've ever read - the tragedy comes from the relentlessness of the sorrow. The reader spends time in the heads of three characters - Patrick, Verna, and Caro - and each is drawn with compassion and intelligence. It's about small people in a small town, whose decisions turn everything inside out. It might be more accurate to say that it's everyone's dithering that causes the problems, but in fact the book is a weird haze of people being paralyzed by sadness until they do something desperately stupid because either they want to feel something or they believe the wrong person. This book has been compared a lot with Gone Girl and Breaking Bad, but I thought it was about nine thousand times more tragic than either of those, and also much better. It was, I suppose, a lot more Dreiser than Flynn.

And then it gets worse.

Everything that happens is wholly believable, which is kind of awful, because one ends the book wanting to take a shower and go look at pictures of kittens. Most of the book is just grim and gritty, a sad story about sad people from a miserable little city in Pennsylvania, but near the end the precipice on which Braffet has stranded her readers gives way, and BAM everything gets SO MUCH WORSE. There is a tinge of melodrama in the awful things that happen in the last part of the book (and particularly in the ringleader of the horrible things), and while I believed them, I wasn't pulled in quite as deeply as I had been for the rest of the book. Still and all, though, I certainly didn't stop reading. I couldn't.

Poor Patrick. And poor Caro. And poor Verna.

[Ellis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This could quite possibly inspire a "deliciously melodramatic" shelf, simply so it could be the single (so far) star of the show, or perhaps as Kelly's review suggests, a "psycho goth teen" shelf. I didn't have a whole lot of expectations going in but I was pleasantly surprised by the twists & turns here, particularly those concerning said psycho goth teens.

[Mieneke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm finding Save Yourself a hard book to review, because I can't seem to make my mind up about it. On the one hand I really liked it and found it compelling, especially towards the ending, but on the other hand I found the book slow going and at times a bit of a depressing slog. And every time I sit down to write my review I tend to oscillate between these two extremes. One thing is sure, either way Braffet certainly succeeded in getting a reaction out of me, which surely is part of what a book should do. So what did I like about it and what made it such a dark story?

Save Yourself is a psychological thriller that tells quite a dark story; it's the story of how Patrick Cusimano's insanely complicated life could get even worse. And it's also the story of how two sisters lose themselves, and each other, when their strict religious upbringing creates conflict with their lives as high school students. The narrative is told from three points of view: Patrick, Verna, and Caro. They are all pretty broken people. Patrick has to deal with his childhood, his mum's untimely death, the crime his father committed and what this forced Patrick to do. Verna is trying to get to terms with her very strict religious upbringing, her sister's rebellion and all that entail. Caro is trying to get past an abusive childhood with a mentally unstable mother and some less than fatherly step-dads. In fact the entire book is full off broken people. Verna's sister Layla is just as lost and broken as Verna is, for much the same reasons. Their school friends, who are outcasts, and more than just outcasts, seem to be looking for something to guide them through their troubled home lives. And their leader Justinian, the one who might be the most broken and damaged of them all. The story is about the lies people tell themselves, the lies they tell each other, and the way they play on the hurts each carries.

Beyond the darkness of the narrative, the book is also somewhat of a slow starter, in fact the plot isn't very fast-paced at all; instead we really get into the characters heads. This gradual insertion into the characters' psyche was extremely well done; even if they're not always likeable or understandable, the protagonists are sympathetic. Even Patrick and Caro, surprisingly, because usually screwing your brother over? Not cool. But in their case it somehow seems as it should be. The one thing that bugged me is that Layla's motivation in seeking out Patrick never gets explained and I still can't get my head around it. And Justinian and his cult-like ways also did my head in; where were his parents? Where are the adults in any of these children's lives? The plot and its denouement slowly creep up on you, only to take you for a rollercoaster ride you're unaware you boarded until it’s too late to get off, much like Verna and Patrick feel during the last chapters of the book.

So in the final verdict did I like the book? I certainly enjoyed the craft and found Patrick and Verna compelling, but despite its relatively short length, 247 pages in my eARC, the book seemed very long. Partly this is because of the slow pace, but it's also because the book takes pretty long to get to the point. Still the closer I got to the end of the book, the more I got drawn in until had to read to the ending holding my breath. If that is what Braffet set out to do with this psychological tale of suspense see most definitely succeeded. If you enjoy a twisty and dark psychological thriller, Save Yourself is an excellent choice to pick up next time you go book shopping.

This book was provided for review by the publisher as part of the book tour organised by TLC Tours.

[Lectus · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF big time. To much misery in the lives of the characters to make it appealing. I supposed there are people who live really miserable lives, and most of the times I am happy reading about them (sicko), but this time the writing didn't... move me to enjoy it.

I couldn't care about Layla stalking Patrick to become friends because.... Hello! He said he doesn't want to be your friend!! Who in real life tries so hard? Oh! And the poor soul, so misunderstood because she dresses awkward. Is like, people are mean to you because you have embraced freakishness, and then you don't like it. Why dress and act like that, then?

The daddy issues: If you don't like you life because daddy doesn't love you, move away and start over, unless, of course, it's this book and you need to stick around for the sake of the plot.

Verna... is it possible to be that innocent nowadays? Unbelievable.
Patrick was a decent character but I didn't care enough about the sidekick characters to stick with the story.

Another reason the story didn't work for me was because it has too many characters at the same time. I hadn't fully started to feel sorry for Patrick when I was also introduced to Verna's and Layla's problems.

This book is supposed to be a thriller; that is, the book is supposed to have suspense and excitement... I didn't see it here so I decided to follow the title of the book and 'save myself' from finishing it.

Via http://onlectus.blogspot.com/2014/06/...

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am always wishing there were more books about people who aren't well off in New York City, and Braffet has fulfilled my wish quite nicely. Patrick, Mike and Caro are sleepwalking through life, working dead end jobs, just making ends meet.

The weaknesses of the book come mostly from the other protagonists, Layla and Verna, raised by an overzealous born again father and rebelling to find themselves. Elements of their lives are real and viscerally true, others feel somewhat manufactured.

A few of the more melodramatic elements of the book don't ring true. (Everyone hating Patrick for waiting a few hours to turn in his father to the cops seems false to me.) But I found Braffet's voice strong and I was willing to follow where she led.

A good read for fans of Gillian Flynn's earlier books, a lot of the same feel.