One rainy October night therapist Tallie Clark is driving home from work when she sees a man standing on a bridge, looking ready to jump. She gets out of her car and runs to the man, begging him not to jump. Miraculously, she is able to get him to come down and he agrees to go with her to get some coffee and perhaps talk about his feelings.
After coffee, the man agrees to come back to Tallie’s house with her. He’s not interested in talking about what pushed him to contemplate suicide, but he does tell her that his name is Emmett.
Over the course of the weekend, Tallie tries to help Emmett, to try and get him to open up so she can determine whether he’s still thinking about dying, and he does in small doses. But over this same weekend, the two form an intense bond, despite the fact that both are hiding things from one another.
This was an intense, beautiful, moving book. Alternating between Tallie and Emmett’s narration, it’s a story of grief, anger, hope, recovery, and secrets, and how sometimes the right person comes along at the moment we need them most.
There are a lot of things happening in this book but I was immersed completely from the first few pages. I didn’t love everything the characters did but I wonder how I might react in these situations. The funny thing is, I picked this as my Book of the Month club choice on the strength of its description (and its cover) but I knew nothing about it. Sometimes that gamble pays off!!
Cross-Smith is an amazing writer, and I have to read more of her work!!
This Close to Okay publishes 2/2/2021.
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