I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
Remy’s dad is a survivalist whose outlook on society spirals after the death of his wife and the onset of the covid pandemic. He takes his 5 year old son, Remy into the remote wilderness to live off the grid. Remy hates it, but he is only five, so he has no choice. The first have of the book, Catherine Ryan Hyde describes the life Remy is forced to lead through the eyes of this young child. Events and emotions he doesn’t really know the words for but he tries to explain the best he knows how. This insight into Remy’s young life is gut-wrenching.
The second half of the story takes place after Remy’s father dies and he is forced to re-enter a society he has been taught not to trust. He isn’t sure if that is true or not and he struggles with that question for much of the book. But Remy is lucky to have Anne, the woman who takes this broken child into her family and does everything she possibly can to make him feel safe and loved. This part of the story flips back and forth between Anne and Remy’s points of view. The author doesn’t sugar-coat the struggles that both Remy and Anne go through during this time. She offers a true portrayal of the difficulties faced when fostering a child that everyone else has deemed difficult, feral and broken. But Anne does it because no child should ever feel like they are “too much” ( )