My Thoughts:

A story that really touches on trauma and how differently people address those experiences. When we’re introduced to Tess we know pretty quickly that she’s had a difficult life and that she’s kind of started over in a new place but she’s happy, for the most part. Then we quickly learn that she’s kind of curated a life for herself, she even refers to it in that way, where she can pretend that the things in her past happened to someone else or that she isn’t the same person. Even changing her own name.

But then something life changing happens and takes her on a journey of self discovery, reflection, and an adventure that she has no idea where it will take her. Add in the fact that the young man who was with her through her traumatic experiences, the one she thought she loved, has also just popped back up into her life looking to make things right between them. The way they parted at the end of high school left them both in the dark, neither knowing what happened to the other.

Without giving too much away, that’s really the major themes from this story. Tess works at a company she helped build and repairs timepieces for families. She loves seeing these heirlooms come in and hear the stories that go with them and how they have become an important part of someone’s life. She ends up with a mysterious package from an unknown sender that has a pocket watch inside and is asked to find the original owner or whoever it belongs to.

This is what sets Tess on the adventure as her and her teenage crush, whose now a journalist, travel around to places to hear the stories of others that this pocket watch has touched. But the path of truth is treacherous and circumstances along the way force Tess to have to face her own past that she’s been avoiding.

It was an emotional read that really pulled at my heart. From the stories of those that the pocket watch were with, to Tess and Elliot’s own stories about their lives. Each one carries a traumatic burden with it. Reminding me that trauma has so many shades and everyone’s experience with their trauma is slightly different.

A very reflective story that left me feeling grateful for my own experiences and the times I’ve had, as well as the reminders of how beautiful it is to look back and see the detailed and complicated paths we all walk in life.