Amanda's Reviews > Perfect Glass

This book is precious. When I have to a point to a list of books that changed my life, Perfect Glass easily makes the list.

The first book was incredible, too, but this one...this one just impacted me so deeply. Both Henry's and Meg's sides of the story, but especially Henry's. His wrestling with feelings of failure and insufficiency, his struggles with understanding others in the orphanage situation in Nicaragua, and his raw, aching pain as he watched his life in Nicaragua falling apart...and worried about his life back home at the same time. I felt all of it and it moved me.

Meanwhile, Meg's life back at home with Jo Russell, the sometimes-fierce, sometimes-senile elderly artist was another overwhelming story of love and perseverance. This whole book was a story of love that perseveres even when it seems like nothing is working. Love that fights until the very end. Love that does not shrink away when things are growing more messy and painful by the moment.

It's so very beautiful, that love.

This isn't a book to critique as a manuscript (see my embarrassing fourteen-year-old self's attempt at that cool detachment below). It's a story to be absorbed and lived. Let it touch you, challenge you, and make you think about love that never fails.


Old Review (circa 2013, aka way back when)

Characters

Since this is a sequel, it had pretty much the same characters. Meg and Henry were as amazing as always. Quinn was interesting, but I wasn’t too fond of him, quite frankly. He had no business poking his nose into Meg’s life like that when he knew the state of matters between her and Henry. Also, I get the idea that his relationship with Meg was supposed to be a friendship, but it didn’t really seem like that. I may not have noticed, but it didn’t seem like that to me.

In Perfect Glass, the Point-of-View is split between Meg and Henry. That provided me with so much understanding of Henry and his life and heart. He had his own storyline in this book, and a big one at that. I loved it, and I totally got it, too. Meg was still her compassionate, empathetic self and I loved the relationship between her and an elderly artist, Jo Russell.

I can’t quite tell who the focus is on in this story, however. I’m not sure if the main character is still Meg or if it’s now Henry. Like I said, they got equal “face time,” so that’s not a helpful factor. Personally, I think Henry’s storyline was very strong and may have been stronger than Meg’s in this book.

Plot

So in Perfect Glass, Henry’s in Nicaragua working at his sister and brother-in-law’s orphanage before he goes to college. There are tons of problems to be solved with that, and as a reader I could really see how Henry was growing and changing through that. I could completely relate to this, although I’m not quite sure how. The story between Raf, a 15 year old boy with a history who lives at the Quiet Waters orphanage, and Henry was incredibly special. I think Henry’s storyline was done excellently and was resolved perfectly.

As for Meg, I couldn’t tell her storyline as easily. I could tell she learned a lot from the artist, but that was about all I noticed. I saw some goals, but I didn’t spot a specific, main one. This is part of what lead me to believe that perhaps Henry was indeed the main character of this story.

At any rate, the plot was done pretty excellently in this sequel, as well. Again, perhaps not as well with Meg, but Henry’s was amazing and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Overall

As is not often the case with sequels, this was just as good as its predecessor. I think I learned a lot from Henry and Meg in this story about perseverance and the importance of relationships and the way we can make a difference through them. All the characters were very well developed and real, just as in the other one, and once again the emotions in this story were so well put into words that I didn’t know what to do with them!

The author painted a clear picture of life in a Nicaraguan orphanage for me, and her details touched my heart. I was left aching for Henry, his brother-in-law, and the others who had to walk through some horribly sad times for Quiet Waters. I admired Henry for sticking with his plan and for leading those kids even when everything seemed to fall apart. Meg was so kind to Jo, and I loved how Jo taught her about the reason for love. I think I’ll go ahead and end this with that quote:

She [Jo] began to whisper. “If you have someone to love, then love. If you have someone to forgive, then forgive. You think, when you’re seventeen, there’s time enough for that, but there’s not. There’s no time at all.”

I squeezed her hand, trying to think of how to respond. But she took the burden from me and kept whispering. “You want to know why God gave us people to love? Because that’s the only way we can understand how He feels about us. Desperate and jealous.”

I scooted closer to Jo’s bed and leaned down over her, touching my forehead to hers.
“That’s beautiful.”

“I loved a man once, but I didn’t love him enough. People make mistakes all the time. All the time, Meg, people screw up.”

Her throat seized up. She coughed and swallowed and tried to make it right again. Finally, she could whisper, just a breeze of sound. “When you’re here, though, dying in a hospital bed, none of that matters. Just love and forgiveness. Got that? And you must have gigantic courage, enough for a lifetime.”

“Got it,” I whispered, reaching for a tissue on her table to stop my tears.

It is, beautiful, isn’t it?