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           Tallie McGovern was a normal high school student until her older brother, Nate, was killed in a car accident while Tallie only had her learner’s permit. From that night on, everyone treated her in a special way and was only known as “that girl, whose brother died in a car accident.” All of Tallie’s best friends avoided her, even her family. Tallie had a variety of different rituals she would go through every day, hoping she could return back to normal. But how could she return to normal after her biggest supporters died? Tallie couldn’t even bring herself to say his name. To add on to everything that had already happened, Tallie figures out that Nate was an organ donor. She doesn’t exactly take this too well.

            School wasn’t exactly easy for Tallie; she had loads of work to catch up on after taking the last month of school off after Nate died. Thankfully, she had Mel to distract her. The thing about Mel is, she didn’t care that Tallie recently had a death in the family. The two of them went on with having fun in their high school days; going to the movies, hanging out their favorite coffee shop, and just normal teenager things. Mel isn’t a typical teenage girl. She’s interested in a few things that you’d never expect a teenager to be interested in. Despite being best friends, they do have a few complications every now and then, mainly because of Tallie. Later in the book, Tallie is introduced to Chase, a quite intriguing boy who’s constantly adding on to his scrapbook consisting of tragic stories that he’s found floating around on the news, social media, or local newspaper. Tallie and Chase become friends and go through a series of miscommunication and dishonesty.

            Knowing that Nate was an organ donor, all Tallie cares about is finding the remaining pieces of him. It’s almost like she was brainwashed, and programmed to only proceed with one special task. She crosses the line several times in an attempt to get what she wants, varying from hiding her family’s mail, to calling almost every hospital that she suspected Nate was treated in. Throughout the story, Tallie drags Chase into a whirlpool of all of her ridiculous plans to meet all of the recipients of Nate’s organs.

            Through all of the crazy things occurring in the story, my favorite character has to be Chase. Despite some lies and complications with Tallie, Chase stays with Tallie through all of it and tries his best to protect Tallie. What I really like, is how composed and silent he can be sometimes. I never really knew what to expect from him, as he could be so vague at times. Obviously, it’s not common to meet a teenager that has a hobby of writing about tragedies in a scrapbook. Chase is the rock that Tallie really needs to go through with her journey.

                This beautifully written story will take you on an emotional rollercoaster bringing you to tears. This book is one of those books that makes the reader never want to put the book down, and just keep on reading to see what’ll happen next. Barnaby writes the story to perfectly reenact the process of how one might experience grief. Personally, I’ve actually lost my own dad and I too could say that my experience of grief was extremely complicated, so this story really did touch me, and I’m sure it would for everyone who reads it. This book is very fast paced; Barnaby immediately grabs your attention and keeps it for the entire book, with so many things going on to keep you curious on what might happen next. At one point of the story, I think I was even shaking because I was so nervous of what the outcome of the story would be. For all of these reasons, I rate Some of the Parts a 10/10 and is definitely on my list of favorite books. 

Check out Some of the Parts at the Newport Beach Public Library.