Author Groupies: Review of Life's a Cappella by Yessi Smith

Life's a Cappella

Author: Yessi Smith

Rating: 4 Groupie Stars

I will not tell you what my name used to be it is irrelevant. That person should never have existed.

I want to tell you how great my life was. How I lived without regrets. With constant laughter. Without any tears. I want to tell you how I lived each moment to the fullest. How each breath I took was fresh and full of life. With eagerness. Without any fear.

I want to tell you all of that, but then my story would be masked with lies and not worth telling. My life didn't start until I left my past. And I left everything. My mother, my friends, my name. My new name, the name everyone knows me by is Erin Lewis.

Four years after finding the courage to leave her hometown in Alabama, Erin is finally happy with where her life has led her. Not only is she secure in her environment, but the relationships she has formed center her, making her forget how damaged she once was. Before she can fully settle into her new life, her past crashes into her present, unraveling a set of events that destroy the very foundation she has built her new life on.

"The truth is I was born into a family in which the word family in and of itself was laughable."

"But my soul went a cappella, leaving my body so these men couldn't strip me of the only thing I had left-music."

"I learned at a very young age that home was not a place I wanted to be."

Erin Lewis changed her name, left her hometown, and forgot about her so called "family" as soon as she could after high school. She relocates to Miami, where the book starts four years later. Erin has reinvented herself with new friends and is about to graduate college. Erin has a hard time trusting people and tends to think the worst of them. It still mystifies her when people don't react negatively to a situation but look for the positive. She has tried to forget about her past and has told no one around her about it. She thinks it's all behind her...it's never that easy though!!

"And that is what I want, to shine so brightly that the darkness of my past is but a small speck of dust."

Erin meets Trent in Key West on break from school when she is with her best friend Cam at a beach party. Trent is a HOT, young cop that has a past of his own. Their first meeting was not the best and Erin of course had her guard up and was even a little mean to Trent! Trent ends up spending the weekend with Erin and her friends and she starts to like him, even with all of her reservations about people.

"Because I'm pretty sure there's some sort of law against offering women you don't know your banana. Some might call that harassment."
"You told your girlfriend that I sound like Chewbacca when we have sex," he said incredulously.

Erin and Trent start dating but of course with her insecurities and past she tends to push people away and does that well with Trent. He puts up a good fight at first and lets her know that she is someone special to him. When she finds out that his mom is a recovering alcoholic she decides she can't be with him because it reminds her too much of her own mother and can't trust her. Even though Erin trusts Trent and her friend Cam, she still has not gotten the courage to tell them about her past. But the past always has a way of bringing itself up! Erin, Trent, and Cam are having dinner one night when an unexpected visitor arrives asking for Jordyn. Erin tries to deny that she is Jordyn, but the cop knows better. He proceeds to tell her that her mother has died and has left a four year old girl behind. Erin is dumbstruck at first and can't believe that she didn't know her mother was pregnant when she left. The cop tell her that she is the only living relative left and she should try to take her in. Her and Trent end up in a huge fight about her hiding her past and she leaves. Cam comes over to sort through everything and find out what's going on. After a few bottles of wine and tears, Erin decides that she going to go back to Alabama and meet her sister. Cam leaves when Erin says she needs to be alone for the night and thats when tradgy strikes.

Because what was life but looking back at a bunch of pictures, forever engraved in our minds, teaching us, guiding us, and sometimes repelling us from life."

"Cam left my apartment last night but never made it home. She was gone. Dead."

After the death of her best friend, Erin spirals into a deep depression and relies heavily on sleeping pills to get her through the funeral and coming days after. She puts her sister and going to see her on the back burner and isn't sure that she wants to go anymore. Meanwhile, Shayna her sister waits and hopes that she will come save her from the life she has lived. Erin finally pulls it together and goes to Alabama to meet her sister and see about getting custody of her.

"It wasn't until I was alone that I allowed my bitter heart to shed a tear. One single tear that screamed louder than a torrential downpour of tears. I needed to change my frame of mind."

Erin meets the detective on her sister's case and doesn't immediatly remember him from her past. After a few days she realizes that he is the one who stood up for her against her mom when she was eleven. Nate is like the brother she never had and is grateful that he has been looking after Shayna since her mother died. But she can't help feel guilt about not knowing about her and saving her from the same life she had a lot earlier.

"Shayna, my little sister. My little sister whose eyes had seen too much. My little sister who had in her short life already endured too much. I hadn't been there for her from the beginning, but I would make sure the rest of her life wasn't so heinous. I'd take care of my little sister."

Erin takes Shayna to Miami to begin a life together and is able to get over the heartbreak of her best friends death. After a few weeks she realizes that she misses Trent and that she did in fact love him. After a lot of hard work and determination Trent and Erin are able to work through their problems and give Shayna the life she really deserves.

"My new name, the name everyone knows me by is Erin Park. It is a name built of love, trust, humilty, and strength. It is a name I am proud of. A name that I share with my husband and our daughter."

I really enjoyed this book. I liked that the book was from Shayna and Erin's points of view and you got a look into what both went through with their mother. Their story was heartwrenching and at times hard to read. The situations that Erin was put into all her life while living with her mother was horrible and to think that she had another daughter and those things could have happened to her as well!! Trent was amazing and so was Nate, he needs his own book!!!! (HINT, HINT)

"I found the comfort that came with that love. I found that pain could be shared, thereby lessening the weight of that pain. I found that I could comfort at the peak of my own distress. I found Trent; the only one who knew the song of my heart."

I'm a Hispanic living in South Florida with my redneck husband from Texas and our "half breed" son, who is actually the reason I started writing again after years of celibacy. My son loves stories, but not the kind you can read in an existing book. No, he'd rather make up a story, complete with our own illustrations. So, thank you Son, for igniting a flame I had let go out.