And I'm still crying. It was one of the most poignantly beautiful stories I've read in ages. My heart is in a million pieces right now, but they are all beautifully broken.
It's this weird feeling that I don't know how to describe - a mixture of betrayal at the author's choice, a sadness so profound I don't know how I will ever come out of it, hope, and the feeling that the world, despite how screwy it is, has an endless amount of beauty and love to offer if you just stop for a minute to look for it.
My heart has been in a very weird place, lately, and I think that reading from this weird place caused this book to have an even more profound impact on me than if I had read it from a normal place. It's like my heart had been flattened out and was being slowly drained and sucked into a black hole, and this book turned the black hole into helium which proceeded to fill up my heart until it burst into a million pieces. A million heart-wrenchingly sad yet hopefully beautiful pieces.
This isn't a review, as it never could be. But I am left utterly bewildered and utterly enchanted, and I would almost recommend that, if you haven't read all of the Traveling Pants books, you go out and do so now. Because for this book to fall into its proper place, you need to have first read the other four (just watching the movie won't do), and you NEED to read this book. Now.