BOOK REVIEW | MAKING FACES BY AMY HARMON

Making Faces by Amy Harmon

Genre: New Adult Contemporary

My Rating: ★★★★★

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Goodreads Summary:
Ambrose Young was beautiful. He was tall and muscular, with hair that touched his shoulders and eyes that burned right through you. The kind of beautiful that graced the covers of romance novels, and Fern Taylor would know. She'd been reading them since she was thirteen. But maybe because he was so beautiful he was never someone Fern thought she could have...until he wasn't beautiful anymore.
Making Faces is the story of a small town where five young men go off to war, and only one comes back. It is the story of loss. Collective loss, individual loss, loss of beauty, loss of life, loss of identity. It is the tale of one girl's love for a broken boy, and a wounded warrior's love for an unremarkable girl. This is a story of friendship that overcomes heartache, heroism that defies the common definitions, and a modern tale of Beauty and the Beast, where we discover that there is a little beauty and a little beast in all of us.

This book is absolutely perfect in every single way. I honestly don't have a negative thing to say about it. 
It starts off following the story of four very different people: Fern, a tiny redhead who has always been ugly; Bailey, Fern's cousin who has Cystic Fibrosis and is confined to a wheelchair; Rita, a beautiful girl who is friends with Fern; and Ambrose, a star wrestler with a face that makes girls swoon left, right and centre. The story starts while they're in high school during the year 2001 and the effect 9/11 had on them. Alternately, it follows another storyline a couple of years later when Ambrose comes back from serving in Iraq with a severely disfigured face. It's almost a backwards Beauty and the Beast tale, where Ambrose used to be beautiful, but now he's forever stuck with half of his face severely disfigured. From then, it's a beautiful story of loss, love and learning to accept and love yourself. 

This honestly blew me away, even though I already had high expectations seeing as the Goodreads rating for it is 4.50 and thousands and thousands of people have read this beautiful book! The writing is honestly flawless and immediately draws you in. Because there are flashbacks to when they were children and also flashbacks to 2001, you get so much backstory with these characters that you immediately draw a connection with them and they feel so real. I also love the backstories given in regards to all of their families. Everyone's family is shown throughout the book and the families play a really important role in the story, which as we all know, parents and families often get overlooked in YA & NA contemporaries. 

There are so many important aspects that are shown throughout this book that are so important to be highlighted in literature such as abuse, pregnancy, war, death and chronic illnesses and diseases and all of these things are so common and happen to so many people and it enhances the messages of this story so much. I could honestly keep going on about this story but I'm afraid I won't stop!

All of the characters are so unique and there are so many important messages conveyed through this book that will stay with you for years to come, at least I know that's how it's going to be for me! I will forever cherish this beautiful book that has given me so much to think about and to be grateful for. I will never stop recommending this book. GO READ IT.