"Dying to Forget" by Trish Marie Dawson Review

"Dying to Forget" is written by Trish Marie Dawson and tells the story of Piper Willow. After being "date raped" and the death of her best friend, who was the only other person that knew about the rape, Piper decides to kill herself. After her death Piper goes to "The Station," a limbo of sorts, between Heaven and Hell.

 The Station is where many, but not all, of those who decide to take their own lives go. Here they have two choices; they can become "volunteers" or simply "move on," presumably to Hell, If the person decides to become a volunteer, as Piper does, they are used to help try and prevent others from killing themselves, by becoming their subconscious.
In "Dying to Forget" Piper is put into two different people. First is Sloan Nash who she resides in for most of the book, she then enters Abiline Peterson were she stays until the last couple of pages.

 I recently read "Th1rteen R3asons Why," another book about a young girl who committed suicide. "Th1rteen” took a very unique way in telling the story, the narration of the book switches between her, telling her story, via cassette tapes, of why she killed herself and the actual narrator as he listens to said tapes. These tapes are sent to the thirteen people she blames for her death, hence the name.

 Like "Th1rteen," "Dying to Forget" takes a unique way in dealing with suicide. Suicide is one of the most taboo subjects in existence and author's spin on it never once glorifies the subject which, when dealing with suicide, is extremely important. 

Support groups exist for many subjects; cancer, rape, drugs, and alcohol, to name a few. These groups often have speakers who have overcame their addictions and troubles or survived their illness (or both). These speakers try to prevent others from making the same mistakes and/or help them cope with their battles. Suicide prevention groups on the other hand, is limited on who can speak for them. They can only have those that have overcame their desire to kill themselves talk, they can't have someone who successfully killed themselves speak on why it would be a mistake to do the same. "Dying to Forget" fills this vacant spot, in a way, and it works really well. 

 Once you start reading "Dying to Forget" it is hard to put down. There are very few characters and settings so you're never have to feel overwhelmed trying to process information. The Station is described in such a way that is easy to visualize too. I often visualized it looking like Platform 9 ¾ from the last 'Harry Potter' film, after the final battle.

While the characters are easily relatable, I believe there should have been more depth to them. I'm mainly speaking of Piper's two "assignments," both Sloan and Abby's reasoning to want to kill themselves seemed as though they were cut short and not as detailed as they should have been. While both of their, as well as Piper's, stories are explained, I believe that there could have easily been a few more pages detailing their stories more. By doing so, we readers could feel closer to the characters and sympathize with them more.

 "Dying to Forget" is an outstanding book, that has a lot of things working for it; it puts a spin on a taboo subject that works well, and neither takes away the seriousness of the subject or glorifies it in any way. The lack of character depth does very little, in taking away from the book, if any at all, and could simply boil down to my personal preference.

 "Dying to Forget" is the first book in it's series (The Station) and Dawson's second published book, it is the first book I have read from the author but certainly not the last.

I give the book 4.5 Assignment Cards out of 5.

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