Book Review / "Just Jonathan" by Donna Scuvotti

Just Jonathan by Donna Scuvotti

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


“Dreams shattered by just being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

That’s what happened with Jonathan at the vulnerable age of thirteen. In one moment, his perfect life crumbles and turns into a nightmare. After his mother gets killed in a car accident, he finds himself thrown out of the warm cocoon of a loving family. "It was so traumatic that it burned the childhood right out of me, which was unfortunate because now I felt like I couldn’t relate to anyone my age."

The experience is even more traumatic since Jonathan is left alone to cope with his grief. Although his father isn’t dead, the way he treats the situation and his son almost makes it worse that he’d stayed alive. "He went from being the best Dad in the world to not even caring if we had food in the house or wondering where I was."

"Just Jonathan" by Donna Scuvotti tugged at my heartstrings and stirred many a memory from my own past.

I could deeply relate to what Jonathan has to go through in this story. The feeling of your perfect life shattering into a million pieces is familiar to me. One summer, you are still a happy child surrounded by a loud, loving, and caring extended family. Everything is just like it’d been for the first decade of your life. And then, the next summer your life crumples and shrinks, and nothing gets back to what it was ever again.

I lost my best friend when I was about the same age as Jonathan. For me, it was both bewildering and shattering. Bewildering because until then, I hadn’t encountered death, let alone the death of someone so close. She wasn’t simply a friend, one of the company of jolly teenagers hanging in school corridors between classes. She was that only person who talked to me when I arrived at the new school. With all my friends with whom we had been together since kindergarten left behind, dumbfounded by the realisation that from now on, I have to make a whole journey to get to school – twenty minutes by train followed by an even longer walk – instead of simply crossing the road, I felt completely lost. Anna didn’t let me feel this way for long. As soon as I appeared in the classroom doorway, she approached me, asked my name and offered to sit together. I hadn’t fit in until graduation – bookish kids would understand – but at least I didn’t feel unhappy and forlorn. Thanks to Anna. A few years later, there was an incident – one of many; working with children, people stop paying too much attention to them I guess – a classmate hurt Anna, she went home and spent some time not attending school. And then, I called her, wishing to ask when she was going to be back, and her mother picked up the phone and said that Anna was gone… I was devastated. I couldn’t even gather the courage to tell my aunt and mom that my best friend died. How can you put into words something that you aren’t able to understand?

Little did I know back then that it was only the first experience of losing someone dear and important to me. In the next few years, I lost my father and my two loving aunts.

“Just Jonathan” is a real treat for everyone who loves animals. Only the person who adores animals could have described how profound the therapeutic impact of having them around can be. The author has managed to do it masterfully. I loved Sydney the golden retriever and wouldn’t mind cuddling up with Luke’s calico cat.

The story makes an unexpected turn when Jonathan meets Luke. Their first meeting already felt like a life-changer but in a way completely different from what Jonathan could imagine. And from there, a rollercoaster of events and revelations starts.

I don’t want to spoil the experience of unwrapping this story for you, so I’d better leave it here. I’ll only add that “Just Jonathan” is the book that will surprise you, for it will lead you to the paths you don’t expect you’ll be treading when you start reading.




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Just Jonathan