Emily (Books with Emily Fox on Youtube)'s Reviews > Five Feet Apart
Five Feet Apart
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Five Feet Apart.
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Reading Progress
December 27, 2019
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Started Reading
December 27, 2019
– Shelved
(Hardcover Edition)
December 27, 2019
– Shelved
January 2, 2020
–
Finished Reading
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A Robin Reads
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Jan 02, 2020 05:33AM

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I personally really *loved* this book (I cried like a lil' baby ;-;), but I can also see why you wouldn't like this.Tastes are different. We probably don't like a book that they did really enjoy.




It was cool but some gloomy
Im toweny two but i have not felt in love with someone yet
I think im a robat😂
At the end i love book🙏

Because it's about two extremely sick children deliberately breaking protocol and endangering their lives. The writing also wasn't great, but it's mostly the concept that's upsetting.

I don't necessarily think this book addresses all of these questions perfectly or in some cases even well, but it does address some very real concerns we go through. Namely, the choices we must make from a young age between living the life we have been given and making meaningful relationships and memories, even when it puts us at risk, and protecting our health when it means isolation and missing out on many, many important milestones and experiences. Teenagers already break many rules and boundaries and this becomes infinitely more complex to manage when your life is so heavily dictated by rules and protocols, such as when you spend extended time in hospital. If I waited until I wasn't extremely sick to consider dating or falling in love or getting into relationships, I would be dead. I will never not be sick, and that's difficult and frustrating - and it was the most difficult and frustrating as a teenager and in my first few years as an adult, for so many reasons - but it's the reality I, and many others, live in. I have conflicted feelings about some aspects of this book, but either way, I love that there are books beginning to talk about these experiences and subjects like growing up severely chronically ill.
Glorifying breaking protocol is of course not something I'd encourage, but discussing it happening - and framing a story around why this is such a difficult choice and one with significant complexity, and discussing the myriad of reasons and emotions behind why protocol is broken, is absolutely valid in my opinion. They are teenagers, who happen to be sick, and while they know there are potentially fatal risks to breaking the rules, that doesn't necessarily make it an easy choice not to. It was never an easy choice for myself or others, either. In some ways I wish it was, but knowing you are sick and at risk doesn't make watching life go by without you any less difficult or painful. It makes sense to me that this focuses on teenagers, too, as this is a time when for most of us these struggles are felt the most intensely.

