I received a free copy of this book through Goodreads Giveaways.

I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for Jennifer (and by extension Lozito) to grieve the loss of a sibling, but We Turn to Face the Sun attempts to show just that. The majority of the book focuses on Jennifer and how her grief manifests, and I appreciate that Lozito shows this in a unique lens and doesn’t shy away from Jennifer’s feelings, even when they aren’t necessarily how someone “should” be mourning.

My major critique is that this book would have benefited from being shorter – novella-length at most, possibly a short story on the longer side. There are swathes of pages where the characters are explaining every little thing, getting lost in memory, or otherwise veering off from the scene at hand, so much so that I found it increasingly hard not to start skimming when this happened. A good amount of this could have been removed and I feel like the reader would still get the picture without having to do the work of absorbing long paragraphs that don’t let the reader draw their own conclusions.

There were also sections from the POV of Tara, Jennifer’s sister, and while some of this was enlightening, I found it only complicated things. I do think getting Tara’s side of the story was important, but I wonder if this was the best way to go about it. I didn’t end up feeling any closer to Tara as a result, and I think there could have been several ways the poignant parts of her sections could have been interwoven into Jennifer’s experience.

Ultimately, I applaud Lozito for writing about something so personally significant. It takes an incredible amount of guts to do that, and I think others who have experienced similar losses might find some comfort in this read.