No one ever wrote a song called ' All I Do Is Nearly Win' or ' Simply the Second Best.' Nope-the winner gets all the glory, but second place, well, they're first loser. I found it very comforting to slip into shoes that were mine but made for someone else.It's not easy being second best.

What I liked most about Louise was the way I so easily related to her, though that can really be accredited to the author. She goes back for the child and pulls him in. But she rectifies this mistake by doing something her parents did do for her. This scene is my favorite because though many would think it unacceptable for a parent to forget their child, Louise realizes for a moment how easy it was for them to forget her. Something goes slightly wrong and in her anxiety for the second twin, a little girl, she forgot about the baby boy that came first, the same way her parents forgot about her when she and Caroline were born. There is a moment in the last chapter of the book where Louise, now full grown with a family of her own, is delivering a set of twins. I loved this story because it presented a very solid embodiment of the internal and external struggle that tears siblings apart everyday. She learns that life is what you make it and your future isn't determined but how far the shadow of the person in front of you stretches but how far you can make your own stretch.Ĭlick here to see the rest of this review With this simple missive, Louise realizes the freedom that she's had all along and she later learns that the struggle was more internal than she thought. Her mother encourages her to leave her home in Rass in Chesapeake Bay and go to college.

When she lets it all go in confessing to her mother everything she feels, Louise finds the release that she's been waiting so long for. When Caroline is first to leave for college in New York, Louise finally bursts. It soon becomes time to start their lives and the two sisters go their separate ways. Finding no validation in her parents or grandmother, Louise looks in her friend Call and even the object of her affection, Hiram Wallace (Captain). Even as an infant, she was left forgotten in the shadows when her sister even bats an eye. Louise Bradshaw has lived her entire life hidden in the glare of sunshine that is her sister Caroline. Sara Louise 'Wheeze' Bradshaw struggles with inner turmoil as she fights to be seen in her sisters shadow.

For jacob have i loved