Keri Blakinger

This was reviewed in a past BookPage, but enough time has passed that I didn't remember why I put it on my TBR list. I think my interest was caught by the fact that the author is a former competitive figure skater.

I would rate this lower than 3 stars but decided to give it 3 stars because her story has the potential to be inspiring. There isn't as much about the figure skating part of her life as I'd prefer to have seen. She has managed to keep her sobriety, find jobs, and find a cause to get behind (trying to make life in prison better).

The beginning is a bit choppy for me--with chapters jumping between current and past. I almost wish she'd written it chronologically. The descent into addiction and her arrest is difficult to read--even some of the prison part is difficult to read what they go through.… (more)

I love a good book written by a journalist as I'm often drawn to the distinctive and compelling writing style that usually comes with the territory. Add a mutual background in skating, a shared regional growing up experience, and the fact that when Keri was arrested in Ithaca, my brother in law was concurrently getting his law degree at Cornell, well, I just knew this was a book that I will definitely stick with me for quite some time. From the first page, Keri didn't disappoint. I have laughed, I have cried, I have exclaimed "holy shit" out loud, and repeatedly shared facts about the prison system that I have learned with friends and colleagues. Keri writes with a finely honed and distinctive voice that makes her story all the more compelling. Alternating between chapters of her life, they are all seamlessly pulled together by her masterful pen. To know that her work in recent years has been focused on effecting change to the same system she experienced is inspiring and heartbreaking. Keri's writing conveys not just her own experiences, but shows the human side of a system that many of us do not often think of, let alone experience. Prisons are a nebulous space and the people who are incarcerated there are not often people that the average American puts time and effort into caring about. While I've had my own experience with family members going to prison for drug related offenses, once they were out, I stopped thinking about it, but they never did, and it's clear Keri never did either.… (more)