{"id":4085,"date":"2025-09-15T11:18:48","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T11:18:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=4085"},"modified":"2025-09-15T11:18:48","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T11:18:48","slug":"book-review-the-past-that-made-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=4085","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Past That Made Us"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Past That Made Us<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

by Kelly Marks<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong> Literary Fiction<\/p>\n

ISBN: <\/strong>9798891327665<\/p>\n

Print Length:<\/strong> 298 pages<\/p>\n

Publisher:<\/strong> Atmosphere Press<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Reviewed by Shelby Zwintscher<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong>A heart-wrenching, tenderly hopeful story of the love, loss, and lessons that rise out of a cancer diagnosis<\/strong><\/h2>\n

For years Millie has depended on herself and herself alone. Grinding away at work and keeping the world at an arm\u2019s length has been the best way to get distance from the past that still haunts her.<\/p>\n

As a senior manager at a large accounting firm, Millie doesn\u2019t have time to waste making another visit to the emergency room, but her stomach pain is horribly persistent. She is anxious to receive a diagnosis, a prescription, and an okay to get back to the grind. But the grind comes to a screeching halt when Millie is diagnosed with cancer.<\/p>\n

Millie can handle this on her own, she has to. That is\u2014until she physically cannot. After missing an appointment due to chemo side effects, the hospital calls her estranged mother and Millie has no choice but to return to the town she grew up in: St. Bell, Maine.<\/p>\n

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For Millie, returning to St. Bell means facing a past she\u2019s spent years trying to bury. St. Bell is where her broken family ran to in order to escape the grief of her sister\u2019s death. It\u2019s where her father\u2019s abuse darkened her and her mother\u2019s days. It\u2019s where her mother became hardened and detached, no longer much of a mother at all. But it\u2019s also where she experienced her first love and, with it, immense heartache.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor so long, I lived with a brokenness inside of me. A shattered heart I tucked away into a darkened and sealed-off place. But Mother\u2019s arrival and my return to St. Bell illuminated the painful memories I spent years ignoring.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Past That Made Us<\/em> is a story of hope despite the odds: cancer, trauma, and stubbornness. The complexities of rekindling broken relationships and the newfound hope that flourishes out of hardship are all written with breathtaking detail and thoughtful prose. I was so wrapped up in this novel, it even made me cry. Twice!<\/p>\n

The characters represent the wonderfully painful rollercoaster of being human. Throughout the story we witness Millie\u2019s begrudging growth and the ripple effect of that growth on relationships she thought were long lost. Every character feels as though they have walked out of real life and onto the pages.<\/p>\n

The Past That Made Us<\/em> balances the plot, medical information, and character development with great care. The steady creeping in of hopeful undertones is what elevates this heartbreaker of a story most. We need hope, and we get it. We\u2019re taken exactly where we need to be by story\u2019s end.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy diagnosis follows me like a skulking ghost everywhere I go. My physical scars are a beacon of my fight. But no one recognizes the internal scars cancer leaves in its wake. The ones hidden deep. The ones that hurt the most.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

You should pick up The Past That Made Us<\/em>. It\u2019s sad and it\u2019s hopeful and it\u2019s a ton of things in between. It\u2019s going to stick with me for a long time.<\/p>\n

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Thank you for reading Shelby Zwintscher\u2019s book review of The Past That Made Us <\/em>by Kelly Marks! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.<\/p>\n

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The post Book Review: The Past That Made Us<\/a> appeared first on Independent Book Review<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Past That Made Us by Kelly Marks Genre: Literary Fiction ISBN: 9798891327665 Print Length: 298 pages Publisher: Atmosphere Press Amazon Bookshop Reviewed by Shelby Zwintscher A heart-wrenching, tenderly hopeful story of the love, loss, and lessons that rise out of a cancer diagnosis For years Millie has depended on herself and herself alone. Grinding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4086,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}