Scars Like Wings (ARC Review)

There are plenty of YA stories about love and finding oneself after trauma. But this is the first I’ve seen that features burn survivors. 

Scars Like Wings is the story of Ava, who lost her parents, her best friend, and her face in a house fire. A year later, her doctors and aunt insist that the next thing on her rehabilitation agenda is to reenter the world. AKA, going back to high school. 

This may be the most difficult part of recovery yet.

True to its title, Scars like Wings, is not the depressing story it could have been. Rather than focusing on physical recovery, the story follows Ava as she tries to navigate back into being in public, and braving school again. Dealing with her parents’ deaths and the trauma of the fire is something she still must face, and will certainly always weigh on her in one way or another, but it’s not the focus of the story. Rather, Scars like Wings centers more around the idea of how important friends are to surviving and getting through hardship.

There is a hint of romance to this story as well, but overall the story focuses on platonic relationships. I really liked the way this was handled, because it felt realistic, and also didn’t fall into the unfortunate category of “falling in love will fix all your problems (even if you’re 16 and it probably won’t last forever)” which I’ve grown quite sick of.

In fact, I loved the takeaways from this story overall and how it felt authentic without becoming a very dark story, which it could have easily become. Stewart strikes a very good balance between not shying away from harder topics and having difficult things occur that would be likely to happen in real life while maintaining a lighter feel to the novel.

I say “lighter” without meaning to say that the story feels superficial or surface-level, of which it is neither. It is merely that there is as much good, and humor, as there are darker themes and the trajectory of the story is always aiming towards uplifting and healing rather than showing how hard trauma and being a burn survivor can be. I really appreciated Piper’s and Ava’s blunt humor, used clearly as a coping mechanism, and how it felt real and relatable. Warning, however, puns do arise. And I loved those too.

At times, my twisted soul thought that the story could have had more darker turns. But for a YA audience, the level of dark that was introduced was plenty, and it definitely serves to make the story approachable for more sensitive readers.

And, I realized, that was not what this story wanted to portray. This is not a story about the difficulty of or even necessarily about being a burn survivor. In fact, this book reads almost like a standard YA high school drama novel at times, accept that, oh yeah,  the main characters are burn survivors too, which shows that someone who has gone through trauma can experience problems like crushes, and nemeses, and theater tryouts as well as skin grafts, and therapy, and reconstructive surgeries.

The main focus of the story, when it comes down to it, is the impact of having caring and supporting friends to help you through life. There is definitely an underlying theme that Piper and Ava are survivors, not victims. Therefore the focus is on overcoming trauma rather than the trauma itself, which is well addressed with the themes and tone of the novel without being a painfully obvious moral-of-the-story. 

I loved to see how this book addressed a lot of different topics and how it focused on relationships and character growth for its sources of conflict and tension. Although Ava is the main character, we also see how the fire has affected her aunt and uncle, not only because of their own loss but because of the financial burden of helping Ava with her surgeries. We see how Piper overcomes her trauma differently than Ava, along with all the other members of their therapy group (in little bits) and how those around them react to the events too and are affected by it in their own ways.

Also, my theater-loving heart adored how drama was featured in this story.  Reading about Ava’s new school putting on a production of The Wizard of Oz definitely brought me back to my own high school stage, on which I once performed in the very same musical. And Asad’s obsession with Wicked certainly reminded me of my experiences watching the show on Broadway and having my mind equally blown. Fellow theater-lovers will certainly be equally warmed by its inclusion.

Overall, I think this book succeeds at exactly what it was trying to do. I was surprised to find that this story is a debut as it certainly does not show any of the weaknesses that some author’s first stories pray victim to. I rated Scars Like Wings 5 out 5 stars and highly recommend it, especially to fans of 100 Days of Sunlight.

Scars like Wings will be released October 1, 2019.

Thank you to Netgalley and Delacorte for the opportunity to read a digital advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.