Anything but Ordinary by Lara Avery

Anything but Ordinary by Lara Avery

Bryce Graham wakes up in the hospital and discovers that she has been asleep in a coma for 5 years due to a traumatic brain injury.  When Bryce was 17 she was an Olympic diving competitor, hopeful of accomplishing her dreams.  She was in love with her high school sweetheart Greg and had a best friend, Gabby, who was her confidante.  One fateful day, she dove and hit her head on the diving platform, changing her life and those who she loved forever.

Bryce still feels 17 but in reality she is 22.  Life has gone on for everyone but Bryce, who feels like she stuck back in time.  She has to learn to walk and navigate a world that has changed greatly.  She suffers some side effects like migraine headaches, tunnel vision, pain and something else that no one suspects, she remembers things that happened while she was asleep.

Anything but Ordinary is a perfect summer book.  The main character Bryce wakes up in the summer to experience a series of wonders and to relive her senior year of high school.  Bryce learns about life, love, family and friendship and she makes extraordinary choices.  The people around her seem to wake up from the self imposed, mundane way of life they have put themselves in and Bryce learns to live in the moment.

Lara Avery has created a fascinating contemporary book that is a mixture of love story, drama and tragedy.  Her characters are emotional beings who have suffered because of a accident that changed each of their lives in dramatic ways.  Anything but Ordinary reminds the reader that life is fragile and that anything can happen.  Bryce is a well developed main character that you can relate to and Avery draws the reader in from the very first page with her writing style.

Wake up people, this book is Anything but Ordinary.