Losing Hope

Sky is shown from Holder’s perspective and plays the role of love interest and soulmate. Upon first meeting Holder, Sky comes across as somewhat guarded, wanting to like and trust Holder but not fully convinced of his good intentions. Unable to remember life before she was adopted, she takes her sheltered life with her adoptive mother Karen at face value, accepting Karen’s stringent rules regarding social media and internet use. Though she seems happy enough, Holder notices that Sky is “emotionally distant” at times and she is easily distracted, a precursor to the dissociations that happen when her traumatic memories return later in the book.

Sky enjoys playful teasing banter with Holder and has a similar sense of humor, which is evident when comparing her friend, Breckin, to Holder’s friend, Daniel. Both Breckin and Daniel say outrageous things to make Sky and Holder laugh, respectively. Sky is sincere, too, enjoying running and reading romance novels and taking school seriously. Her characterization is hence three-dimensional as she is part of the comedic and dramatic moments in the novel.

As her fragments of memory return, her personality becomes more fragmented as she deals with the impacts of sexual abuse at the hands of her father. Holder, who has loved her since she was a child when called Hope, is her soulmate, supporting her as she works through the anguish of her past experiences. Her character arc follows the process of Healing from Childhood Trauma.

Les Holder is Dean Holder’s twin sister and the childhood best friend of Hope, who goes missing when they are five years old. Though Les dies by suicide in the first chapter of the book, she serves as one of the main characters through her impact on Holder. His letters to her, which sometimes include mini scenes with her, keep her memory alive in the novel. Her suicide letter, revealed in a subchapter of Chapter 47, comprises the novel’s denouement as it fills in many of the holes left in the narrative: It clarifies that her death by suicide was the result of her childhood sexual trauma at the hands of Hope’s father.

Les’s story, though related mostly through Holder, acts as connective tissue in the relationship between Holder and Sky. When they were children, she was best friends with Hope along with Holder. Because she experienced the same abuse that Hope experienced, they share a common wound. When Holder learns that Les and Sky share this wound, he seeks Sky’s support to help him to forgive himself for not protecting Les from her father. Structurally, Les’s presence in the novel is the tissue that connects its dramatic events to Holder’s internal reflections.