Book Review: The Meaning of Okay

Reviewed by Elizabeth Zender | Content Warnings: Sexual assault

Experience falling in love slowly, completely, and sweetly.

Kennedy’s past is full of hurt. It’s hard for her to heal from what happened to her. Her friends provide a great support system and her therapist gave her great techniques, but it doesn’t seem to move her forward at the pace she’d like. 

Then, in comes Rhys, a friend of a friend whose own past propels him forward at the speed of light toward recovery. He meets Kennedy and his whole world is set back in motion. Kennedy has made rejecting men an artform as well as a protective measure, and that wall she’s built begins to crack when Rhys is around. Maybe it is possible for her to feel safe after all.

Cortney Raymond crafts a compelling story about the journey of recovery and, as the title aptly puts it, finding what it means to be okay. For sexual assault victims like Kennedy, defining what “okay” even means can be difficult. Her parents don’t understand and cannot help her. Her friends, Dillion and Erin, hope to help her move forward. But it is ultimately never going to be an easy road. Being “okay” will no longer look like what it meant before her trauma. Kennedy was set on her “okay” looking like a future of being alone. When she meets Rhys, she sees the possibility of something different, and that terrifies her.

Rhys is forever the gentleman in Kennedy’s life, a man who we can all wish would leap off the pages and into our lives. Raymond deserves a round of applause for creating such a man, one who is always on the lookout for ways to keep Kennedy safe, even at the expense of his own desire to date her. He is the promise of help in a world that is increasingly difficult to navigate. He may turn out to be just what Kennedy needs in order to find her footing.

Raymond’s love story is about trust when trusting someone feels like a luxury. Falling in love feels dangerous enough at times, and falling in love when you have such deep seeded trauma in your life can feel impossible. Rhys and Kennedy’s stories show readers the process of learning how to feel safe again. It isn’t a straight line; sometimes, it’s one step forward, four steps back. It may feel scary, dangerous even, just like falling in love. Read The Meaning of Okay to find out if Rhys and Kennedy find trust, healing, and each other to be worth the risk.

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