At a Glance
- Read by: Rebekkah Ross carries the full four-year arc with subtle, controlled restraint. She avoids melodrama in the darkest scenes, which makes them land harder.
- At its heart: Sexual trauma and survival, identity fracture, the long arc of healing
- Vibe: Heavy, unflinching, and ultimately hopeful
- Short version: A devastating and necessary story told with real craft, and Ross's narration finds the right register of suppressed pain without ever exploiting the material.
I first encountered this novel on a reading list compiled by a high school librarian who had put together resources for teachers navigating conversations about sexual assault with students. The way I Used to Be appeared alongside Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak as one of two books in the YA canon that take trauma seriously enough to be useful rather than merely cautionary. That is high company, and after spending nearly ten hours with Rebekkah Ross's narration of Amber Smith's debut, I think the comparison holds.
Eden starts the novel as a girl defined by goodness. Good grades, good reputation, good standing in the quiet architecture of high school social life. The night her brother's best friend rapes her, that version of herself does not survive. What the novel then traces across four years, freshman through senior, is what happens to a person when they bury trauma rather than naming it, and the ways that burial deforms every relationship and every version of selfhood that follows.
What We Made of It
Smith's structural choice to organize the novel by academic year is more than a formal convenience. It allows her to show how the same patterns of self-destruction and self-protection play out differently as Eden ages, gains access to different coping mechanisms, and encounters different social contexts. The freshman Eden who simply goes silent is not the junior Eden who has learned to use sexuality as control, and the distinction matters. Smith is documenting a psychological process, not just a series of painful events, and the four-part structure gives that process room to develop with real complexity.
Multiple reviewers noted the immediacy of identification with Eden, one writing that they instantly felt like the FMC going through this journey. That response is not accidental. Smith writes interiority with unusual precision, and Ross's narration preserves that precision throughout the performance.
What Makes The Way I Used to Be Worth Hearing
Rebekkah Ross is excellent here. The narration challenge this material presents is acute: how do you voice a character whose defining quality for much of the novel is suppression, the active erasure of feeling and expression? Ross finds a register that communicates what Eden is not allowing herself to show without collapsing into flatness. The performance has texture beneath the controlled surface, and that texture is what makes the emotional payoff of the later chapters feel earned rather than sudden.
Reviewers consistently noted tissues as a required companion to this book, and while that may be true, I would add that the tears are earned rather than manipulated. Smith and Ross are not working the audience. They are telling a difficult story with discipline and care, and the emotion is a byproduct of that craft rather than a goal pursued for its own sake.
What Might Not Land
This is not a comfortable listen, and it should not be. One reviewer explicitly recommended it for listeners eighteen and older and emphasized the importance of knowing what you are going into. Sexual assault, its immediate aftermath, and the long-term behavioral consequences it produces are all present in concrete detail. Survivors of similar experiences should be aware that the book is structured to be immersive in a way that can be genuinely activating.
The novel also resists the narrative of heroic recovery that many readers bring to trauma stories as a default expectation. Eden does not emerge transformed and healed. She emerges changed, which is the more honest and less satisfying trajectory. Readers who need clear catharsis and resolution may find the ending insufficient to the weight of everything that preceded it.
Who Should Listen to The Way I Used to Be
Adults and older teens who want to understand the interior experience of untreated trauma with genuine nuance will find this one of the most accurate fictional accounts available. Educators, counselors, and parents navigating these conversations with young people will find it a useful companion text to more clinical resources.
Younger listeners and those with personal histories of sexual trauma should approach with care and ideally with support in place. The book's power comes precisely from its refusal to soften the subject matter, and that power carries real risk for vulnerable readers. It is not a book to recommend without context.
How does Rebekkah Ross's performance compare to the audio versions of comparable YA trauma narratives like Speak?
Ross brings remarkable control to a character defined by emotional suppression. Her performance is more interior and restrained than the more acclaimed narrations in this genre, which suits Eden's psychology. The emotional weight comes through the cracks in the performance rather than being stated directly.
Is this a good book to listen to with a teenager who has experienced sexual trauma, or is it better read independently?
This is a question best answered with the guidance of a counselor familiar with the specific person. The book can open important conversations, but the immersive nature of the audio experience, particularly with Rebekkah Ross's close interior narration, means it should not be treated as therapeutic material without professional context.
