A Version of You by April Lee Fields is the detailed chronicle of a spiritual young woman as she travels far from her home in England, learns necessary and universal lessons, and meets a colorful cast of new friends. This narrative shows the development of her relationship with her lover, people from her past, and strangers turned into newfound friends. She deals with the ever-looming character of Death and makes her peace with death’s reality. She has a long journey to discover what love is and how it manifests in her life, and she learns the true value of feminine friendship. Her travels to Asia, Australia, and the United States showcase her development as a young adult trying to find herself.

There are so many positive aspects of this book that it is nearly impossible to choose just one as a favorite. The phrasing and wording April Fields uses in A Version of You are absolutely beautiful. To some the wording may seem a bit dense, but the level of detail and variety of words she uses are absolutely astounding. She captures both visiting and living in completely different cultures in a respectful and meaningful way, and the imagery and metaphors she uses easily reinforce the lessons she learns and imparts to the reader. Each of the relationships that come into her life and eventually fade away touches the heart and allows readers to think about similar people in their own lives. Truly, the book embodies its title, not only showing April but also a version of yourself as she goes on her journey.

The many wonderful parts of this story stand out much more prominently than any negative aspect. In fact, I could only list one thing as negative throughout my entire reading of A Version of You. Occasionally, I found the beautifully-written prose to be too dense to read through easily. At those times, the narrative seemed to get bogged down in explaining each small detail Fields came across; however, this is a minor problem.

I rate A Version of You 4 out of 4 stars. I derived messages of overwhelming beauty and harmony from this book. Each word is purposefully chosen and serves to further draw the reader into the narrative. While sometimes the level of detail may seem heavy, there is joy in reading about the smallest things. In addition, there are very few errors throughout this book, and none of them break the flow of the narrative. I base my rating on all of these aspects of A Version of You.

This book is an excellent read. I would recommend it for anyone who enjoys reading true accounts of people’s lives, detailed accounts of someone’s changing emotions and relationships, or logs of people’s travels. However, the story does contain drug and alcohol use, injury, and death; anyone sensitive toward any of these topics should consider reading another book or be prepared before joining April on her journey. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

******
A Version of You