Welcome to Thursday Quotables! This feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines will be, and you’re invited to join in! Hosted by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies.

Auntie told me once that a girl needs at least one grown man in her life who sees her worth as inherent. Values her just as she is, not dependent upon her appearance or accomplishments. Are Lost Girls the ones who received other messages about their value?

This actually hits me at my heartstrings.

I may have mentioned this before in other posts, or maybe not I don’t really remember right now, but I do not have a good relationship with my father, like at all. I don’t even talk to him really and I don’t think I will ever forgive him for what he’s done. But that’s beside the point.

I have always tried to remind myself that I don’t need any man in my life to make me feel like I am worth being loved. I think because of these issues that I had with both my father and my stepfather, I ended up becoming a person that felt truly weak when someone, either a guy or a girl, would leave me, or just not want me in their life anymore. It hurt more when it was a guy, and I felt like it was because I wasn’t good enough to be loved ever. I hated that feeling, and yet I couldn’t get out of that mindset.

Reading this, reading what Daunis said that her Auntie told her back then, makes me think about how I didn’t have that person growing up, and even now I sometimes feel like I don’t have that person in my life that isn’t romantically involved with me. Did I need someone like that in my life while I was growing up, so that I didn’t have to feel this way? Or would it have just been another reason why I have man issues? I don’t know. But it was something that made me pause at the moment, think about Daunis and her situation compared to mine, and make me wonder whether or not we did need someone like this. Would it have really been more beneficial to us?

As a biracial, unenrolled tribal member and the product of a scandal, eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, both in her hometown and on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. Daunis dreams of studying medicine, but when her family is struck by tragedy, she puts her future on hold to care for her fragile mother.

The only bright spot is meeting Jamie, the charming new recruit on her brother Levi’s hockey team. Yet even as Daunis falls for Jamie, certain details don’t add up and she senses the dashing hockey star is hiding something. Everything comes to light when Daunis witnesses a shocking murder, thrusting her into the heart of a criminal investigation.

Reluctantly, Daunis agrees to go undercover, but secretly pursues her own investigation, tracking down the criminals with her knowledge of chemistry and traditional medicine. But the deceptions—and deaths—keep piling up and soon the threat strikes too close to home.

Now, Daunis must learn what it means to be a strong Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman) and how far she’ll go to protect her community, even if it tears apart the only world she’s ever known.

Debut author Angeline Boulley crafts a groundbreaking YA thriller about a Native teen who must root out the corruption in her community, for readers of Angie Thomas and Tommy Orange.

So this was the second week of me doing Thursday Quotables and boy, it definitely feels like the type of post that will force me to think more about why I pick the quotes that I do. It gets me back into the writing habit again, something that I used to love doing so much, you know? It can get hard to remember that your writing doesn’t have to be perfect all the time, and it’s always something that you can improve on every single day. I think this is going to be pretty fun to try out every week.