There was a line in The Space Between Us that took my breath away. Ivy Parker writes in her journal, “I don’t know who I am without her,” as she tries to figure out why her grandma isn’t there. “I keep looking for myself in mirrors and only seeing pieces of her reflection, scattered like glass.”
It’s a simple admission, yet it means so much to her whole journey. While Naomi’s debut centers on grief, its beating heart is a quiet exploration of identity. About the delicate process of finding out who you are when the person who influenced you the most is no longer available to show you who you are.
In this manner, Ivy’s narrative bears a striking resemblance. We typically talk about sorrow as a way to let go, but Naomi asks a deeper question: What happens when the person you lost was so important to who you are that their absence makes you feel lost?
Ivy is sixteen, standing on the edge of adulthood and adolescence, where everything seems scary and possible at the same time. Before Mae died, she was grounded, not just emotionally but also in terms of her life. Mae was more than Ivy’s grandmother; she was her guide, her confidant, and the keeper of her most tender, unguarded self. Losing her is more than just losing a person. It’s like losing the Ivy that Mae saw in her mind.
Naomi depicts this emotional unraveling with restraint and precision. Ivy doesn’t collapse into theatrics or deliver tidy speeches about ‘finding herself, instead, we observe her identity flicker in and out of focus: how she flinches when her mother criticizes her, how she drifts away from her old acquaintances, and how she hesitates before penning down her ideas, as if words alone would betray her.
One of the book’s most potent symbols is Ivy’s empty journal pages. In the first few chapters, they are empty, silent witnesses to her doubt. But as time goes on, she starts to write down bits and pieces: memories of Mae’s laughter, doubts about her worth, and even hesitant statements like, “I am still here.”
Through her writing, Ivy begins to piece together a self no longer tethered to Mae, yet still shaped by her presence. One of Naomi’s most startling yet subtle ideas is that after a loss, identification isn’t about letting go of the past; it’s about making those memories a part of a new whole.
Ivy’s experience is so touching because it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Her connections with her mother, her brother Jules, and her estranged best friend Maya show distinct sides of who she is.
Ivy faces the part of herself that wants acceptance, but hates it when she talks to her mom. There are a lot of implicit accusations and awkward silences in their relationship. But over time, Ivy starts to understand her mother as more than simply a source of sorrow. She sees her as a person who is flawed, mourning in her own way, and having trouble connecting with others. Ivy lets her mother’s hand rest on her shoulder while they wash dishes together. It feels almost normal, but it hits her hard. It’s a little gesture, but it’s a step toward changing how they perceive each other, not as enemies but as two women who want to understand each other.
Ivy finds an unexpected softness in Jules. At first, she keeps him at a distance because she sees him as a symbol of the family her mother made without her. But Jules, who is as innocent as a kid, keeps coming back to her, giving her half of his candy bar, asking her to assist him with his homework, and expressing to her, without being asked, that he is delighted she is his sister. Ivy sees a part of herself in Jules that can care, be there, and rebuild trust.
Maya is also there. Ivy pushed her buddy away because she was sad and thought Maya could never comprehend how heavy her heart was. When Maya eventually gets in touch again, their reunion doesn’t make everything better right away. Both sides are hurt. But in their tentative chats, Ivy begins to grasp another truth: that part of knowing who you are means letting others see you, including the ugly, hurting, unfinished pieces.
There is a cultural connection here that feels very important. For a lot of teens, their sense of self is already unstable, made up of both outside approval and searching within themselves. When grief comes into the scene, it can break that fragile structure wide open. Naomi won’t let Ivy’s problems be seen as “just teenage angst.” She says that her pain is real, complex, and needs to be dealt with.
This feels urgent in a world that asks teenagers to be resilient without granting them space to discover who they are beyond their roles as daughters, sisters, or caretakers.
At the end of the book, Ivy is not a completely different person. She hasn’t “found herself” like self-help books say she will. But she is starting to live her own life again, not by getting rid of her grief, but by letting it sit next to her hopes.
Ivy says in her journal, “I don’t know who I am yet,” in one of the last moments. But that might be fine. I don’t have to know everything all at once.
It’s a straightforward idea, but it means the difference between life and death. It argues that identity isn’t a set place we reach, but a landscape we move through slowly, sometimes going back to where we came from and sometimes finding new roads we didn’t know were there.
The Space Between Us stays with us because it knows something important about becoming: that we are still creating, still moving, and still able to build a self that can hold both love and absence, even when we lose something or are broken. You need to stop and listen to your memories, your silences, and the parts of yourself that you are currently learning about. When you shut the last page, it asks you a delicate inquiry, almost like a whisper: Who are you now? And who do you think you might become?