FULL SUMMARY
The Way I Used to Beby Amber Smith

Full Book Summary

The Way I Used to Be — Summary and Analysis

At a Glance

  • Genre: Young Adult contemporary; coming-of-age, realistic fiction
  • Setting: A contemporary suburban U.S. town; mainly home, school, and party spaces
  • Perspective: First-person, past tense from Eden McCrorey
  • Structure: Four parts, one for each year of high school

Opening Hook

One night in her own bed, Eden’s world is split open by Kevin Armstrong—her brother’s best friend—and a lie becomes the armor she must wear to survive. When her mother mistakes the blood for Eden’s first period, Eden swallows the story and the threat that “no one will ever believe you.” Silence hardens into habit; the girl Eden used to be becomes a stranger. Over four years, she remakes herself again and again, trying to outrun what was done to her—and the truth that won’t stop knocking.

Plot Overview

Freshman Year

The novel opens the morning after Eden is raped by Kevin, and the secret takes root as her mother folds the “evidence” into the laundry, believing it’s Eden’s first period (see Chapter 1-5 Summary). This moment locks Eden into a suffocating cycle of Trauma, Silence, and Secrecy. She drifts from her best friend Mara and from her older brother, Caelin McCrorey, who remains devoted to Kevin and oblivious to Eden’s pain. After a cafeteria humiliation, Eden hides in the library and starts a book club—one small arena where she can choose the rules, a fragile expression of Control and Powerlessness. The year closes with Eden quieter, harder, and certain that silence is the only safe choice.

Sophomore Year

Determined to become someone unbreakable, Eden reinvents herself—contacts, new clothes, a sharp exterior (see Chapter 16-20 Summary). The transformation draws the attention of Josh Miller, a senior basketball star who never noticed her before. Eden sets strict terms: no public couple, no vulnerability, no real intimacy. But feelings complicate the rules. A web of secrecy and lies—especially about her age—leads to a blowup, and when Caelin discovers the relationship and confronts Josh, Eden is left more isolated than ever, convinced closeness is a risk she can’t afford.

Junior Year

Eden doubles down on numbness. Parties, heavy drinking, hookups with strangers—sex as a weapon, a distraction, a counterfeit form of power (see Chapter 31-35 Summary). Rumors calcify into a persona she wears like armor, even as it erodes her from the inside. Watching Mara’s steady happiness with their book-club friend Cameron intensifies Eden’s sense of dislocation. Her spiral captures the novel’s portrait of Identity and the Loss of Self: when the story you can’t tell starts telling you who you are.

Senior Year

Caelin comes home from college with news that Kevin has been accused of raping an ex-girlfriend (see Chapter 46-50 Summary). The family’s denial wavers—then cracks when police arrive to ask about another accusation: Kevin’s own sister, Amanda Armstrong. Realizing her silence hasn’t protected anyone, Eden reaches for help. She calls Josh in the middle of the night; he drives to her, listens, and believes. With his support, she tells Caelin, who is devastated but finally sees the truth. Eden walks into the police station to give her statement—the first step in Healing and Finding One's Voice, and the first step back to herself.

Central Characters

For more on the cast and their arcs, see the full Character Overview.

  • Eden McCrorey

    • A survivor rebuilding herself in the aftermath of assault. Eden’s arc moves from silence and self-blame to a hard-won act of declaration.
    • Key traits: guarded, resourceful, self-punishing; yearning for safety and connection; fiercely intelligent beneath the armor.

  • Kevin Armstrong

    • Charismatic in public, predatory in private. His social capital shields him, illustrating how abusers often hide in plain sight.
    • Key traits: manipulative, entitled, image-conscious; protected by community myths of “good guys.”

  • Caelin McCrorey

    • A loving brother blinded by loyalty to his best friend. His acceptance of Eden’s truth marks the collapse of communal denial.
    • Key traits: protective yet naive; a study in bystander complicity and the cost of waking up.

  • Josh Miller

    • The possibility of a healthy relationship that Eden can’t yet accept. His presence at the end offers belief without rescue fantasies.
    • Key traits: patient, kind, respectful; a catalyst for Eden’s decision to speak.

Major Themes

For extended discussion, visit the Theme Overview.

  • Trauma, Silence, and Secrecy

    • The novel shows how trauma isolates—not only through fear that no one will believe you, but through the daily labor of maintaining a lie. Silence becomes both shield and prison, shaping Eden’s choices and relationships until speaking is the only way to break free.

  • Identity and the Loss of Self

    • Eden tries on new personas—tough, detached, promiscuous—to create distance from the girl who was hurt. Each mask offers temporary control but deepens her alienation, revealing how unspoken violence can rewrite a person’s story from the inside.

  • Control and Powerlessness

    • After being overpowered, Eden seeks control wherever she can: in secrecy, in sex on her terms, in the performance of indifference. The book interrogates whether these strategies grant power or mimic it, and what real agency looks like after violation.

  • Healing and Finding One’s Voice

    • Healing isn’t linear: Eden stumbles, lashes out, retreats. The turning point is not redemption by another person but the choice to tell her story—to be heard, believed, and to claim a future beyond what was done to her.

Literary Significance

The Way I Used to Be deepened YA’s conversation about sexual violence by tracking the long arc of aftermath across four years—refusing tidy closure in favor of a raw, honest chronology of coping and recovery. Published in 2016, just before #MeToo’s global surge, it anticipated urgent cultural debates about consent, belief, and the everyday workings of rape culture. Critics praised its courage and emotional clarity, and its bestseller status reflected its resonance with readers who saw their experiences named without euphemism. Like Speak before it, Amber Smith’s novel broadened the frame for survivor narratives, insisting that “unlikable” behaviors—anger, detachment, risky sex—belong in truthful portraits of trauma, and that finding one’s voice is both a personal act of healing and a public interruption of harm.