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My Rating: 5 stars

Ingrid didn’t leave behind much. But after she took her own life at a young age, she left her journal to her best friend, Caitlin. Now Caitlin is alone, struggling to find hope and deal with the loss of her best friend. Caitlin relives moments from the past, good and bad, through Ingrid’s journal entries, photographs and drawings. Caitlin learns to broaden her horizons and embrace her talents. She encounters first love and realizes that her friendship didn’t die with Ingrid. Her memory will live on. She uses the journal as a tool and reaches out to all of those who loved Ingrid, showing that the best way you can move on is to talk about it.
I didn’t think I would like this book at first. I honestly just randomly picked it off a shelf at the library. But I’m so glad I did. I think we’re all so used to those books who focus mostly on the people who are suffering from depression and who are suicidal, and they never really tell the stories of how things like that effect the people around them who love them. This is why I thought this book was so intriguing and eye-opening. Caitlin’s point of view was unlike any other in books I’ve previously read. I couldn’t ever imagine what I’d do if I lost one of my close friends. It took me a while to figure out the title though. I think it has to do with Ingrid’s passion for photography. Like saying “hold still” before snapping a photograph. That’s all I could come up with. Although “Hold Still” had me struggling to hold back tears in the middle of English class, it’s one of those books that I will never forget.