Author: Colleen Hoover
Genre: YA, Contemporary Romance
Format: Kindle
Published: 1 January 2012
Publisher: Self/Amazon Digital Services
Series: Yes!
Price: $2.99 (worth every penny and more)

Synopsis: {via GoodReads}

Following the unexpected death of her father, 18-year-old Layken is forced to be the rock for both her mother and younger brother. Outwardly, she appears resilient and tenacious, but inwardly, she's losing hope.

Enter Will Cooper: The attractive, 21-year-old new neighbor with an intriguing passion for slam poetry and a unique sense of humor. Within days of their introduction, Will and Layken form an intense emotional connection, leaving Layken with a renewed sense of hope.

Not long after an intense, heart-stopping first date, they are slammed to the core when a shocking revelation forces their new relationship to a sudden halt. Daily interactions become impossibly painful as they struggle to find a balance between the feelings that pull them together, and the secret that keeps them apart.

Review:

This review might be short because, frankly, I found very little wrong with this book. I loved it, it was fantastic, and to go on for too long would just be gushing. While I think this book probably actually deserves gushing, I'm not really a gusher. So, I'll be brief, but I'll say that I think anyone and everyone interested in a touching story should read this book. Yes, it's romance, but it's much more than that. Give it a shot.

The Characters:

Both Layken (or "Lake") and Will are believable, sympathetic characters. Lake is going through a great deal of turmoil throughout the novel, but I never felt like she was petulant. She does have fits, but they're understandable fits. In a lot of ways, she and Will are in a terrible place. They're drawn to one another, but can't be together and you feel for them. Even Kel and Caulder are great little characters, as is Julia, Layken's mom, and Layken's best friend Eddie (a girl). All in all, the cast is well-rounded.

One thing to look out for here is that the book is not only first person, it's present tense and from the point of view of a teenage girl. Lake is eighteen, but she's young and the perspective works beautifully. We see, in many cases, her immaturity in dealing with Will and the bad spot they're in. But, she usually pulls it together in time to see her priorities and make choices that lead her the right direction.

The Plot:

This book really touched me. There were moments I laughed out loud, other when I cried. Crying is not a usual reaction for me, but this book has moments when you really feel for, and relate to, the characters. The plot isn't overly complicated, and while it had the potential--if handled incorrectly--to be cringe inducing (particularly given the news and climate with regards to some of this book's topic), it turned out to be endearing. Hoover handled a somewhat touchy subject with grace and the book was fantastic as a result.

The Issues:

I did feel a bit like the book left me hanging at the end, it's over a bit abruptly for my tastes, but the epilogue is available to help rectify that. It does end on a nice note, and in a place that I think worked, I just tend to believe much more could have been said. Still, it's a stylistic choice and I can respect that. Something else I'm a little bit put off by is that the second book in the series, Point of Retreat, has a different narrator.  Rather than being narrated by Layken again, the book is narrated by Will. I literally stopped reading a book series (Kushiel's Legacy) half-way through (after book 3) because I couldn't handle the idea of a new narrator (Immriel). So, this takes me outside my comfort zone a little bit. I think, though, if I can like this book and remember who the narrator is, then maybe I can go back to Kushiel's Legacy with a more open mind. We'll see.

The Verdict:

Rating: 5/5

All in all, I really enjoyed this book. It's a self-published novel and it stands together really well with some of the other self-published (and traditionally published) works in this genre. The story is heartwarming and heartbreaking at turns, but has a happy ending. I said so in my introduction, but I think if you're looking for a quick read that you should check this out. I can't wait to get into the next book, which I bought at the same time as this one in anticipation that I'd like it. I hope, if you take the time to check this one out, that you'll love it too.

I should start with an admission, to give this post a little bit of context. So here goes: I have been trying to resist reading YA since I was in my mid-twenties. There you go. The thing is, when I was a kid, YA lit was simple and easy. It was for children, to inspire them read, and while some of it was good, it was also often formulaic and highly simplistic. We read things like the Fear Street Series by R.L. Stein, and they were awesome, but they were clearly for teenagers. Before that, it was Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys. Young Adult was for, well, young adults... for teenagers.

Heck, I read many of the Fear Street novels, but I did so when I was of the appropriate age to fit into their target audience, while I was still young enough to enjoy them for what they were, without my mind wrapping around the obviousness of many of the plots and destroying my suspension of disbelief. I could do it then. Now, as an English grad student, I'm trained to see what's going on in the book, which renders much of the YA from my youth completely unreadable. Wow, okay, that makes me sound like a lit snob, doesn't it? It wasn't meant that way. I enjoyed them then, I probably still would, but for the nostalgia, not the story.

Many of my friends in high school, for lack of YA reading with depth, turned to the books like Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews. I never did read it, fairly certain my mother would have sent me back to the library to put the book back where I got it. My friends all seemed to love them, but that series was far from the YA lit of R.L Stein and Carolyn Keene. Still, without much interesting reading appropriate to a 15 year old, they went right to the "adult-ish" books. I still haven't read Flowers in the Attic but I'm going to have to put that series on my reading list.

Then, when I was in my twenties, something happened. Well, a few things, really. The first, I became a much more avid reader. I consumed books for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The second, I found Harry Potter. Not at first, of course, in fact I was able to reject Harry Potter for years. But eventually, I was convinced to read them by friends who were adamant fans. My gal pal, Amanda, lent me the first three books in the series and I tore through them. From that point on, I was hooked. I devoured the rest of the series, waited patiently for the 7th book, and when it came out, I did the same. I laughed, cried, and began to realize that YA lit was not only for children. Rather, some of the themes were so adult, I wondered how any child, with their limited life experience, could understand them.

Still, I wasn't completely sold on the whole YA thing. I wondered if Harry Potter wasn't simply an exception, rather than a rule. It was fantastic, no doubt, I don't think anyone would argue with that (though I have a professor who hates it). Then, Twilight came out and I rejected that, too, but somewhere along the way I began to realize, much to my surprise, that YA lit had evolved. From simplistic plots for children, to something that all ages could enjoy, YA lit had grown up. It was defined not by its unwillingness to address the hard themes, but such elements as the lack of graphic sex. It addressed issues through teenage protagonists, but that didn't make it a genre strictly for children.

These days, with YA lit having evolved so thoroughly, I have abandoned any qualms I had about reading it. In fact, I embrace it, as do many adults around the book blogosphere, I've noticed. Now, I look for titles I want to read, without regard for their labels, but for their stories--I recently finished, and loved, the Hunger Games trilogy, a quite heavy YA lit trilogy and am currently reading The Girl in the Steel Corset. Now that I'm in my early thirties, I've finally come to terms with YA lit, but it's been a winding road. Sometimes, that's okay. Sometimes, it's not just the journey that matters, but the destination, too.