Young love setting roots in meaningful ways and resurfacing several years later after a hiatus is the premise of this story.

The story is told by Brecken, the female lead, in first person. The story reads well and the characters' initial developments were very good with all the characters different from each other. Especially in the beginning, the plot showed a sweet teenage romance.

On the other hand, the basic plot's couple of twists felt a bit off to me. One of them is the male lead Reed's several years of disappearance after his parents' death in a car accident for which he blamed himself. The amount of time he stayed away from his beloved (after all the strength of their love) felt uncharacteristic for a serious, well-adjusted character with excellent upbringing. Then, with the twist at the end where the note he left for Brecken getting lost (the note being stuck between the wall and the bed) felt like too much of a coincidence.

These type of coincidences would be all right probably if written in the Victorian Era, but they didn't feel to be strong enough turns of plot (to me). It was as if the author couldn't think of a more substantial and credible plot twist or better explanation of character behavior and she wrote the first thing that occurred to her to make the story progress.

Another thing was the yo-yo timeline handling. The back and forth chapters threw me off a bit, also. The back and forth storytelling can be very successfully done, but if it gives the reader the wrong impression about the action or the character, the story would be better told in chronological sequence.

Still, the story is interesting, and the writing is pretty good. Despite its flaws, I enjoyed reading this novel very much.

the female characters and author's insight into the thinking and emotions of teenage and young women.

is Em Barrett with other books such as: The Almosts, El Train Love Story.

it is an enjoyable summer read.

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Created Jul 13, 2014 at 4:52pm • Submit your own review...