This book was recommended to me by the lovely Corina (The Brown Eyed Bookworm) who is also a blogger, book reviewer and bookstagrammer. Please follow the link to check out her cool blog at The Brown Eyed Bookworm and thank me later.
The author(s) are relatively new to me as I have read only one book by them but that turned out to be a really good book which raised my expectations for this one.
This is a story about second chances featuring Macy and Elliot, who as teenagers develop a very close friendship which evolved into a love relationship. This unfortunately was cut short by a betrayal and subsequent break-up. Eleven years later, they run into each other and realize that they still have strong feelings for each other despite the fact that Macy is already engaged to someone else and Elliot has been in a relationship for five years. Written in chapters that alternate between the past and present, the story follows their lives, how they met, broke up and eventually got back together after a long time.
Unfortunately, this story did not cut it for me. First of all, I am not a huge fan of YA therefore, reading half of the book which was mainly based on their teenage years together was not really enjoyable. Secondly and maybe the most important disappointment for me was the fact that I didn’t find either Macy or Elliot as characters likable. Elliot came off as being a bit insincere as a teenager despite the fact he said he was in love with Macy while Macy seemed somewhat needy. As adults, their characters didn’t improve much in my opinion and that just did it for me.
However, I loved the idea of the reading room in Macy’s house where Macy and Elliot spent most of their time together and their bookish game of “favorite word”. I also liked Macy’s relationship with her dad and how they were able to navigate through life after her mother passed on.
Despite the fact that I wasn’t wowed by this book, looking at the ratings and reviews on goodreads, it is well loved by so many readers so if you like “friends to lovers” romance with a bit of YAish vibe, then you may like this book.
Rating: 3 Stars
Published: April 10th 2018 by Gallery Books
Pages: 432
Genre: Romance
Buy: Amazon
The Author(s):
Christina Lauren is the combined pen name of long-time writing partners/besties/soulmates/brain-twins Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings. The coauthor duo writes both Young Adult and Adult Fiction, and together has produced fourteen New York Times bestselling novels. Their books have been translated into 30+ languages. (Some of these books have kissing. Some of these books have A LOT of kissing.)
