My current WIP is a contemporary YA. That said, I’m reading a lot of contemporary stuff of late. I went to the library to pick up a couple books and stumbled across this amazingly brilliant book… 
The cover probably caught my eye or perhaps it was the title. I flipped it over to read the book blurb and loved the tag line…
“Their lives weren’t easy. Neither was their love.”
And yes – that about sums up the story. It’s a heart aching, bittersweet story of first love that is told in alternating first person accounts of Cèce and Mack, the two fifteen-year-old protagonists. For me, the story being told in the present tense added an extra layer of intimacy and immediacy to the story that made it hard to put down. I DID stay up far too late just to finish one more chapter on more than a couple nights.
It’s a book that I told my writing group about and my husband and my kids who are far to young to read this novel. It’s THAT good.
I’ll be honest, it took me a few chapters to click with the voices. But the voices are incredibly authentic for the characters and the story couldn’t be told from any other voice but theirs. I was hooked by page 23. I gasped on page 119. Cried on page 278 (among a few others) and laughed in countless places in between. The cast of supporting characters are colorful and memorable in all the right ways.
Out of four TL’s DreamWorld clouds – this one garners a perfect four.
Have you read it? What did you think? If not, I leave you with these three words:
READ THIS BOOK!!!
