City Love (City Love, #1)

by Susane Colasanti

Sadie, Darcy, and Rosanna are living together in New York City the summer before their freshman year of college begins. With no parents, no rules, and an entire city to explore, these three girls are on the verge of the best summer of their lives.

• ISBN10: 1467600598
• ISBN13: 9781467600590
• Publish Date: 21 April 2015
• Publish Status: Active
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
• Imprint: HarperCollins
• Format: Audiobook
• Language: English

Reviews

[jeannamichel]

It is the summer in New York City. Three hopeful girls, soon-to-be-freshman at university, plan to have the time of their lives in the city that never sleeps.
Before I get into too much of the book, you must take a look at the cover. I’m talking about the inside cover. It’s so pretty. NYC. The view from the rooftop. The whole cover gets you in the mood to read about how awesome New York is.
And, unfortunately, City Love does not read like anything else besides these two things: 1.) three girls with problems go on dates and 2.) a love letter to how awesome NYC is.
These three girls were extremely difficult to tell apart. Alternating perspectives, especially with three people every chapter, can get a bit confusing. Each girl had some problem in their past, which I am hoping for clarification in the next novel. Coincidentally, each girl moved to the city and within less than a week they all had boyfriends. I expected some girl power and independent characters, following some of the latest trends in recent YA but these girls fell short. For example, Sadie has a lovely quote above her bed: Just around the Corner. This cute saying could be interpreted in many ways. I thought about dreams or goals but Sadie thought about a boy. Most of the plot was just meant to be taken lightly. It’s a good beach read, a quick read. It was entertaining, even though there were some downsides.
NYC is awesome and I love when books talk about real places. I can actually go to the Strand or to the High Line. While reading, I made a list of almost all the places Colasanti mentioned because I definitely love the city as much as she does and want to check out all of the places. When I was first starting off, I thought City Love was going to be super predictable. The three girls started going on these dates and I was thinking that they would all end up breaking up and the book would end with something like: Who needs true love, when you can have city love? Yes, I was expecting that level of cheese. It is called City Love, after all. I was happy when it didn’t end that way.
Still, I wasn’t quite happy with how it ended either. I am not a fan on contemporary series, nor did I know that City Love was book one of a series. I have to wait for book two to release to find out what happens next? Nothing was solved. Couldn’t you have given me some kind of hint of how it would go? Colasanti left her readers hanging. It is like when you are watching a show and the two main characters are about to kiss for the first time and they are two inches from each other’s face and then: TO BE CONTINUED. What? You know they are going to kiss but you have to make sure. That was City Love.
I have to admit it. Even though I own most of Colasanti’s books, I have not read any of them. I didn’t know what to expect. However, Colasanti’s writing makes for a fast read but still filled with enough quotes you would love to put on bumper stickers.

Overall, City Love is a light, entertaining read. If you live in NYC, you might want to check out some of the places the book recommends. Colasanti will make readers fall in love with the city and have them looking up so they won’t miss a thing.

[bookishzelda]

City Love has that whole kind of Sex in the City vibe as we follow three girls and their lives in New York as they strike out on their own. I have to say I’m still kind of reeling from the end of the book. I should started the review before it.

Sadie is the optimistic hippy of the three. She is very kind and has a sweet romantic heart. She is that friend of yours that you want to protect in a weird way because you just want her to end up happy. She ends up meeting Austin and they have a whirlwind romance just like the movies. We all know that life, however, is not a movie and the credits are not always the end.

Rosanna..she was more of a complicated character for me. At first I didn’t like her because she felt so judgemental. Not of everyone just people with money. I understand that she was scraping by but it was like she thought everyone that is well off and jerks. Doesn’t matter if they worked hard for it or not. The more she spends time with D and the more we get revealed about her the better I started to understand. I was ready to get up in Nasty girls face to defend her. Of course I can’t understand how she would want to leave Chicago for New York but you know.

I liked Darcy. You would almost expect to not like her because she has unlimited funds. She is actually very kind and generous. She knows what she has but she enjoys using it to make other people feel good about themselves. She has her moments with her temper but she owns up to it and knows she's wrong. I don’t doubt she would go to bat for Sadie and Rosanna even though she hasn’t known them that long.

I’m a big fan of reading a book that has multiple POVs like this that intersect with one another. I think it can be hard to write but City Love is well done. It was easy to keep them separate and come back together in my head.

The book overall is a fun book that takes you through New York City life. I thought it was fun all the places they talk about and explore. It makes me want to go on my own adventure when I’m there in a couple weeks to see the places they talk about. For the most part it’s a fun read but some things take a really interesting turn at the end. Where you are like wait what. This is over already. Where is the second book. I need to know what happens.

[Leah]

City Love is the first Susane Colsanti novel I’ve read, but it most certainly won’t be the last (and not just because City Love is the first of a trilogy and ends on a pretty neat cliff-hanger, meaning I am now desperate for the second book). However I was immediately sucked in to the story and her writing. She’s excellent at getting in to the minds of our three main characters: Darcy, Sadie and Rosanna. They’re three girls who are just desperate to enjoy their New York summer, come what may, before college starts in the fall. They’re entirely different personalities, but they all have one thing in common: their love for New York.

While the novel is certainly about other things, the one thing that shines the brightest is the love that not only Sadie, Darcy and Rosanna have for New York, but the obvious love Susane must also have. No one can write about a city the way she does without it being something she really, really cares for herself. The whole novel was like an ode to New York and if there was a soundtrack it would be 11 tracks of Taylor Swift singing Welcome To New York. That’s it. That’s the perfect song to sum up this magnificent ode to a magnificent city I want to fly out to RIGHT NOW to visit. The love just pours off the pages, and it’s as if it’s the first ever book you’ve ever read set in New York. It was simply gorgeous.

What I also loved was how awesome the girls are. They’re so different – Darcy’s a Cali girl, with money, here to have a good time; Sadie’s a born and bred New York dreamer desperate to find her soul mate; and Rosanna wants to make a difference in the world, no matter the financial gain (or lack of). That’s why they all seem to get on so well, so quickly. It was great to see their friendships forming immediately. At first I preferred Darcy over Sadie and Rosanna, but Rosanna was the girl who grew on me the most. Her thoughts on life and human beings mirrored mine (seriously, the things that make her furious make me furious – like neighbours making obscene amounts of noise or someone taking a seat on a train that could have been given to the pregnant lady also boarding etc) and she was probably the most like me of the three. I felt like I knew her personally, and learning of her history just made me want to give her a hug. But I loved Darcy and Sadie, too. I love Darcy’s free spiritedness (if that’s even a word) and I loved that Sadie just wanted to be loved and love someone back, it’s perhaps a naive outlook but it’s also beautiful amongst all the cynics in the world.

I am so excited for the second City Love book. I want to get more in to these girl’s lives. I want to see where their relationships go (because their relationships with the boys in the novel are super sweet and special) and there were a couple of pretty neat cliff-hangers leaving me salivating in anticipation for book two. City Love is one of those books you just know you’re going to love from the word go. And I did. I loved it. The girls were just freaking awesome – it’s as if the book was written by a teen it was that spot-on for teens and early adults. The setting was also amazing, just utterly, absolutely amazing. It was like a love story about New York. I could hardly believe my eyes when I had reached the end and it said that this was book one in the series and to look out for book two. I felt bereft. I wanted MORE!!!!!! I’m so looking forward to the next two books in the series, for sure. Susane Colsanti is a fabulous writer, and I could not rave about City Love any more than I already have. Just read it and you’ll understand.