Solving for Ex

by Leighann Kopans

[Sam@WLABB]

A romance built around math -- stupendous! Seriously, "Solving for Ex" was a very sweet and adorable YA romance. I know a lot of people are saying, "if only they had told each other how they felt," blah, blah, blah. However, I thought the responses and actions of Ashley and Brenden were fairly realistic. Ashley left a really tough situation in her hometown to start over at a new high school. Suffering from depression, Brenden was there to help get her back on her feet. Why wouldn't she love him!!! Brenden never showed any interest beyond friendship towards Ashley, so why would she risk their friendship by declaring love??

I actually really enjoyed the friendship between Ashley and Brenden. It was very sweet how they supported each other. I also liked the evolution of Ashley from wounded to fired-up and strong.

Overall: I always love a story with characters who are interesting and relatable. I need to be able to feel something for them and I did find myself sympathetic towards Ashley (I swear, I was a little choked up at times), angry at Brenden, swooning over Vincent, fuming at Sophia, and worried for them all. There was a lot of humor, including nerd humor (yay!)