After loving the author's debut, Phantom Limbs, I knew I had to get my hands on this book. And yay, it did not disappoint! Let us talk about why!
- Paula Garner does an amazing job of getting the feels into her books. This is the second time that I have felt more empathy and love for characters than I ever assumed I would, and I love it. I cried and frankly, tears are the mark of a good book to me.
- I found Jules so, so relatable. Our life situations had zero things in common, but I could relate to her on such a human level. On the level of someone who just wanted to be loved and accepted, as we all do. She had amazing friendships, and an often difficult relationship with her mom, but she genuinely cared about the people in her life. She made plenty of mistakes, and she often took the hits hard, and I guess she just seemed so well fleshed-out, so very human.
- The plot was quite family-focused. Of course, you may have gathered this from the synopsis, but it made for quite a powerful story. Hence the tears and such. I loved that Jules was reconnected with loving people from her past, and that it forced some honest, real talk with her mother.
Now, the matter of Jules's crush is... hard to talk about without being spoilery. I will say, it was written (and as we are reading from Jules's POV, it could be just projection, but I don't think so) as though her thinking that Luke's feelings for her were more than a quasi-foster brother's would be. I will also say that Luke wasn't my fave. If you've read the book... fuck that guy. I mean- she straight up never met him, she was a baby for goodness sake! Him acting like she was some sort of incestuous freak for having feelings for him? What even, asshole? That didn't make me not like the book but it did leave me with some questions.
Bottom Line: Lovely and full of feels, this book was one of my most anticipated of the year, and I am quite glad that it lived up to my own self-hype!