This is a hard one for me to review. I liked it, but I didn't love it, but I also think it's a valuable story. It has a lot going for it, but at the same time it didn't really stick with me. Hence my struggle. So I will do a things that worked/things that didn't list. As you do.
Things that worked for me:
- Savvy and her relationship with her brother. Oh, this caused so many feels. So. Many. Savvy's brother Evan requires extra care, and Savvy is there for him every single step of the way. With a mother who ditched them, and a father who might as well have, she is the most stable thing in his life. She works tirelessly to make sure he is cared for. And she is exhausted and overwhelmed and it's so frighteningly realistic. Her love for him gutted me, on more than one occasion.
- Her friends are fabulous. She doesn't have a ton of friends, in part because she had to leave her old school, but her friend Retha is just... I adore her. It was such a lovely example of female friendship. And her friends have problems of their own, and those are hard to read at times too, but it's also quite honest.
- I liked that the book portrayed characters were dealing with some pretty hard socioeconomic stuff. It's often used in a trope-y way, but it wasn't here. This was just reality. It was Savvy trying to scrape enough money together to buy groceries, to take the bus to school. And I certainly felt for her.
Things that didn't:
- I didn't dislike her relationship with Cameron, I just didn't like it as much as I'd hoped. I don't know why, I liked him as a character, I just don't know, it didn't feel as authentic as I'd hoped? Maybe I am jaded and don't think that there are human beings as patient as Cameron out there. Who knows, but I think this is a "me" problem.
- I just didn't connect to Savvy as much as I would have liked. Part of it I think is that she and I have very different personalities, but I also have connected to characters like her in the past, so I am not quite sure why I didn't connect with her. It did give me a bit of a "distant" feeling from the story at times.
- There were a few parts in the story that did seem a bit unrealistic to me, which I won't get into for spoiler reasons.
Bottom Line: Overall, I think this book is worth reading just for the range of characters and situations it presents. The writing is great, and I definitely was invested in the outcome for Savvy, Evan, Cameron and even all the side characters.