City Love (City Love, #1)

by Susane Colasanti

[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.