Review: Kissing in America

Kissing in America
Author: Margo Rabb
Published: May 26th, 2015
Hardcover, 400 pages
4 Gold Stars

(summary from Goodreads)

In the two years since her father died, sixteen-year-old Eva has found comfort in reading romance novels - 118 of them, to be exact - to dull the pain of her loss that's still so present. Her romantic fantasies become a reality when she meets Will, who seems to truly understand Eva's grief. Unfortunately, after Eva falls head-over-heels for him, he picks up and moves to California without any warning. Not wanting to lose the only person who has been able to pull her out of sadness - and, perhaps, her shot at real love - Eva and her best friend, Annie, concoct a plan to travel to the west coast to see Will again. As they road trip across America, Eva and Anne confront the complex truth about love.

In this honest and emotional journey readers will experience the highs of infatuation and the lows of heartache as Eva contends with love in all of its forms. 

This book was so different from what I expected it to be, but it was still fantastic. Eva lives inside romance novels, escaping the world around her. She lost her father recently, and she lies about how he died to anyone who asks. She seeks the comfort of the books instead of people, but when Will starts showing up to her tutor sessions, suddenly she wants to live. He sees her and the moments they spend together on the roof of the school make her believe they are meant for each other, just like the characters in her books. So when he moves to California to go live with his father and he tells her to come see him whenever she's free, she takes him up on the offer and goes on a road trip across the country with her best friend, Annie, and her Aunt. They make a trip of it, stopping to see landmarks along the way. Eva puts all her hopes into being with Will, thinking that once she sees him again everything will be okay. Truths and discoveries along the way make for a memorable journey about love, friendship and family.

This book started off so dreamy. Eva lives vicariously through her romance novels and Will makes her believe them to be true. She's a hopeless romantic, young and in love, in a place where we've all been. She believes him to be the one and she'll do anything to get him back. Her plan to go to California is fun and unique. She gets Annie to apply to be on a TV series called Smartest Girl in America, and Eva will be her lifeline for the categories she isn't great in, like literature and music. The two girls make a great team and they have the kind of friendship we all remember having or still have if we're lucky. It takes Annie a bit of convincing before she decides to go along with Eva's plan, but once they are on the road, they have a great time together. There are moments that test their friendship like when they are visiting Annie's cousin and they spend more time together without Eva around. There are lots of moments where people tell Eva she is wrong about Will, which just amkes Eva more determined to see him.

Will is the guy we'd all fall for in high school. He's a bit of a player, but he's super sweet to every girl and acts like they are the only one he wants. From the beginning I wasn't so sure about him, but the things he said and did with Eva showed me why she fell for him. A young woman will do anything for the guy who's captured her heart. With first love comes first heartbreak and I won't say I didn't see it coming, because I thought maybe Will would be different, but when they finally see each other again, it's not at all like Eva had hoped. The ending was unexpected but I completely understand why Rabb did it like this. This is an important book for young women on the power of love and the way that it can make or break you. Eva's relationship with her mom was equally as important as Eva's relationship with Will and I loved how their story arced throughout the book. The misery of losing a family member causes people to react differently and I loved the moment they were able to see each other again.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has ever been infatuated with someone. There isn't as much kissing as I would have liked, but this was a great road trip story with an unpredictable ending.

"I think sometimes the biggest influence isn't what's present in your life, but what's absent. Those missing pieces that shape you and change you, the silences that are louder than the noise."

Review: Mosquitoland

Mosquitoland
Author: David Arnold
Published: March 3rd, 2015
Hardcover, 352 pages
5 Gold Stars

(summary from Goodreads)

"I am a collection of oddities, a circus of neurons and electrons: my heart is the ringmaster, my soul is the trapeze artist, and the world is my audience. It sounds strange because it is, and it is, because I am strange." After the sudden collapse of her family, Mim Malone is dragged from her home in northern Ohio to the "wastelands" of Mississippi, where she lives in a medicated milieu with her dad and new stepmom. Before the dust has a chance to settle, she learns her mother is sick back in Cleveland. So she ditches her new life and hops aboard a northbound Greyhound bus to her real home and her real mother, meeting a quirky cast of fellow travellers along the way. But when her thousand-mile journey takes a few turns she could never see coming, Mim must confront her own demons, redefining her notions of love, loyalty, and what it means to be sane. Told in an unforgettable, kaleidoscopic voice, Mosquitoland is a modern American odyssey, as hilarious as it is heartbreaking.

Mim is one of kind and so is her story. From the first page I was drawn into this book and it's still holding on to me. I'm still waiting for Mim to go on another adventure and meet more people and find her way through the darkness that is life. This is exactly the kind of book I look for, a road trip book where there are new characters around every corner and you can meet someone who changes your life in such an impossible way and suddenly your regular life doesn't seem so bad and maybe your new family really does love you.

Hopping on a Greyhound bus alone to make her way back up to Cleveland, Ohio, Mim thinks she's doing the right thing by leaving her dad and her new stepmom, who's pregnant with who will soon be her new sister, to go see her sick mom. Along the way, she writes letters to someone named Iz, but we do not find out who she's really writing to until the end of the book, and when I found out I bawled my eyes out. The Greyhound trip starts out quietly, except for the creepy guy who seems to really want to talk to her and the old lady who carries a locked box that she wants to bring home to her son. It's not until the bus crashes and she's shipped onto a new bus that she starts meeting people who will change her forever. Suddenly she has a mission that the Greyhound bus can't help with. Tagging along with her is Beck, the cute guy from the bus and Walt, a kid with Down Syndrome who is wiser than anyone she knows.

This isn't just a story about a road trip. This is a story about finding yourself when you feel like you've been drowning. Mim has been on medication for as long as she's remembered and through flashbacks we find out that there is a history of mental illness in her family and her dad thinks she may not be all right. She's been prone to hallucinations and tends to black out and wear her mom's favourite lipstick like war paint. The hallucinations make her a bit of an unreliable narrator, and the further we get into the story, the more we believe that she does not need medication as she hasn't been taking it and is fine. Well, not fine, but are any of us fine?

This book shows us how it really is. There's no way you could travel across the country without some sort of disaster or unwanted things happening to you. It was not all good for Mim, but the moments that were good made everything worth it. Poncho Man was a creep, and Mim held her own against him. The old lady was wise and helped Mim realize a lot about herself. And I think I found more about myself as I read her story. It's important to be yourself in a world where no one is. Don't take the medicine to make you like everyone, let your freak flag fly. It's what makes us stand out, what makes me people love us. And you can find wonderful people in the most uncommon of places, like on a Greyhound bus, on the roof of a gas station, or on the side of a highway. The characters, the writing, the adventures were all perfect and I think this is such an important book for anyone who's suffering or doesn't feel like they belong. You belong, you matter.

A debut author, David Arnold has proven that he can write the perfect YA novel that would work for both boys and girls, young adults and adults alike, and can take each and every one of us on a great adventure without even leaving the United States. We're all weird, we're all crazy and we all just want to be happy. Wear your war paint.

"Home is hard. Harder than Reasons. It's more a storage unit for your life and its collections. It's more than an address, or even the house you grew up in. People say home is where the heart is, but I think maybe home is the heart. Not a place or a time, but an organ, pumping life into my lie. There may be more mosquitos and stepmothers than I imagined, but it's still my heart. My home."

Review: Let's Get Lost

Let's Get Lost
Author: Adi Alsaid
Published: July 29th, 2014
Hardcover, 352 pages
5 Gold Stars

(summary from Goodreads)

Five strangers. Countless adventures. One epic way to get lost.

Four teens across the country have only one thing in common: a girl named LEILA. She crashes into their lives in her absurdly red car at the moment they need someone the most.

There's HUDSON, a small-town mechanic who is willing to throw away his dreams for true love. And BREE, a runaway who seizes every Tuesday - and a few stolen goods along the way. ELLIOT believes in happy endings... until his own life goes off-script. And SONIA worries that when she lost her boyfriend, she also lost the ability to love.

Hudson, Bree, Elliot and Sonia find a friend in Leila. and when Leila leaves them, their lives are forever changed. But it is during Leila's own 4,268-mile journey that she discovers the most important truth - sometimes, when you need most is right where you started. And maybe the only way to find what you're looking for is to get lost along the way. 

Road trip stories always get me. I love the moments between cities, the driving down empty roads where all the characters do is talk to each other and become better friends. Usually they involve a couple people, maybe more, that are together the whole way through. They are not usually just one girl travelling up to Alaska alone, influencing many people along the way. Leila is a lost girl and through her travels, she meets many different people and ends up helping them as much as they are helping her. Told in a series of five short sections, each with a different character's story, we see how Leila jumps into these people's lives and stays there long after she's gone.

This book starts off with a bang. Leila arrives at Hudson's car garage, ready to start her trip, and quickly becomes a part of his life that he wasn't expecting to have. This part made me smile but also broke my heart, the quick love that Hudson and Leila share is over before it began and Leila continues on her journey, though Hudson is never far from her mind. Hudson is a sweet character, very homebound and ambitious. Though he doesn't want to stray far from home and his dad, and Leila gives him the best reason not to. Bree is misunderstood. After her parent's death, she couldn't handle having her older sister as her guardian so she ran away. She's been on the road for a while when Leila picks her up hitchhiking. They become fast friends and get into a lot of trouble. They have a great, short adventure full of laughs, tears, and some jail time and Leila is there to help Bree reunite with her sister. Elliot's story starts off just as badly as the others. He has just old his best friend that he loves her but she did not feel the same way. Oh and it's prom. Leila finds him on the road in his tux, hoping to end it all. He lives for movies and compares his life to those he's seen on the silver screen constantly. Leila tells him to go win her, like they would in a movie, and so they set off to tell Maribel again how much Elliot loves her. Not an easy feat and not anything like how Elliot expects it to work out, but life isn't the movies and things don't always work out. Lastly, there's Sonia, on the eve of her late boyfriend's sister's wedding, where she is falling for someone else in a way that she knows she's not ready for. After an argument with Jeremiah, Sonia ditches the wedding and finds Leila, a girl who's willing to take her back home to the States. But when Jeremiah calls saying Sonia has the rings in the pocket of his jacket that she's still wearing, Sonia must find a way back to the wedding, only her passport's been stolen. Trying to smuggle themselves across the border to Canada isn't easy and they get into their own far amount of trouble along the way. In the time it takes them to get back to the wedding, Sonia realizes that everything she needs was in that hotel and that it's time to move on with her life.

Finally, the last section of the book is all about Leila. She makes it to her destination to see the Northern Lights, but after everything that's happened. it's not what she needs. We find out why she's been running, why she on this random journey to Alaska, and what she was really looking for by being there. Through these people she's met along the way, Leila has discovered what's really important and who she really needs in her life. It's a heart-warming tale of those who are lost and how they get found. The writing is beautifully crafted and Alsaid weaves a story through all these different characters that somehow makes so much sense at the end. We meet people in life that we know we'll never see again but that doesn't make them any less important to us. The people Leila meets shape her in a way she'd never expect and through their actions, she realizes what hers should be. A great story about love, loss, and the importance of moving on with life. This book certainly made me want to go on a road trip, simply to meet new people and have amazing adventures. A perfect summer read for anyone looking for a book with heart, friendship and some sweet romance.

Review: Amy and Roger's Epic Detour

Amy and Roger's Epic Detour
Author: Morgan Matson
Published: May 4, 2010
Paperback, 344 pages
5 Gold Stars

(summary from Goodreads)

Amy Curry is not looking forward to her summer. Her mother decided to move across the country and now it's Amy's responsibility to get their car from California to Connecticut. The only problem is, since her father died in a car accident, she isn't ready to get behind the wheel. Enter Roger. An old family friend, he also has to make the cross-country trip - and has plenty of baggage of his own. The road home may be unfamiliar - especially with their friendship venturing into uncharted territory - but together, Amy and Roger will figure out how to map their way.

I took this book with me as a weekend read at my friend's cottage. Needless to say I ran out of reading two days in because I couldn't put this one down. This was the perfect dock read about a girl trying to get through a hardship and a guy trying to get back part of his past. Over the course of a few days as they drive from California to Connecticut, Amy and Roger find out they have more in common than they thought and find that they need each other. With each passing day and every new state, they get to know each other better and find out the real reasons they are both in that car. A wonderful story about moving on and finding love, Morgan Matson hit this one on the head.

Amy Curry hasn't driven since she was involved in the car accident that killed her father. Suddenly her life is being uprooted and she has to move to Connecticut where her mom is starting a new life. Unable to make the drive herself, Amy's mom recruits an old friend's son, Roger, to be the driver. Amy and Roger haven't seen each other in a long time and Amy has no idea how they'll survive the week in a car together. But when Amy starts taking detours to visit places that remind her of her father and Roger finally admits that he's doing this drive to try and see his ex-girlfriend, they both start to take the drive together, creating playlists and making stops that interest the both of them. Before long, Amy finds it hard to think about leaving Roger and envies the girl he's going to see. Amy is my kind of girl. She's scared, but soon she starts to dive into the car ride and the adventure that goes with it. Amy and Roger bond over the course of the trip and I love their story arc. They are so cute together and I wanted them to be together from the start. Their chemistry was realistic and Matson wrote them both so well. She is an expert at teenage love, first love, and everything else. The obstacles they both had to overcome were well written, broke my heart and repaired it all over again. 

I read this book so quickly not only because I had a lot of time chilling by the water, but because it flowed so well and I couldn't wait to see where Amy and Roger would end up next. This was the perfect road trip story for those who love them (I'm definitely one of those people!) and I loved that they went from Yosemite Park to Graceland. Matson describes her own road trip at the back of the book with great pictures and she actually had real pictures throughout the novel that helped me to visualize where Amy and Roger were going. There were also receipts and other souvenirs throughout the novel that made this not only a novel but a scrapbook as well. This was a fantastic touch and really helped me get into the story. This was the perfect summer read and Matson has quickly become a favourite of mine. I'll have to read Second Chance Summer next!

“The best discoveries always happened to the people who weren't looking for them.” 

“It’s not about the destination. It’s getting there that’s the good part."

Review: The Disenchantments

The Disenchantments
Author: Nina LaCour
Published: April 18, 2013
Paperback, 307 pages
4 Gold Stars

(summary from Goodreads)

Colby and Bev have a long-standing pact: graduate, hit the road with Bev's band, and then spend the year wandering around Europe. But moments after the tour kicks off, Bev makes a shocking announcement: she's abandoning their plans - and Colby - to start college in the fall.

But the show must go on and The Disenchantments weave through the Pacific Northwest, playing in small towns and dingy venues, while roadie- Colby struggles to deal with Bev's already-growing distance and the most important question of all: what's next?

To be honest, I wasn't sure what to expect going into this book. In fact, I must not have read the back cover very well because I didn't even realize the narrator was a male until I read the first page. I knew there'd be music, some drama, and hopefully some laughs, and I was mostly right, though none of it was the way I expected it to be, which turned out to be perfect.

Colby and Bev's relationship is one of a kind. She's this gorgeous girl who fronts a girl band. She makes out with random people and she likes to live life as freely as possible. Colby likes routine, like schedules and plans. So when Bev tells him that she's going to college in the fall instead of taking off to Europe with him like they'd planned, Colby doesn't know how to process this information. He's furious, for good reason, and she's told him while they're on the road with her band, The Disenchantments, on the final tour before everyone's life changes. Watching all this unfold through Colby's eyes gives this story that different edge that it needed. If this were narrated by Bev, I don't think it would have struck readers as much. 

What I loved most was that this played out like a John Green novel. He's one of my favourite authors and his characters have a way of sticking with you long after the last page. They are funny and multi-dimensional and his plots are unlike anything out there. LaCour has the same spirit as Green. Her characters jump off the page and not just because they all have such different looks. They are each so strong in their own ways and the minor characters we meet throughout the story hit you as hard as the mains. This is a road trip book, which Green does so well, that never bores. Each night the band plays a different venue, each more random than the last. The band is not very good which made me laugh since the band is everything to them. I love that they kind of suck, it's much more realistic that way. Garage bands are just about the music, and boy did these girls love the music.

The small things that happened are what made me love this book. Meg's tattoo, the lost amp, the graffiti, Colby's art and Bev's carvings. This book was full from beginning to end. Each new town brought new characters, new challenges, and moments where I wasn't sure if Colby and Bev would make it through the trip together. Colby's voice put me right in the van with these girls, the pain he felt every time he looked at Bev and knew he couldn't have her. The longing in his voice whenever he spoke to his parents. The need to leave his mark on the world, and the familiar feeling of not knowing what you'll be doing with your life when everyone around has it all planned out. This book hit that area after high school and before the rest of your life right on the head. We all feel lost when we graduate from what we know. Some people go off to school, others take a year off, and then there are those that just want to see the world and escape real life fir awhile. Plans change, people change, and all you can do is try to keep going, try to make new plans and love the people anyway. This book captured every feeling I felt when school ended, and I love how it all played out. This was not a typical love story, it was about friends who have changed without each other knowing it, and dealing with what comes next. Beautiful writing and wonderful characters made this a heartwarming read that made me glad it wasn't the comedy I thought it would be.

“Searching, always. And yes, we all are, or soon will be, disenchanted, I still want to know it all: the heartbreak, the fear, the friendship, the anger, the love. All of it.”

Review: Reunited

Reunited
Author: Hilary Weisman Graham
Published: June 12, 2012
Paperback, 336 pages
5 Gold Stars

(summary from Goodreads)

1 concert. 2,000 miles. 3 ex-best friends. Can a road trip restore harmony?

Alice, Summer, and Tiernan used to be best friends—as well as the self-proclaimed biggest fans of the band Level3. But when the band broke up, so did their friendship.

Now, four years later, they’ve just graduated from high school. When Level3 announces a one-time reunion show in Texas, Alice impulsively buys tickets and invites her two former friends along for the trip. Reluctant at first, both girls agree to go, each with her own ulterior motive. But old resentments and other roadblocks—from unintended detours to lost concert tickets—keep getting in the girls’ way. Will their friendship get an encore, or is the show really over?

High school's rough, especially for friends who lose touch yet still go to school together. Now in totally different crowds, ex-best friends Alice, Summer and Tiernan graduate without a thought of the others, until Alice finds out that the band they used to love together, Level3, is reuniting for one night only in Texas. On a whim, Alice buys tickets, hoping the others will be willing to go with her. So off they go on a road trip that may or may not restore old friendships. 

I love road trip stories. The hijinks are always fun with cars breaking down and things not going as planned. This trip certainly didn't disappoint. The fact that the girls don't really get along made it even better, the tension palpable and the memories of when they used to be friends slicing through it every once and awhile. The girls have so much history behind them and the Pea Pod, the green Volkswagen van they're driving, that it's hard to ignore how much they know about each other. It was great seeing how they try to stay civil and how some parts of their old friendship is still there. With Level3 music keeping them together, it was a joy ride to watch how they slowly began to be the girls they used to be.

Music played a huge part in this story. Each chapter started with Level3 lyrics (which were awesome) to set the pace for the chapter ahead. Level3 was the band these girls fangirled over in middle school and listening to the music brings back the good times they had together. It certainly keeps them going when they aren't sure they should continue their journey.

Each character has such a unique voice, that it was 
lovely to see the development in each one of them. Alice, a planner and straight A student, finds herself wait listed for college and suddenly to do things she never thought she'd do. Summer, the popular girl, realizes that being popular does not make you happy. And Tiernan, the rebel with dyed hair and combat boots, finds out that talking to her mom was all she really needed to do to be heard. I loved seeing their individual journeys while they were having a big one, and the ending just made me smile and laugh. This book was heartwarming, fun, and full of spirit. Certainly the best sort of thing to read in the heart of summer. And it definitely makes me want to go on a road trip with my girls and go see an awesome band!