To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han

Title: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Author: Jenny Han

Publisher: Simon & Schuster BFYR

Release Date: April 15, 2014

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

Lara Jean’s love life goes from imaginary to out of control in this heartfelt novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Summer I Turned Pretty series.

What if all the crushes you ever had found out how you felt about them…all at once?

Lara Jean Song keeps her love letters in a hatbox her mother gave her. They aren’t love letters that anyone else wrote for her; these are ones she’s written. One for every boy she’s ever loved—five in all. When she writes, she pours out her heart and soul and says all the things she would never say in real life, because her letters are for her eyes only. Until the day her secret letters are mailed, and suddenly, Lara Jean’s love life goes from imaginary to out of control.

I ADORE contemporaries. It’s no secret. And lately, it seems like all these awesome contemporaries are being published. Basically, I am in Heaven. I had been looking forward to Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before for quite some time and I was beyond excited to read. And so surprise, I absolutely loved it.

Sixteen-year-old Lara Jean Song has been in love exactly five times, with five different boys. Every time she’s been in love, she’s written that boy a letter pouring out her heart in an effort to get over them. Once she’s finished, she doesn’t mail the letters, she puts them in a hatbox she keeps in her closet. But one day, Lara Jean arrives at school to find out that someone sent her letters to each of those five boys. Now Lara Jean has to deal with what those letters mean, especially the one that was sent to Josh, the boy next door who also happens to be her sister’s boyfriend. With help from an unlikely source, Lara Jean starts to realize that her imaginary love life is nothing like the one she has now. She discovers that love is often messy and who you fall for is completely out of your control.

Have I mentioned lately that I ADORE contemporary books? In case I haven’t done so enough already, I’ll say it again just for good measure. And Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is exactly why I love contemporaries. Right from the start, I was pulled into the story. Being the curious person that I am, I wanted to know what was in those letters, even who those letters were addressed to in the first place. Most of all, I wanted to know who had sent them. And once I started getting some answers to my questions, I just couldn’t seem to turn the pages fast enough. I loved seeing the relationship between Lara Jean and Peter develop, especially the situations they would get themselves into being that they were only “fake dating.” But the more time they spent together, I could just see that it was becoming less and less fake, even if they didn’t realize it. It was just an overall fun and adorable story about first love and growing up. And if I’m being honest, as much as I love my deep and serious contemporaries, I might love my adorable ones even more. Basically, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is just the kind of story I adore.

I connected with Lara Jean pretty early on in the book. Just like her, I’ve been guilty of writing letters to people (read: boys) just to get stuff off my chest and never sending them. Unlike Lara Jean though, no one’s ever sent those letters behind my back. But even then, I could feel her pain when she discovered that letters that were never meant for anyone’s eyes but her’s had been read by the boys they were addressed to. And I loved seeing her struggle with how to deal with everything. The situations she put herself in often made me smile, especially when she was with Peter. Because though they may not have been particularly fond of each other at first, Lara Jean and Peter were really fun together. I loved how despite the fact that they started this whole thing as a ploy to make other people feel jealous, I could tell that they were starting to care for each other and eventually even go so far to as fall for each other. It was just great to see both of them grow and change, becoming better people. And now that I know there’s a sequel, I have some thoughts on what I want to happen to both Lara Jean and Peter.

Though this probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows me, I absolutely loved Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. It was exactly what I hoped it would be, and I loved getting lost in this story and getting to know these characters. I can’t wait to find out more in P.S. I Still Love You. 

Don't Look Back by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Title: Don't Look Back

Author: Jennifer L. Armentrout

Publisher: Disney-Hyperion

Release Date: April 15, 2014

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

Samantha is a stranger in her own life. Until the night she disappeared with her best friend, Cassie, everyone said Sam had it all—popularity, wealth, and a dream boyfriend.

Sam has resurfaced, but she has no recollection of who she was or what happened to her that night. As she tries to piece together her life from before, she realizes it’s one she no longer wants any part of. The old Sam took “mean girl” to a whole new level, and it’s clear she and Cassie were more like best enemies. Sam is pretty sure that losing her memories is like winning the lottery. She’s getting a second chance at being a better daughter, sister, and friend, and she’s falling hard for Carson Ortiz, a boy who has always looked out for her—even it the old Sam treated him like trash.

But Cassie is still missing, and the facts about what happened to her that night isn’t just buried deep inside of Sam’s memory—someone else knows, someone who wants to make sure Sam stays quiet. All Sam wants is the truth, and if she can unlock her clouded memories of that fateful night, she can finally move on. But what is not remembering is the only thing keeping Sam alive?

Even though I might sound like a broken record by this point, I will say this again: I will read anything Jennifer L. Armentrout writes. To this day I have yet to be disappointed and anytime I hear about a new book from her, I get all excited. And I am happy to report that Don’t Look Back has kept the streak going. This was a page-turner that kept me guessing the whole way through. And I loved it.

Samantha Franco doesn’t remember who she is, what happened or where she has been for the last four days. But from everyone has told her, she wasn’t a good person. She and Cassie, the best friend she went missing with, took mean girl to a whole new level. Now though, Sam is getting a second chance. A second chance to be a better person and maybe try to fix some of the the wrongs she did before she went missing. But know one seems to be telling the truth about what happened the night she disappeared. Hoping to help find Cassie, Sam does everything she can to try to remember what happened that night. The only person who seems to be willing to be the truth is Carson, the boy she spent her childhood with, but who she has treated like trash all through high school. Sam is trying to do better, trying to remember, but could her forgotten memories be the reason she’s still alive?

Until now, I knew Jennifer L. Armentrout could do paranormal and contemporary romance like no other. Now I can also add thriller to the list. I loved Don’t Look Back. Like, dropped-everything-when-I-walked-in-the-house-after-work-and-kept-reading-all-night loved this book. This story was engrossing. I kept telling myself I would stop after reading just one more chapter, but I was just humouring myself by that point, there was no way I was putting the book down. Being the curious person that I am, I just had to find out what was going on, what had happened the night that Sam and Cassie disappeared. And because the story is told from Sam’s point of view, I was finding things out as the same rate she did. And if I’m being honest, that could be a little frustrating at times, but at the same time it just made it so I couldn’t stop reading. And as with any Jennifer L. Armentrout book out there, it didn’t hurt that there was also a good does of romance in the story. But the mystery is what truly did it for me. I just wanted to know everything. Until it was close to 2 AM and I finally did (though I may have regretted that decision when my alarm went off the next morning). But Sam and Carson made it totally worth it.

I loved that this story was told from Sam’s perspective. It made everything feel that much more intense and there was almost this sense of urgency to the way she told her story at times. And if I’m not lying, that’s probably what kept me on the edge of my seat so much. But beyond that, Sam was just an interesting character to read about and get to know. Seeing how she would react to what people told her she used to be like just made me love her that much more. She was able to see that she had been a pretty horrible person but at least she was trying to do better now that she had a second chance at it all. But as much as I loved Sam, Carson is the one who completely stole my heart. Because Carson was truly a good guy. Sure he didn’t seem that way at first, but it didn’t take long for me to change my mind where he was concerned. For me, Carson just leapt off the page and straight into my heart. There was very little about him I didn’t love. And he was exactly who and what Sam needed. I also have to mention Scott, Sam’s twin brother. I loved the relationship this two had when Sam came back not knowing who she was. They might not have gotten along before her disappearance, but I loved the sibling bond, and how protective Scott became where Sam was concerned.

In case the gushing didn’t make it obvious enough, I loved Jennifer L. Armentrout’s Don’t Look Back. It was an engrossing page-turner that kept me on the edge of my seat the whole way through. With this book, Jennifer L. Armentrout has just reinforced the fact that she will forever be on my auto-read list.

The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith

Title: The Geography of You and Me

Author: Jennifer E. Smith

Publisher: Poppy

Release Date: April 15, 2014

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

Lucy and Owen meet somewhere between the tenth and eleventh floors of a New York City apartment building, on an elevator rendered useless by a citywide blackout. After they’re rescued, they spend a single night together, wandering the darkened streets and marvelling at the rare appearance of stars about Manhattan. But once the power is restored, so is reality. Lucy soon moves to Edinburgh with her parents, while Owen heads out west with his father.

Lucy and Owen’s relationship plays out across the globe as they stay in touch through postcards, occasional e-mails, and—finally—a reunion in the city where they first met.

A carefully charted map of a long-distance relationship, Jennifer E. Smith’s new novel shows that the center of the world isn’t necessarily a place. It can be a person, too.

I love Jennifer E. Smith’s books are some of my favourite contemporary YAs. As you can imagine, I was beyond excited about reading her latest, The Geography of You and Me and I loved every page of it. This story was exactly what I had hoped it would be, but it was also so much more. I just loved it all.

If it wasn’t for a blackout trapping them together in an elevator, Lucy and Owen may have never met. But that time spent together in the elevator, and the hours spent roaming a dark Manhattan, bring Lucy and Owen together. But once the power comes back, the two go back to their own lives, almost as if nothing happened. Owen and his father drive west and Lucy and her family move to Edinburgh. But even though they only spent those few hours together, Lucy and Owen can’t seem to stop thinking about each other. They keep in touch through postcards and a few e-mails, even meeting when the opportunity presents itself. But it’s hard to know what could happen when every meeting is so brief. Could it be that Lucy and Owen have become the center of each other’s worlds?

Jennifer E. Smith is one of those authors who is on my auto-buy list: as soon as I see her name on a book, I buy that book and read it as quickly as possible. So far she hasn’t disappointed me, and that still holds true now that I’ve read The Geography of You and Me. I loved this story so much. I loved how I got to see both what was going on with Owen and with Lucy over the course of the story, seeing how each one was basically going through a lot of the same things the other was. But more than that, I loved how the story developed over time, everything that happened wasn’t crammed in a few days or weeks, it took place almost over the course of a whole year. And I loved that this story was set all over the states, and at times, all over Europe. I’m not going to lie, as I was reading The Geography of You and Me, I got this urge to travel and see all of the places Lucy and Owen visited over the course of the story. But most of all, I loved that the whole time I was reading I just had this big, goofy smile on my face.

I loved Lucy and Owen. I mean, how could I not? Not only were they kinda perfect together, they were also these awesome individuals outside of that relationship. When I first read about Lucy, I saw a lot of myself in her. I could relate to so many aspects of her personality and so I connected with her right away. Owen I can’t really say I related to, but I was immediately drawn to him, much int eh same way that Lucy was. There was clearly a lot going on with him, and I loved peeling back the layers and finding out everything there was to know about him. And then put Lucy and Owen together, and I was a happy reader. Though it wasn’t immediately obvious that they would work together, especially when both of them immediately found someone else when they moved away from New York. But still. The more I read about them individually, the more I could see that they really belonged together. And so I just kept turning the pages to see how it would all play out. 

In case it wasn’t obvious, I seriously loved Jennifer E. Smith’s The Geography of You and Me. This is the kind of story that reminds me just why I love contemporary stories as much as I do. And if you haven’t already picked up any of Jennifer E. Smith’s books, you are seriously missing out.

The Museum of Intangible Things by Wendy Wunder

Title: The Museum of Intangible Things

Author: Wendy Wunder

Publisher: Razorbill

Release Date: April 10, 2014

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

Loyalty. Envy. Obligation. Dreams. Disappointment. Fear. Negligence. Coping. Elation. Lust. Nature. Freedom. heartbreak. Insouciance. Audacity. Gluttony. Belief. God. Karma. Knowing what you want (there is probably a French word for it). Saying Yes. Truth. Devotion. Forgiveness. Life. Happiness (ever after).

Hannah and Zoe haven’t had much in their lives, but they’ve always had each other. So when Zoe tells Hannah she needs to get out of their down-and-out New Jersey town, they pile into Hannah’s beat-up old Le Mans and head west, putting everything—their deadbeat parents, their disappointing love lives, their inevitable enrollment at community college—behind them.

As they chase storms and make new friends, Zoe tells Hannah she wants more for her. She wants her to live bigger, dream grander, aim higher. And so Zoe begins teaching Hannah all about life’s intangible things, concepts sadly missing from her existence—things like audacity, insouciance, karma, and even happiness.

An unforgettable read from the acclaimed author of The Probability of Miracles, The Museum of Intangible Things sparkles with the humor and heartbreak of true friendships and first love. 

I am so excited to have finally entered what appears to be “Contemporary Season.” Looking at my TBR pile recently, it seems like all the books I have coming up are contemporary reads and that makes me so unbelievably happy. And I was even more excited when I saw that Wendy Wunder’s The Museum of Intangible Things was going to be my next read. And as excited as I was, I was also not in the least bit disappointed by this story.

Hannah has always had relatively low expectations, this way she doesn’t get disappointed. In her small town in New Jersey, everyone is that way. The one person with ideas of grandeur is Zoe, Hannah’s best friend. But Zoe’s over the top feelings may be what will bring her down. So when Zoe suggests that they get out of New Jersey, Hannah goes along with the plan, knowing that eventually she will be able to talk down Zoe. But the further west they get, the more Hannah begins to think that there might be no coming back for Zoe this time around. While out on the road, Zoe makes it her mission to teach Hannah all about the things in life that will better her existence, all in the hope of getting Hannah ready for when she won’t be around anymore.

Though it’s been sitting on my shelves for the last two years, I still haven’t read Wendy Wunder’s debut, The Probability of Miracles (I know, bad), but after having read The Museum of Intangible Things, you can bet that I will be picking up the other one soon. Keeping up with a recent theme (or so it would seem), the Museum of Intangible Things wasn’t what I thought it would be, but I loved it. I loved that this was a story that focused on friendship, on how Hannah and Zoe have always been there for each other but how they also need to learn how to get on without each other. And of course I loved the road trip aspect, though it wasn’t always the sanest road trip. Though what I loved the most about that the ending didn’t really go in the direction I thought it would. Sure, stuff happened that I had guessed would happen or hoped would happen, but there was also a lot I didn’t necessarily see coming. And like I said, that made me love the story even more, because I love it when stories take me by surprise. But more than that, I just found the characters, especially Hannah and Zoe, endearing.

Hannah and Zoe couldn’t have been more different, but they worked perfectly as friends. Being what looked like complete opposites, they balanced each other out. Where Zoe was outgoing and adventurous, Hannah was more reserved and cautious, always thinking things out before acting. Zoe was the rule breaker, while Hannah was the rule follower. But this was a great friendship. I loved the dynamic between Zoe and Hannah, and how each girl could be exactly who she was around the other. But at the same time, they pushed each other to be better, to want more for themselves and for each other. Throughout the story, I really felt for Hannah though. Being that the story was told from her perspective, I got to know a lot more about her and her life than I did about Zoe. In that respect, I found that I could relate to many aspects of Hannah’s personality, especially her more cautious and thought-out side. And in some ways, I could also relate to what it feels like to have a very exuberant best friend, granted mine isn’t quite as extreme as Zoe, but still. Though what I loved the most about Hannah, was seeing her growth over the course of the book, how she really came into her own and started to get a better idea not just of who she was, but of who she wanted to be in the future. But to sound like a broken record, the friendship is what really did for me in this book.

Wendy Wunder’s The Museum of Intangible Things was a fantastic read, showing just how powerful friendships can be, how much they can mould and change you. If you are looking for a great story with a focus on friendships, then The Museum of Intangible Things is perfect for you.

The Summer of Letting Go by Gae Polisner

Title: The Summer of Letting Go

Author: Gae Polisner

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Release Date: March 25, 2014

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

Just when everything seems to be going wrong, hope and love can appear in the most unexpected places.

Summer has begun, the beach beckons and Francesca Schnell is going nowhere. four years ago, Francesca's little brother, Simon, drowned, and Francesca is the one who should have been watching. now Francesca is about to turn sixteen, but guilt keeps her stuck in the past. Meanwhile, her best friend, Lisette, is moving on most recently with the boy Francesca wants but can't have. At loose ends, Francesca trails her father, who may be having an affair, to the local country club. There she meets four-year-old Frankie Sky, a little boy who bears an almost eerie resemblance to Simon, and Francesca begins to wonder if it's possible Frankie could be his reincarnation. Knowing Frankie leads Francesca to places she thought she'd never dar to go and it begins to seem possible to forgive herself, grow up, and even fall in love, whether or not she solves the riddle of Frankie Sky. 

I know I probably sound like a broken record at this point, but I love contemporary. And if it’s set in summer, than you can bet that I will be reading that book. For those reasons, Gae Polisner’s The Summer of Letting Go had been on my radar for quite some time and I was looking forward to reading it. It wasn’t what I thought it would be, and that might be for the best since I ended up loving this story.

Unlike everyone else, Francesca Schnell doesn’t look forward to summer. Despite living on the coast, she doesn’t enjoy spending her summers by the water and at the beach. She hasn’t ever since her little brother drowned four years ago. Ever since that day, Francesca’s family hasn’t been the same. But this summer, she meets Frankie Sky, a four-year-old little boy who bears an uncanny resemblance to Simon. Without realizing she’s doing it, Francesca starts to wonder if maybe Frankie Sky could be Simon’s reincarnation. But the more time she spends with this little boy, the more Francesca realizes that after all this time, she needs to move on and start living her life. And that doing so doesn’t mean forgetting Simon, it just means forgiving herself, growing up and even letting herself fall in love.

Summer contemporaries are just my favourite. I could keep going on all day about why I love them so much. They can be taken in so many different directions, and I feel like every time I pick one up, I never really know what I’ll get. I just know that I’ll love it. And that was the case with Gae Polisner’s The Summer of Letting Go. The book had been on my radar for quite some time and I was definitely looking forward to reading it. But in my mind, it was a completely different story than the one I ended up reading. I don’t actually know why, but for whatever reason the synopsis had not registered right with my brain. But that might be for the best, because I loved the story I ended up getting. It was more than the summer contemporary story I was expecting. It was also a story about grief, and growing up, and learning to keep going and be happy even when it feels like you have no right to be. I loved seeing Francesca come to accept everything that had happened in her past, and starting to see what her future could possibly hold. Because it felt like first and foremost, this book was about growth, specifically about Francesca’s growth. Even when she wasn’t always aware that she was doing a whole lot of growing up.

Francesca was an interesting character. At first I wasn’t really sure how I felt about her. She just seemed like someone who didn’t really know what she wanted and wasn’t really willing to try and find out. But then she met Frankie Sky and this change happened in her. Of course this change didn’t happen all at once, but from that point on, Francesca started doing some growing up. And I loved seeing that change happening. Francesca went from being someone who I didn’t really care for all that much to being someone who I could understand and even relate to at times. But if I’m being totally honest, Frankie Sky is the one who completely stole the show. Every time this little boy appeared, my heart just melted. He was just so brutally honest in his four-year-old way, while at the same time still being this totally adorable and sweet kid. All that to say that I loved Frankie Sky. He really should have his own book.

Gae Polisner’s The Summer of Letting Go was a fantastic read. I loved reading every single page of it and getting to know these characters that would eventually work their way into my heart. If you are looking for a summer contemporary that is not all about the romance, than The Summer of Letting Go is just the book for you.