I am in this place where I want to read a lot of romance and because I have exhausted all fandom resources as far as I can (why am I so behind on every single fandom!). I decided to hook up with some YA novels that looked like awesome romances! I thought this was a straightforward teen romance, but I was misled. It’s actually an extremely well done family drama.

Okay, I am a sap with daddy issues. This book grabbed me by the balls, okay? I love this book. Elizabeth Scott, you are so my new Nora Roberts, even without the hot sex (and if I really need hot sex, well, that’s what I’m in fandom for).

This book has a father who in in the throes of a mid-life crisis, quits his job and starts selling vitamins at the mall, a gorgeous, but generally unattainable guy Kate verbally spars with on a daily basis, a positively delicious mother-daughter relationship between Kate’s mother and grandmother. It also had a very heartbreaking friendship that smacks so close to my own teenage experience that I pretty much spent a whole chapter of this novel in tears! Poor Kate; we have to watch her struggle, and be trampled on until she finally gets it together. I love watching really weak characters grow and change in positive ways, and she did it even with her family problems. I do wish there had been more backbone and less groveling, but in the end it evens out, I think, and Kate comes into her own.

And the romance! THE ROMANCE, GUYS. Kate and Will and Will and the snark and the making out in closets and misunderstandings and arguments over nothing and angst and then more making out! I haven’t read a romance that was more believable in a few weeks. If I was the doodling type, I would be writing their names in hearts in my Lisa Frank notebooks. You know, provided I had Lisa Frank notebooks.

This novel has happy parts but it also has really, really realistic fuckups that make you realize not everything has a happy ending. Kate’s ending wasn’t happy, it was bittersweet, and all the more so because it drives home the fact that even with support and love, some people are just inherently selfish. I hurt at one scene in this novel so bad, I’m not even sure how to describe it besides it felt like getting jumped in an alley with metal bats and soccer cleats.

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