Review: Likeable characters, a thoroughly convincing love story, and a plot like a modern day Dickens. . .
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 23, 2013
Someone Different seems to me to be indeed very different from many teenage romance stories, in that both protagonists are in their own private prison.  Jayden, the handsome 16-year-old boy, has a life that has been a car crash since his birth: alcoholic abusive father, absent mother, vile criminal associates and rock bottom surroundings, and he is in a prison of economic and social deprivation.  And heroine Annabel?  She has everything material you could possibly desire, but she’s in a prison that’s every bit as bad: that of self-serving acquisitive mean spirited parents who are determined to push her into being the kind of person they want her to be, pressuring her at school to do better, trying to imbue her with their go-getting achieve-at-all-costs mentality, when, at heart, she’s an ordinary kind girl who doesn’t want massive riches, even though she’s never lived without them.  They cannot even understand her pure love for her horse, which has nothing to do with the equine’s value, but is all to do with pure unquestioning love.These two personable characters, both imprisoned and consequently restricted through no fault of their own, and who come from entirely different backgrounds, meet and fall in love.  It would seem that the match between Miss rich-and-posh, and  criminal underprivileged desperado Jayden is jinxed from the start.  Yet Ms Hanney’s skill at dismantling the huge barriers between them is masterly and utterly convincing.I don’t normally read love stories, but this is a hard edged, realistic love story, with even a touch of gritty violence (don’t worry, it’s not too graphic), so that, rather like Dickens’s tales, injustices that seem set in stone, are finally reversed, with a lot of anguish, risk and adventures along the way.This book doesn’t shy away from reality, it isn’t sugar coated. Nor is it so miserably down and gritty that you are repelled in any way.  It strikes a balance between a love story and an adventure story, and there are even some neat and clever  twists at the end.And it’s not giving away any secrets to tell you that it does have a happy ending, but to explain precisely how this is achieved would  be to take away the pleasure of reading the book.I liked the protagonists, I liked the story and I liked the emotion. And I particularly liked the ending.  Read this book and you’ll enjoy it.