Review: Good but wanted more
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 17, 2013
*I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.*Vacant was a very sweet short story. I had recently read a lot of heavy emotional books prior to this story so it was a welcome relief to read an uplifting tale for a change.We meet Ethan, an orphan who has been brought up by the foster system after the loss of his parents. He keeps his head down and survives. But he is merely surviving-not living. That is until Emily moves next door to him and infiltrates his life, he can no longer deny that he wants to experience life, and experience it with Emily.I enjoyed the author's writing style, it was easy to get lost in the story. The pacing was too fast for me, there was many time jumps, the book spanned over 15 years. If it was a full length novel I think it could have 5 star potential but I just felt it lacked detail as we missed a lot of time and big events were summarised briefly.I liked the slow build of the relationship between Ethan and Emily, he was very chivalrous and I was glad to see their relationship didn't go to the next step until Emily was 18. Vacant is labelled as adult or indeed erotica. I would describe this as New Adult and the very few sex scenes it does contain are not explicit. So don't be put off if this is a deciding factor. There is a YA version of this story and I feel it may only differ by two scenes at most.And I also spoke to soon as there was a line in the story near the end that had me sniffling, so I didn't escape the tears on this one either. :)My favourite quote was from Emily when she was trying to convince Ethan that the five years of age difference didn't matter. I thought this was so sweet; "My heart has no idea how old your heart is."This was a very short and sweet read that will leave you feeling warm, fuzzy and with a positive outlook on life. I would have liked greater detail with Ethan and Emily's background and also greater detail as their life progressed. There was a lot of information crammed into 80 or so pages. But that aside, it is worth a read! ~Ava