Review: 3 stars - A sweet story of young love that turns to more
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 07 10, 2013
Novella's are usually hit or miss with me.  As a novella, there isn't usually enough time for me to get invested in a character.  So not the case this time.  This is a story over the course of three years.  We get pieces here and there but its' enough for me to fall for Ryan.Ryan is an athlete with a crush on an older girl.  He's shy and cute as he watches her from afar only to have her approach him.  I love how they become friends despite the age difference.  Everyone sees how he feels but she only sees him a friend.  It really had me loving Ryan more.  His reactions to her, to his own life and his own relationships all had me loving him.I didn't like Brooke as much.  I'm sure it's because she hurts Ryan so much.  She doesn't get what she's doing to him - at least at first.  What I did like about her was that she made friends with Ryan.  He's so shy around her that he never would have made the first move.  She did.  She encouraged him with baseball.  She got the whole male ego thing.  She was a good friend to him.  But she was just a friend.  When she dated other guys it tore him apart.  When she encouraged him to have a girlfriend it hurt him.  She didn't mean it that way but it happened.This book is written in third person from Ryan's POV.  I always struggle with third person writing but I can see why it worked for this book.  The book focuses on the parts of Ryan's life that were important to his relationship with Brooke over about three years time.  First person writing would have been odd here.  And even though it was third person, I really did connect with Ryan.The pacing is good.  I liked that we didn't get too much extra so the story of them flowed well.  It's a novella of about 90 pages, so I read it in a couple of hours.I was kinda thrown by the ending. Things may have happened a little fast there.  I wanted just a little bit more too.  I guess that's a good thing.  I felt like I didn't want to let go of these characters.  I spent some time thinking about them and added a own little bit more.  I like that when I can't quite let go of a book.