Review: It's a romance, but so much more...
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 12, 2013
Although this may seem like a love story, I feel like this book is really about a girl's emotional growth and maturity from high school and into the adult world. Is there a romance? Absolutely. But I think this book is about so much more and that is what makes this book stand out from all the rest.When we meet Natalie, she gets her heart broken by her high school sweetheart, Bryson, who she thought was the love of her life. A month later, she leaves her hometown and moves down to Miami to stay with her friend to try and figure out her life and what she's going to do with it. Her mission while in Miami is to party, have fun, and not let her emotions get involved. Then she meets Nolan...and her mission becomes extremely hard to follow through with, especially when he wants more from her. While trying to resist Nolan, Natalie starts finding things out about herself that she never realized.So let's talk about Natalie. For the first 45% of the book, she irritated me. She was whiny and stubborn and proclaimed that at age 19, she was done with love. A little melodramatic, no? When she would say things like "I'm broken and I refuse to be healed anytime soon" I'd roll my eyes. However, as she began really looking at herself and letting herself feel emotions, I really started to like her. She's one of the few female characters that really went through a drastic change from the beginning of the book to the end. Watching her grow stronger emotionally was probably one of my favorite parts of the book. And when she finally confronted Bryson...brave. Her "ah ha" moment about her relationship with Bryson was fan-freaking-tastic. From that moment, you really became proud of her.Nolan was just the icing on the cake. You loved him from the minute you met him - even if everything about him screamed "player." Because I felt like this book was more about Natalie, I didn't feel like I got enough of Nolan and I wanted more of Nolan. I'm so glad Ms. Williams is going to be writing a sequel and I can only hope there will be a lot more Nolan!Now I can't finish this review without talking about the poems and songs. They were good and if Ms. Williams wrote them in addition to writing this book, then wow. It gave a whole new dimension to this book by allowing us readers to understand how Natalie and Nolan were feeling in their own words.The book did not end in a cliffhanger per se, but I definitely want the story to continue to see what is next for Natalie and Nolan and hope there is a lot more Nolan!This review was originally posted on Book Reader Chronicles.