Review: Such an amazing story of friendship and love
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 12, 2014
This has to be one of the best YA Contemporary romances that I have ever read, even better than some adult ones. This isn’t just a story about a boy and a girl who fall in love and how they work through some problems. It is also a book about friend ship. Something I’ve often seen in contemporary romances is friends taking the backseat to the couple in a story and that’s never say well with me. I love that Jenny Kaczorowski did do that with her book. We see a lot of Bria’s two best friends, Abby and Delores, and we show close she is to them. They add a lot to the story and to Bria’s character that without them it would have been lacking. We don’t see a lot of Ben’s friends but the story, while in third person, stays with Bria so we only see them as they come into contact with her. In a way the story is more just about Bria, who is awesome and badass, who just happens to fall in love and finds out it’s not all roses.I love Bria, I started liking her early on in the book and she just gets better as the story goes on. She is an artist with purple hair, the hair is slightly clichéd but as you read you find out that it is partly part of the persona she has built for herself and it’s partly in remembrance of her mother. Bria is kind, caring, and a little too kind and naive at times. But she’s got this snark to her and doesn’t really care what people think of her. I’ll admit I was a little scared when I read she was a vegan, but thankfully she isn’t the type that tries to force everyone around her into her beliefs. She did have one very justified rant but that was really it.I’m a little torn on Ben, he has some really awesome moments but he had some really jerky ones and he didn’t end up fully redeeming himself in my eyes. But his actions were pretty spot on with a teen boy and how he’d deal with the teasing from teammates and friends.It would be interesting to see a book about Bria and Ben in a few years. To see how they’ve changed and grown. I also wouldn’t mind knowing what happens with Abby and Delores and would love to see them in their own books. Okay Kaczorowski could write stories all the way into adulthood about these characters and I would read them.This story was really well written, enjoyable and I found it hard to put down. I was a little nervous to read it because I have talked to the author quite a bit on twitter but man this book is so amazing. Jenny Kaczorowski sure knows how to write interesting and real characters who can pull you into their lives and make you become emotionally invested in them.One line that really stood out to me and it felt liked it knocked the breath out of me was: “I am art. I can’t not sketch. It’s a compulsion, not a passion.”