Review: Great new YA book
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 16, 2013
When I saw the cover and read the synopsis for Effortless with You, I thought it sounded like a cute YA contemporary romance, and it is, but I wasn't expecting just how much I really enjoyed it.  It's finally summer.  Lucy is looking forward to hanging out at the pool with her popular friend Marissa.  She finally has a boyfriend, Zach, and things seem to be going good, well except for at home.  When Lucy was a freshman in high school, she suffered some intense bullying because of her athletic ability and the fact that she was better than the senior girls.  It was awful for her, and coupled with some "mom issues," her already low self-esteem hit rock bottom.  Enter Marissa, who "saves" her and "transforms" her into the image that Marissa wants her to be, which isn't necessarily a good thing.  After her grades dropped and she gets in trouble one too many times, Lucy finds herself with a job, arranged by her parents, for the entire summer. Who she wasn't expecting to find sitting behind the wheel of the truck she was picked up in for work was Justin, the most beautiful, cocky, popular, aggravating boy ever, with eyes that you could lose yourself in for days. While other girls swooned over him, Lucy was determined that wasn't going to be her.  As the summer progresses and she and Justin get to know each other, she begins to see him for who he really is, and her heart begins to betray her.  He's nothing like she thought he was, and that makes it even harder for her to know that they will never be anything more than friends.  After all, he doesn't see her in that way, he has a girlfriend, and there is no way he would be interested in her, is there?Effortless with You was a great YA romance.  Though the plot is good, it isn't unique, but the character building was superb and really set this story apart from being just another cute YA romance.  I thoroughly enjoyed watching Lucy's character grow and come of age.  She dealt with some really hard, really tough things.  She was naive about a lot of things, especially regarding Marissa, Marissa's motives, and her boyfriend, but she also came to possess a wisdom and strength by the end of the novel that were beyond her years.  She has issues that are centered around her and her mom's mental status that go back to early childhood, which  have deeply scarred her, and I was really touched as they worked through this over the course of the book (and it wasn't easy by any means).  She met a really great group of guys, who she worked with, and I just loved them all, especially Alex.  Then there was Justin - swoon - he was such an amazing guy.  He could come off as a jerk, at least in Lucy's mind, but he was really great underneath.  I just loved him.  Their's is not a love at first sight relationship by any means, and it was really great watching them as they progressed from not getting along, to friendship, to even more.  Lucinda didn't always handle things in the best way and messed up a lot, but she also grew tremendously.  I was almost like watching a caterpillar turn into a butterfly.  Overall, this is a wonderful YA contemporary romance, and if you enjoy that type of story, then Effortless with You is something I most definitely recommend checking out.