Review: Brilliantly beautiful
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 15, 2014
Loved loved this story, with the purposeful, double use of the word "loved." Just when it couldn't get any worse for Ashlyn or Daniel, who have both endured immense loss along with isolation, they meet each other. Ashlyn has always hoped to find someone weird in the same way she is, and guess what, Daniel can quote Shakespeare with the best of them like her, he's even in a band called Romeo's Quest that sings songs based off of Shakespeare's plays. Daniel, who seems very in tune with Ashlyn's emotions and is attracted to the entire package that she is, including the sadness. Sounds like a match made in a heaven that believes in broken people finding each other, except not really, because Daniel is Ashlyn's teacher. So yes, this is a forbidden romance, but the focus was on their love and their healing through each other that the forbidden component almost seemed secondary or a non-issue because the love itself was so authentic and pure. But the forbidden part was still something to be reminded of because of the other characters potentially finding out, but it never felt that way in the scenes with only Ashlyn and Daniel, they were on par with each other in every way such that there wasn't an upper hand for age or emotional maturity. Everything just fit with them. It was sweet and passionate and poetic and on the edge. I absolutely loved how Daniel loved Ashlyn, so encompassing and so fully, yet he didn't try to hold her back in any way. Ashlyn hasn't been truly loved by anyone in her life besides her late sister so I admired her spunk despite her hardship. She wasn't easily deterred by teasing, she was an avid bookworm and she wanted to honor her sister by remembering her in a respectable way. Hailey and Ryan, 2 unlikely people in the form of being her step-sister and step-brother and became her closest friends showed her what real love is and isn't, and that every family has its own dysfunction within it. Henry, the previously absent father that I expected to be nearly impossible to redeem himself in front of Ashlyn, makes excruciatingly small baby steps to remedy that where I wondered if this relationship could be salvaged. Ashlyn's journey to become her whole self again is beautiful and patient and most definitely worth reading.