Review: I really tried to love this.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 07 2, 2014
I wanted to like this book so much, but in the end I just simply can't overlook the inconsistencies.  The premise of the story is pretty simple...Paisley lives in a trailer with her drug addict mom and baby sister, when her mom overdoses and dies, her maternal grandmother comes to take custody of both girls.  What follows is a story about Paisley's journey to accepting her new life, letting go of the mother role she played to her baby sister, and dealing with her attraction to her frenemie Channing.  This book moved fast, was very good at certain points, but totally fell off the rails at other points.The author has the skeleton of a great story, but she didn't develop any of the storylines or characters enough for me to really believe it. *MAJOR Spoilers* Within the first few pages Paisley finds her mother dead, her grandmother on her doorstep, then suddenly is loaded up in a car and on the way to her new life.  She is portrayed as this girl with this strong personality and survival instinct, but she just lays down and goes along with everything.  Within 5 minutes of meeting all her new relatives she is feeling comfortable and really liking them all.  Then her grandmother gives her the guesthouse to live in, and sets up her 2 year old sister with a nanny.  Paisley again just goes along with it!  Being a mother myself, I know that if you have been raising someone for 2 years, you are not easily going to give up that role and let some stranger take care of your child.  And the 2 year old is most certainly not going to suddenly be okay in a strange place, with a strange nanny, and the comfort of her sister nowhere to be found.  That transition needed to take more time, Paisley needed to struggle with being a normal teenager a little more to really be believable.  Then they introduce Channing, who is a complete a-hole with absolutely no provocation.  Paisley's cousins call her his bride within 30 seconds of them meeting, and Paisley doesn't even question that!? He also tells her to go away, and is weirdly puzzled when she says she is there for her sister.  This man makes no sense, and the author doesn't really set it up so that the reader understands (or even hints at) why Channing hates her so much. You also have Paisley calling her grandfather Pawpaw within 30 seconds of meeting him.  He didn't tell her to, and she didn't hear anyone else call him that, she just started talking about her pawpaw.  She is 18 years old, has never met this man, and comes from a hard life.  While i believe she was affected by all the love she was being shown, I honestly could not see why this character would so suddenly latch on to this guy.Then you have the storyline about why Paisley's mother ran away from all of this.  The author makes a jumbled mess out of that story, giving the reader just the basic info and waiting for the big "aha" moment to come at the very end of the book.  Again this is okay, but draw out the details more.  And finally the grandma.  At first she is so loving and kind, Paisley seems to like her, and then suddenly within 1 page of story she turns.  Paisley begins to talk about how she hates shopping with her, feels like she ignores her, and generally distrusts her but no mention of why and how this all came about.  When Gram (her paternal grandmother) is introduced you are supposed to distrust her based on the storyline, but Paisley is completely okay with her and trusts her completely right off the bat.  I just don't buy it.You have so many aspects to this story that could be SOO good, and even with all the holes in the writing I enjoyed the book, but it would have been 10x better had the author taking the time to understand her own characters before putting them on paper, and flushed out the story more.  We don't need a problem resolved in 2 sentences, as readers we are perfectly ready to really get into the story and have our resolutions delayed a little for the sake of a great storyline.