Review: Unique Retelling of an Old Story
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 12 27, 2013
The blurb totally got my attention for reviewing this book.  I'm a sucker for modern re-tellings of my favorite old books- especially Jane Austen.  The other thing that really got me was the music aspect of this book.  I love books that involve music.The music was definitely my favorite thing about this book.  I love how feelings, memories and situations all revolved around music.  I'm sure we all have songs that when we hear them take us right back to a certain moment.  There are songs that remind me of people and places and feelings I had.  I love music.  It is so powerful and can evoke such emotion.  The emotions, events and people in this book are all interwoven in music for Claire and Jared.  I loved that the most about this book.Of course, misunderstanding is a key player in this book.  Claire breaks up with Jared to please her mother and regrets it every day.  Jared doesn't understand and uses his music to vent his feelings.  Misunderstanding leads to hurt.  I enjoyed Claire's maturing in the book.  She learns along the way and starts figuring out what Claire wants and how best to get go about getting it.  The moments I enjoyed the most were when Claire becomes emotionally vulnerable and puts herself out there to succeed or fail- knowing it could go either way but still trying.The things that I didn't like about this book were the swearing (including the F word, multiple times), the underage drinking and drug use, and the casual references to sex.  There was no open sexual situations in this book, just talk about them happening (or not).  I'm just personally not a fan of these things in YA books.  This book would have been just as good (well, better in my opinion) if those things were kept out.