The Start of Me and You by Emery Lord
Genres: Contemporary (YA), Romance (YA)
Pages: 384
Goodreads
Following her pitch-perfect debut Open Road Summer, Emery Lord pens another gorgeous story of best friends, new love, & second chances.
Brimming with heartfelt relationships and authentic high-school dynamics The Start of Me and You proves that it’s never too late for second chances.
It’s been a year since it happened—when Paige Hancock’s first boyfriend died in an accident. After shutting out the world for two years, Paige is finally ready for a second chance at high school . . . and she has a plan. First: Get her old crush, Ryan Chase, to date her—the perfect way to convince everyone she’s back to normal. Next: Join a club—simple, it’s high school after all. But when Ryan’s sweet, nerdy cousin, Max, moves to town and recruits Paige for the Quiz Bowl team (of all things!) her perfect plan is thrown for a serious loop. Will Paige be able to face her fears and finally open herself up to the life she was meant to live?
“I mean you’re always preparing yourself for the thing that is most likely to happen, instead of hoping for the thing that you most want to happen.”
Sometimes I have a hard time with stories taking place in high school, more so when they are not set at the end of the senior year because the characters are just so young. Not that I can’t relate to some high school drama, but in certain stories the drama just seems so unrealistic or too dramatic. Let me try to explain myself here.
This story is centered around Paige – a 16-year-old suffering from the loss of her boyfriend (who died in a freak accident) and has set a plan to start anew. The plan is fairly simple: date, join a group, go to a party and one more but that is a spoiler. OK, cool, you go, girl, get back on your feet! I can get on board with that — usually. There was just something missing with this one. Reflecting back, I think it mainly had to do with their age and – don’t hate me – I just didn’t understand why she was so distraught about the death of her boyfriend.
Obviously, death is a very serious thing for loved ones to deal with and I’m not trying to downplay it but I just didn’t feel the connection between Paige and her boyfriend. One minute she would be closing in on herself with grief, then the next sentence she would say something like “we barely knew each other, there were so many ‘what-ifs'”. Basically, they were together less than a year, she barely knew his friends and she wasn’t present when he died – yet she was consumed with grief for over a year after his death. All the while swooning over another guy.
I just wasn’t sure what the plot was going for there.
While on the topic of Paige, she wasn’t a terrible character. I understand she was going through emotional stress from her deceased boyfriend and an odd family arrangement, and most of the time she dealt with it pretty well. Other times, not so much. She was the typical teenage girl that doesn’t know what the eff she wants and is blind to other people’s issues or when they show her affection – ‘if it’s not the cute, popular boy who is clearly into someone else. I. DON’T. CARE.’ (Her in a nutshell).
On the other hand, her friends are awesome. They all put up with the rain cloud following her around everywhere without getting pissed. Hats off to you, gals! Emery Lord did something very rare in any YA books: created a group of female best friends that actually get along. It was refreshing because, ya know, us girls aren’t all assholes. Paige also had some good guy friends as well, which is a little cliche in the ‘do they like each other?!’ way.
The tone in this book is a little inconsistent. I don’t know how to explain it – it was half perky, half sorrow; half cute, half grief; half light-hearted, half heavy – but it wasn’t done in a way that was smooth. It was, how to say it, glitchy? Jumpy? Bumpy? Random? Or any other term that can describe inconsistency. Either way, it all felt very forced. It was difficult to connect to fully.
On top of that, the story took a very (very, very, I mean, very) long time to develop. Actually, nothing really happens in the book until the end and there was absolutely no tension building up to that point (I’m talking no tension the entire book!).
While it wasn’t a terrible book, it also wasn’t the best contemporary I’ve read. The story took a long time to develop, the main character was a bit selfish and the tone wasn’t sure what it was supposed to be. Also, if you want a love story – this isn’t the book for you as View Spoiler » It was just a cute read that was attempting to discuss a more serious issue but was forced and lacked the depth it needed to really get to that point.
“I may be stumbling through these steps, but at least I’m stumbling forward.”
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| Overall: | 3 / 5 |
2 Comments
Firstly, can I just say how much I love your review format? It’s darling! Second, I’m so glad you were able to find a book for the Keyword Reading Challenge! I also chose the keyword “the” for the month of January – like if it was even a challenge at all ha!
In any case, I don’t typically read from the contemporary genre as I find the angst and melodramatics overbearing and just plain boring, but I’m glad to hear this book worked out for you for the most part.
Thank you! I’m glad you like it 🙂 Also, right? “The” really isn’t challenging but I had no ideas for the other keywords! haha