This Is Not A Love Letter

I have this habit of requesting galleys in batches. I read a ton of book descriptions, request the ones that look interesting (and that I think I can fit into my reading schedule in time for publication) and then promptly forget all about them.

Sometimes it takes a week or two for publishers to get back to you with a yes or a no and then it can be another few months even before I download and read a given book. I try not to read them too far in advance of publication because most of the time, publishers want the review to go live at around the same time that the book becomes available.

All that is to say that by the time I finally got around to reading This Is Not A Love Letter, by Kim Purcell, I had totally and completely, 100% forgotten what the heck it was about. I went into the book blind and I'm actually really happy about that.

First, the required stuff: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

Ok, now that that's over with. I loved this book! It was so riveting. If I'm being totally honest, I wasn't expecting much - I've been off YA for a while now and so by the time I needed to start reading it, I was not really looking forward to it at all, thinking it was going to be your average girl/boy YA love drama. I was so, so wrong.

This Is Not A Love Letter is a cross between The Girl on the Train and Me Before You. For real. It's all about these two teenagers - Jesse and Chris. Jesse is basically poor white trash with a hoarder mother and Chris is the local star baseball player with a bright future and unlimited potential.  They live in a small, very white, economically depressed paper mill town in the Pacific Northwest. And Chris is black.

Chris and Jesse are in love but Jesse is worried she's going to hold Chris back so she tells him she wants a one week break. She wants for them to both gain some perspective and figure out what they'll do next year when Chris goes off to college and she stays behind to work for a year. Chris takes it badly and then disappears. Jesse is convinced he's been jumped or worse but can't seem to rally support at first. Most people want to believe he's just run off for a few days.

It's hard to describe much of this book without giving a lot away. Just know that it's super fast-paced and that I could not put it down. I started and finished it in about 12 hours (and 7 of those hours were spent sleeping). I started it late one night before bed and read until I fell asleep. Then I grabbed it and finished it as soon as I woke up. OK, as soon as I woke up, fed and changed the baby, and found an activity to keep her occupied for the hour or so it took me to finish. Point is - block off some time because once this one gets started, you won't want to put it down.

I really liked and appreciated how smart this book was. I'm impressed by Kim Purcell's writing and I will definitely keep her on my list of authors to watch. I also think this one would make a great movie, so let's get on that Hollywood!

This Is Not A Love Letter will be available for purchase on January 30, 2018.

Firsts

Where do I even start with this book?

This book, this amazing book, Firsts by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn, is quite possibly the most raw, realistic Young Adult novel I have ever had the pleasure of reading. It's just good.

Mercedes Ayers sleeps with other girls' boyfriends. A lot of other girls' boyfriends. She's not having sex with these boys because she likes them or because she wants to hurt their girlfriends. No, Mercedes is sleeping around for altruistic reasons. Really. She wants to make sure that no other girl has as bad a first time as she did, so she offers herself up to their nervous, fumbling boyfriends as practice for the real thing. She tells the guys what to say, what to wear, how to set the mood, how to make things perfect.

Of course it all has to blow up in her face.

This book goes where most Young Adult novels fear to tread. It discusses sex unflinchingly and realistically. I know that YA is meant to be for teenagers and therefore most YA novels have a PG-13 rating at the highest, but I also remember high school. As much as we all like to pretend our teenagers are still children that do nothing more than hold hands and maybe kiss on the lips (no tongue!)... the fact is, an awful lot of them are having sex. This book was refreshing in that it didn't pretend that the only people doing it in high school are there as a lesson to be punished accordingly: Don't do this or you'll get pregnant/AIDs/depression or die like this minor character the heroine is totally going to learn from, kiddies!

There were some aspects of the story that made me uncomfortable - there's an unwillingness to label some iffy behavior as rape or attempted rape, but even that I can let go when I remember how it felt to be 17 and confused about rights and what constitutes what when it comes to consent. Or non-consent, as the case may be. That stuff that makes me uncomfortable is supposed to make me uncomfortable.

I loved this book and I highly recommend it to anyone who liked the Jessica Darling books by Megan McCafferty, Forever by Judy Blume, or Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. This is the book that proves that all YA isn't silly, dystopian, fantasy nonsense. Some of it is real and true and lovely.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Note: the book won't be out until January 5, 2016, but it is available on pre-order from Amazon.