Before and After. That's how Rowan Areno sees her life now. Before: she was a normal sixteen-year-old--a little too sheltered by her police officer father and her mother. After: everything she once believed has been destroyed in the wake of a shattering tragedy, and every day is there to be survived.
If she had known, on that Friday in March when she cut school, that a random stranger's shocking crime would have traumatic consequences, she never would have left campus. If the crime video never went viral, maybe she could have saved her mother, grandmother--and herself--from the endless replay of heartache and grief.
Finding a soul mate in Eli, a witness to the crime who is haunted by losses of his own, Rowan begins to see there is no simple, straightforward path to healing wounded hearts. Can she learn to trust, hope, and believe in happiness again?
My Thoughts:
"Grief..." She shakes her head. "You can't hide from it. There is no over, under or around it. No avoiding. It will stay until you make your way through it."
This book right here broke my heart. The subject matter is so intense. It is full of such raw honesty and heartbreak. I lived every single one of the emotions as they were experienced throughout the story. I'm not even sure what I was expecting when I started reading this, but it definitely wasn't what I got. It was everything I could have possibly hoped for in a book with such emotion. My heart was in no way prepared for the intensity of this story.
This review is going to be so hard to write without giving away spoilers, but I will try my very hardest. Me Since You is not a book that will have you continually swooning over a hot guy and the romance. Although there is a beautiful romance in the book. It is not a book that will have you all giddy with happiness. But there are some happy moments in there as well. What it is, is a book that will make you feel. It will have you asking why. It will have you thinking and questioning.
Rowan Areno, is a normal sixteen year old girl. She sneaks out to parties, gets drunk occasionally, crushes on boys, and she's about to skip school. It's that last one that is going to have life altering ramifications. It will lead to a chain of events that will change Rowan's life and have her questioning everything around her. It will have her dealing with pain, like nothing she has ever experienced before.
"We grow up believing that bad things don't happen to good people... but sometimes they do. It's a hard truth to accept, that life is not fair."
I was on the edge of my seat for this whole book. I was never sure what was about to happen and was knocked for six each time there was a new development. There was always a sense of dread as I was reading but I never in a million years expected the story to go down the path that it did.
The characters in this story were so fleshed out. It was almost like I knew them personally. This story is told through Rowan's eyes, but I felt that I got to know all the characters really well. They all fitted perfectly into the story and each played their part. There wasn't one character that I felt was just there as a filler.
He looks at me like no other guy ever has, like he likes me and wants me to know it, like he's having a blast and is real enough not to hide it.
Rowan was a character that I couldn't help but like. Trying to find her place and fit in with her friends, but also not wanting to disappoint her slightly overprotective parents, especially her father, who is a policeman in the local community, so there are eyes and ears everywhere. As the chain of events began to unfold, her struggles with it all, her love for her family, the helplessness that she felt, all created this girl who was very real. I loved her connection and romance with Eli. He is dealing with his own struggles so he could understand what Rowan was dealing with. The one character that I had no time for was Nadia, Rowans best friend. And I use that term very loosely. She was a horrible girl. Completely self centred, and I couldn't help but wonder why Rowan was friends with her at all.
To say this book was amazing, feels wrong, because of the intense subject matter. But it was amazing. Laura Weiss took the most difficult of subject matters and wrote it so perfectly. The way the whole story played out, the tone and pacing, were all pretty spot on for me.
If you're looking for a story that will tug at your heart and keep you engrossed from start to finish, then look no further that Me Since You.
5/5 Fantastically Written, Emotional Stars.
This book was received form the publisher via NetGalley for my honest review.
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