Gosh, I was so so excited for this book. Lauren Myracle was like my favorite author growing up. But the entire time I read this book, I had a recurring thought of WTF. As in, none of it made any sense to me. The characters, the reactions, THE ROMANCE. Zilch, nada, no understanding. It just failed so completely to live up to my expectations that I’m starting to question if her previous books were even good. (IF I RECOMMENDED ONE OF HER BOOKS TO YOU MAYBE HOLD OUT ON READING IT RN). Also, there was some weird anti-feminist agenda going on and religious undertones, the latter of which usually doesn’t bother me but it just felt SO FORCED.
Basically, Wren is tired of living for her parents. One day she sees Charlie across the school parking lot, and falls in love. Then Charlie needs stitches at the hospital, so she stitches him up free of charge. (Also, this meeting? Like WTF. I’m pretty sure it’s illegal for a VOLUNTEER at the hospital to just “take a patient into the back room” and give him stitches. And she’s a volunteer! Why does she know how to do this?????) Then they fall in love, and have sex a lot (a lot a lot and too too much). And then there’s a confusing ending.
“If Wren wanted to change her life, then she has to be the one to make it happen”
I really thought I would like Wren at first. She had promise with the whole “needing to escape her parents” thing. But in reality, she’s a child. She giggles, is innocent and naive, and so incredibly self-conscious and insecure and selfish. But then she’s so incredibly raunchy when we get to the ~steamy~ scenes that it is a bit of brain whiplash. Also, Myracle never really returned to the whole parent issue, which really was a good issue. And Wren basically decides to just live for Charlie instead. Warning, there is about to be a spoiler. It will stay bolded this whole time so you can just skip it. Wren was supposed to go to Guatemala to escape her parents and do her own thing, but might have decided at the end of the book not to go just to stay with Charlie (it is unclear what actually happened). So basically she is changing her life around solely for a boy. I’m not on board with that. Anyway, Wren in the end was just so weak and whiny and selfish (she complained everytime Charlie had to ditch her for his family. More on his family in a bit but really, how selfish is that?!?!)
I was actually okay with Charlie, except not really. He was better than Wren. He had a bad childhood (i.e. was locked in garage by biological mom) and then bounced around from foster home to foster home before landing with Chris and Pamela. This bad childhood was the “character development” for all of Charlie’s trust problems and intimacy problems, even though Chris and Pamela had been nothing but kind and loving and supportive to him. His younger brother (probably one of my favorite characters, btw) was paralyzed from the waist down because his biological father had punched him in the stomach as a baby. But he was so goofy and adorable. Anyway, obviously Charlie’ foster family was very important to him because they were nice people and loved him when he thought he was unlovable. So how dare Wren get jealous of that when they’ve loved him for years and you’ve “loved” him for weeks? But the thing that really bugged me was Starrla. She was Charlie’s first friend, and they had a weird dating where the both mutually needed each other. He felt like he couldn’t turn his back on her, even though he kind of hated her, because she needed him, but in all honesty she had some psychological damage and really needed him to get her some actual adult help. But no, Chris kept running to help her and hurting everyone in the process because HE WASN’T ACTUALLY HELPING. Like this girl was suicidal and territorial and needed serious help, not a half-assed attempt from someone that tries to distance himself from her.
“The rest of July was hot and sweaty, and so were Charlie and Wren.”
And their romance, which was the rest of the story, really was weak. It was pure love at first sight, which I don’t believe in one bit. It was justified by the fact that “their souls were touching” but no, there was no connection between them either, except for physical. Which, btw, Myracle tries to pass off having sex with your boyfriend without a condom as intimate and romantic when NO, IT’S JUST PLAIN DANGEROUS, even if you are on the pill and he’s getting tested. And as I said earlier, the weird anti-feminist agenda popped up here where Charlie was very territorial over Wren, calling her “his girl” and getting mad when her best friend referred to Wren as her girl also. He was also super over-protective, and the one time she didn’t answer her phone right away he contemplated driving to her house to make sure she was alright because it is so unbelievable that she wouldn’t answer him immediately*. And Wren referred to him as her protector, but why would a girl need a protector, hmmm???? Also, there was a strange man-woman theme popping up in the end of the book, that frankly made me uncomfortable.
*sarcasm
Also, Wren’s parents are assholes. I’ll just leave it at that.
ALSO, there was a whole scene in the book (like an entire chapter), where Wren, her best friend, and her best friend’s bf go to a gun shooting range, and for some reason it was like really liberating for her????? and idk, I thought maybe Myracle would return to that theme at some point, but nope, it’s just a really random scene stuck in there that doesn’t really seem necessary?
“His fingers, splayed against the stars, seemed . . . more than. More than fingers. More than a part, or parts, of a whole. Just as one plus one is more than two, she thought, not knowing where the idea sprang from, or why.”
All in all, this book gets one star, even though I thought that was only going to be used for DNFed books. I finished this, but the more I think about it, the more I dislike it. It made zero sense, and felt like it was trying to be deep but was failing. The romance wasn’t natural, and these two were like bunnies if you know what I mean. And the characters were just flat and pretty unlikable. Which sucks because THE COVER IS SO PRETTY and the font inside the book is so pretty and I had SUCH high hopes for this book. But nope.
Have you read this book? What book have you had such high hopes for but the book just didn’t meet them?
