Release Date: May 1, 2016
Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company
Pages: 241
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance
*I received this book as a NetGalley ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Summary
For sixteen-year-old Jillian McKay, the threat of Hurricane Danielle means a long car ride with her neighbors--including River Daughtry, the former star quarterback of Harrison High. The guy who was headed to glory until suddenly he disappeared to a West Texas juvenile detention center. Once cocky and flirtatious, he's now silent and angry. When their evacuation route is gridlocked, River is the first to recognize the danger they're in. Together he and Jillian set out to seek shelter in their abandoned high school. As they wait out the storm, they confront the past and realize survival is about more than just staying alive--it's about fighting for yourself. -Goodreads Description
The Rundown
Oh boy. I usually love a good contemporary romance. Characters you fall in love with who you want to be your best friends falling for each other against the odds and figuring out who they are in the world as individuals and together...it's totally my thing. But this book was totally not my thing.
Now the setting is great: Houston, Texas with the threat of a category five hurricane headed its way. In nearly landlocked Indiana (hey we've got some Lake Michigan coast) hurricanes are not a weather threat I'm well versed in. However, I was a senior in high school when Hurricane Katrina forever changed New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Nearly a year later, the summer after graduation and before college, I went to Louisiana with a church group to muck and repair roofs on homes. I had never experienced devastation of that magnitude. Whole neighborhoods abandoned like ghost towns. Trash (which really wasn't trash, but remnants of entire lives) everywhere. Even a shrimp boat resting in the middle of a residential street. Maybe it was remembering my time there working after the storm that piqued my interest in this title. Maybe I wanted a good story of two teens surviving and finding love in the process. In this case, what I wanted and what I got were very different, and unpleasantly so.
I just didn't like River or Jillian. Sure, they both had endured hardships that could have made them reliable: loss of parents, pressures from coaches, being wrongfully accused...but they just felt flat to me. I found River to be more creepy than romantic (creepiness had nothing to do with his PTSD from being in juvie). I mean the spring before the hurricane, he hid a field to catch her off guard when they were playing Frisbee because he, "wanted to kiss her before she could think about what was happening." WHAT?! And he knew she had a boyfriend but didn't care because "she was hot and I wanted her." SERIOUSLY??? EW!! That's not romantic. It's stalker-ish and rude and disrespectful.
Not that Jillian is any better. When they seek refuge together in their high school to ride out the storm, she's still with her boyfriend, yet makes out with River. Like a lot. Okay, maybe I'll cut her some slack that she was realizing that she didn't feel the same way for Aiden as he did about her and she and River had that "we could die at any second" mentality, but still. My yuck factor with Jillian was why she started dating Aiden in the first place. She let him cheat off of her in math class because, "It wasn't like he was studying to be a brain surgeon." (p. 139) Girl. No. Cheating is bad, mmmkay? And helping a boy cheat because he's not particularly bright but is a cute basketball player? Double and triple no! How does that help him? Or her?
This book has some redemption in more of the broad topics it hit even if the main characters weren't the best. Blumenthal hits on the corruption in our criminal justice system in relation to private prisons, PTSD, learning to rebuild and trust after live hands you a whole mess lemons, and giving faces to natural disaster survivors and victims. I feel like this book could have been a lot better if the characters had been more developed.
For me, this was less "love at category five" (p. 241) and more love at category what just happened here? If you're looking for a great contemporary romance where life throws a mess of things at the characters and they still come out on top, check out anything by Katie McGarry or Sarah Dessen.
Rating: 2 Stars. Meh, not for me.
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