Genre:
Young Adult, buy Contemporary
Pages:
320 pages
Part of a Series?:
Standalone
Release Date:
April 26th, prescription 2016
You Can Find the Book At:
GoodReads Summary:
What if your town was sliding underwater and everyone was ordered to pack up and leave? How would you and your friends spend your last days together?
While the adults plan for the future, box up their possessions, and find new places to live, Keeley Hewitt and her friends decide to go out with a bang. There are parties in abandoned houses. Canoe races down Main Street. The goal is to make the most of every minute they still have together.
And for Keeley, that means taking one last shot at the boy she’s loved forever.
There’s a weird sort of bravery that comes from knowing there’s nothing left to lose. You might do things you normally wouldn’t. Or say things you shouldn’t. The reward almost always outweighs the risk.
Almost.
It’s the end of Aberdeen, but the beginning of Keeley’s first love story. It just might not turn out the way she thought. Because it’s not always clear what’s worth fighting for and what you should let become a memory.
My Review:
I didn’t love this book. I liked it but I didn’t love it. I haven’t become a Siobhan Vivian fan yet, and I really wanted to become a fan after this book but it just didn’t have that wow factor that keeps me coming back for more.
Here’s what the book did right: I think that there was so much about it that was incredibly realistic and genuine and familiar. I felt like the reactions of the characters, the way there were so many different outcomes to this situation, and that everyone sort of tackled it in different ways…that all felt so real. I think she captured what a scary and traumatic event this would be. It was intense and you could feel the way this town sort of started to shut down once they realized they were basically condemned. I think that was beautiful, the way Siobhan captured how different citizens reacted, how some broke down, some fought back and some found a way to find the bright side of it.
I also think she captured something so true about friendships. I think there are so many amazing books that write fantastic stories about friendship but its rare to see characters sort of grow apart and fall apart. I’ve had amazing friends in my life, and I’ve grown up and moved apart and grew apart and lost friends and its always incredibly sad but also sort of bittersweet. Its really hard to stay friends with someone forever, I think its incredible when people stay friends for so long, and I think Siobhan does a fantastic job at writing very real friendships that can crack under pressure. Even the best friendships have their cracks and can fall apart and I really loved that part of this story.
What really didn’t catch me was the main character herself. Keeley sort of drove me insane at times. I know that she was trying to do what she kind of always did, find the light in the dark, find the good in the bad but at times it just felt like she was ignoring the inevitable and hurting a lot of people in the process. She was so determined to find the good and to stick by her father’s side, that sometimes she failed to miss what was right in front of her. While I also think this is incredibly true of teenagers and, well, people in general, it was just so hard to relate to her and Jesse Ford. I really wanted to hit them a lot and it was incredibly frustrating to me. I just think I had a really hard time connecting to her as a character. I don’t think this is a fault of the character or the book or the author and I think there are probably plenty of people that will love the book but it didn’t speak to me enough personally and even though it is one of few books I’ve managed to read this year, it probably is one that will set on my shelf and won’t be reread.
Rating:
3.75 out of 5 stars
