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Genre: NA, contemporary romance, child abuse/neglect, YA
Written by: Priscilla Glenn
Available as Paperback and Kindle edition
Published October 20th '12 by Creative Space
Get it here:
"I always knew I would fall in love with you," he said softly, "but you were never supposed to love me back."
Now as you see by the rating alone, this one's quite high up there, especially because I hardly tend to rate anything higher than 3, even if I really enjoyed it. Usually my motto is, '3's plenty, no need to get rating happy! I've just seen a lot of people rating all of their previously read books above 4 and 5, completely throwing all caution to the wind.
And Fair enough, if you really liked something, show it, but doing that with ALL of your reads may quickly become insincere & misleading.
If you rate all books the same, despite of its genre, story, length & linguistics, can you still class it as a genuine rating?
Not quite, or at least not in my opinion.
Anyhow! Let's get back to the review.
This is one of those reviews where I don't quite know where to start and my mind just seems to be doing continuous backflips, but in all honesty, I really don't think there are words accurate enough to describe my feelings for this book. As cliché as it may sound, it rendered me completely speechless from the second I started it all the way through to the end, turning me into a slimy goo of emotion. Needless to say, it became a strong favourite in a matter of hours.
I said I'd never be like the one o' those typical girls who sit in front of a book, sighing foolishly, completely swept away by whatever situation unfolding on the pages between their fingers, but I'll be damned if I deny how MUCH I was exactly like them. To tell the truth, I was probably even worse..
It was wonderfully well written, when I found out it was also her debut novel, I was completely blown out of the water. What a complete slam dunk! Strike or any other sports reference you may want to use.
It's a story about long lost loves and second chances, something I'm sure we can all relate to.
The best thing is that you get to fall in love with the characters twice, as we keep being shown little snippets of Lauren's memories from her high school days, and you get to see just how deep her love for childhood friend Michael Delaney runs.
Your heart will break, melt, heal and break a couple of times more.
I personally got especially attached to Michael's little girl, Erin. Who makes the whole story just that little bit more gut wrenching. I found it so admirable how he deals with being a single parent. A single 25 year old guy with no girlfriend or parents, raising a new born child all by himself, while still pursuing a career of his own? Sounds damn near impossible to me..
Especially since his very own parents never gave a turds fart about him. A little boy growing up without a father and no love from his own mother & dead brother... just that alone brought a bothersome pang to the area around my heart!
But the way he believed that it had all been his fault damn nearly killed me. I had no doubts when reading through the tough chapters, I fell right into the lives of Lauren & Michael and had a hard time finding my way back out.
Additionally, BTY, contains some of the best romantic scenes i've ever come across.. without having to be too graphic or unnecessarily smutty.. there was just.. passion. Just like that.
It was real, believable and ignited a low burning fire in my bones that I'll cherish for a long time to come.
So if you haven't managed to get yourself a copy, do it now and do it fast, you'll thank us later.
That's it for now.
