Nobody But Us by Kristin Halbrook

E-ARC, 203 pages
Release Date: January 29, 2013
Read: December 2012
Published by: HarperTeen*
Standalone
Source: Edelweiss
For fans of: Contemporary Romance, Realistic Fiction, & YA

     Bonnie and Clyde meets IF I STAY in this addictively heart-wrenching story of two desperate teenagers on the run from their pasts.
     They’re young. They’re in love. They’re on the run.
     Zoe wants to save Will as much as Will wants to save Zoe. When         Will turns eighteen, they decide to run away together. But they never expected their escape to be so fraught with danger….
When the whole world is after you, sometimes it seems like you can’t run fast enough.
     Nobody But Us, told in alternating perspectives from Will and Zoe, is an unflinching novel, in turns heartbreaking and hopeful, about survival, choices, and love…and how having love doesn’t always mean that you get a happy ending. Described as “beautiful, heartbreaking, and exhilarating” by Kody Keplinger, author of The DUFF, Nobody But Us will prove irresistible to fans of Nina Lacour, Jenny Han, and Sara Zarr.


*MY THOUGHTS* 
     This book was nothing like I expected it to be. Sad thing is, I’m not sure how I feel about that. Even more sad than that, this was one of my most anticipated reads of 2013. My expectations for this were so high, but they barely reached the bar.
     Zoe is a fifteen year old girl who is left by herself with a drunken, abusive father. Will is an eighteen year old boy who has been in foster care almost his entire life. Together they found solace. They realize that the only way they can live peacefully is together, without anyone else around. So they take off on their own for a chance to survive. 
     Sounds amazing right? Unfortunately, this book moved super slow for me. But, I was intrigued so I kept reading. Finally at about the last 20 pages or so, it picked up. If the rest of the book had been like the last 20 pages, I would have enjoyed this so much more. Before then it seemed like everything happened just so the plot could move. But finally, the action picked up. The writing made it seem like what was being written was actually going on. And the emotion in it was incredible.
     Now the emotion was the only thing really tying me to the book. I wanted to know every move that Will made because he was so emotionally driven. He may not have been the smartest, but everything he did had some type of feeling behind it and that’s what caused him to do it. The number one thing was his love for Zoe. Now Zoe, she was the logical thinker of the two. She was the one that was driven by her mind and not her heart. I’m not sure why, but I didn’t connect with her as much as Will. I just felt a little distant from her. I’m thinking it was because although she was the thinker in the situation, she still went back and forth in her decisions. But I will say this wasn’t the easiest of situations to deal with so she deserved to be a little conflicted. 
     As for the romance  man Will is totally swoon worthy. (Minus all the other stuff….) His love for Zoe is unwavering. Through everything, throughout the entire book he showed his love for her. As I said he was the one that really thought with his emotions, so it came off as a little intense, but it was just the way he was. Now her love for him was different. It was obvious she loved him too, but since she was the logical one, every time she tried to show it, she showed it a little different. It didn’t seem as deep as it was for Will. But that’s only because she wasn’t as comfortable showing her emotions as he was. 
     Although my expectations were not met, I was still able to enjoy this. I could see why Halbrook chose to do certain things and why she left certain things out, even if I did not agree with them.