e-ARC, 316 pages
Release Date: January 26, 2016Published by: RazorbillStand-aloneSource: First to ReadFor fans of: Romance, Sci-Fi, Contemporary, Time Travel, Fantasy, Debut Author 16,
Natalie Cleary must risk her future and leap blindly into a vast unknown for the chance to build a new world with the boy she loves.
Natalie’s last summer in her small Kentucky hometown is off to a magical start… until she starts seeing the “wrong things.” They’re just momentary glimpses at first—her front door is red instead of its usual green, there’s a pre-school where the garden store should be. But then her whole town disappears for hours, fading away into rolling hills and grazing buffalo, and Nat knows something isn’t right.
That’s when she gets a visit from the kind but mysterious apparition she calls “Grandmother,” who tells her: “You have three months to save him.” The next night, under the stadium lights of the high school football field, she meets a beautiful boy named Beau, and it’s as if time just stops and nothing exists. Nothing, except Natalie and Beau.
Emily Henry’s stunning debut novel is Friday Night Lights meets The Time Traveler’s Wife, and perfectly captures those bittersweet months after high school, when we dream not only of the future, but of all the roads and paths we’ve left untaken.
*MY THOUGHTS*
My thoughts are all over the place for this one. I’m not sure at all where to start with this one. For the most part, I’m so glad I read this book. On another hand I feel like maybe it wasn’t the right time for me to read this one. Looking over other bloggers ratings, it looks like everyone either extremely loved it or the exact opposite. I somehow was able to fall smack in the middle.
“My retellings should be wrapped in my voice as cradled as casrefully as water so that no word spills.“23%
Natalie Cleary has way too much going on for an eighteen year old girl. She’s seeing things and people and places are changing right in front of her eyes. But then she meets one boy who seems to help her understand all that’s happening. Until something jumps in their way to complicate things even further.
“You never owe another person something, no matter how nice they are to you. Relationships aren’t transactions.“37%
Unfortunately for the most part I found myself bored or confused with this story. Which really upsets me because I really did want to like it. I’m going to blame it on the fact that I read 3 time travel books in a row and this is why I didn’t like it as much. I’m gonna go ahead and blame it on the fact that I was just burnt out. I probably should’ve waited to read this one after I read something else.
“You’ve gotta enjoy the moment […] You’ll miss your whole life looking forward and backward if you’re not careful.“47%
The prose in this one was beautiful though. The descriptions of the world and the folk tales told in this one were so good. There were times I would write down entire passages to keep them and reread them later. Henry’s words are amazing and I can’t wait to see what else she has in store.
“The bad things get exhausting.“52%
Although her writing was so beautiful, there were somethings that confused me. This book is very strange and there is ALOT going on without enough explanation. That is until the very end. Which is unfortunate to the reader. There’s this huge info dump at the end in place of the conclusion. I know that’s how most time travel books work, but this usually happens toward the beginning of the book. With this one, it seemed to be a lot all at once. Maybe too much.
“It’s true that nothing has the potential to hurt so much as loving someone, but nothing heals like it either.“60%
What I was surprised by in this one was the diversity. I was not expecting the MC to be a POC and to be adopted as well. The best part was finding out more about Natalie’s culture through the folk tales. I learned so many different stories and compared them to other stories I’ve already read. This has convinced me to want to keep learning and looking up more of those tales. <—This is the power of -Diverse books y’all! I implore you to read them! (Edited in 2022 to add that this author is not a rep of this group, so this could have been saved for an Indigenous person to write more about. )
“The future’s rarely certain […] All we ever have is the present.“76%
This book brought out so many different emotions in me and provoked so many thoughts while I was reading it. I’m still not certain my words on this book have done my thoughts on it justice, so just go out and read the book!
Overall, I give this
