11 March 2016

Review #366: I'll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios



My rating: 5 of 5 stars


“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

----Eleanor Roosevelt



Heather Demetrios, an American author, has penned a heart-wrenching tale about love, broken dreams in her YA novel, I'll Meet You There, that narrates the story of two teenagers- one with ambitions and goals to get out of a stuck-up small town and the other with lost dreams and a lost leg spending his uncertain days in that same stuck-up small town.







Synopsis:

If seventeen-year-old Skylar Evans were a typical Creek View girl, her future would involve a double-wide trailer, a baby on her hip, and the graveyard shift at Taco Bell. But after graduation, the only thing standing between straightedge Skylar and art school are three minimum-wage months of summer. Skylar can taste the freedom—that is, until her mother loses her job and everything starts coming apart. Torn between her dreams and the people she loves, Skylar realizes everything she’s ever worked for is on the line.

Nineteen-year-old Josh Mitchell had a different ticket out of Creek View: the Marines. But after his leg is blown off in Afghanistan, he returns home, a shell of the cocksure boy he used to be. What brings Skylar and Josh together is working at the Paradise—a quirky motel off California’s dusty Highway 99. Despite their differences, their shared isolation turns into an unexpected friendship and soon, something deeper.



Skylar Evans has been forever dreaming and aiming to get out of Creek View town, a small town in California consisting of a trailer park, old houses, beat-up businesses and a quirky motel, Paradise. After getting herself a scholarship to a San Francisco art college, she is vouching to begin a her life there while working her bare-minimum-wage job at the motel. But her dreams of getting out of the town and avoiding the bleak future here started to fade away when her mother lost her job and started drinking.

Josh Mitchell, once-upon-a-time-hunk, is now back to his stuck-up town, Creek View. He was forced to be back here when he lost his leg while serving as a Marine in Afghanistan. With lost dreams as Marines, he is back on his one leg to support himself, that is when he re-joins the job, the one he used to do before getting recruited as a Marine, at the motel.

Josh and Skylar re-unite once again, but this time both have lots of baggage as well as pain and shared broken dreams. Their pain eventually makes their hearts grow fonder for each other with each passing day.

The author's writing style is fantastic with a charming and layered dual POV of both the main characters. The pacing of the book is quite fast as the book starts gripping the readers with its sharp edges of evocative emotions that feels both real as well as relatable. The emotions are bone-deep that has an ability to force the readers to go on an emotional roller-coaster ride. The book's climax is unpredictable, sweet and apt with the main story line.

The characters are painted with lots of realism and are featured with lots of flaws. Skylar is the one who doesn't want to leave her mom in this small town, her caring as well as fighting nature makes her very strong. Josh is left emotionally as well as physically hurt from the war, and the author has handled the life of this amputee with lots of sensitivity by giving him a painful and evocative voice who narrates his life at Afghanistan. The insecurities of the both the characters not only make them look real but also keeps the readers rooting for them till the very end. The supporting characters are also quite well-developed who are bound to leave a lasting impression in the hearts of the readers.

The love story between Skylar and Josh is not insta, instead it evolved eventually when they gradually began to open themselves up to each other. The romance is at times steamy, sexy and quite passionate. It makes the readers feel for them deeply. But when their insecurities become an enemy to their love story, the readers' eyes are bound to well up for them.

The author not only focus the story at them but also projects the life at a small town, the shortcomings, financial constraints etc are vividly captured in the frame of this story line.

Overall, this is a compelling as well as poignant story about lost dreams and love in a small town.

Verdict: This book is recommended to all the YA contemporary fans!

Courtesy: Thanks to the author's publicist, for giving me an opportunity to read and review this book.
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Author Info:
When she’s not traipsing around the world or spending time in imaginary places, Heather Demetrios lives with her husband in New York City. Originally from Los Angeles, she now calls the East Coast home. Heather has an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a recipient of the PEN New England Susan P. Bloom Discovery Award for her debut novel, Something Real. Her other novels include Exquisite Captive, the first in the Dark Caravan Cycle fantasy series, and I’ll Meet You There. She is the founder of Live Your What, an organization dedicated to fostering passion in people of all ages and creating writing opportunities for underserved youth.
Visit her here


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2 comments:

  1. I’m glad you liked this one. I have it sitting on my TBR shelf. Hopefully I’ll be able to read it soon.

    Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  2. I'm glad you enjoyed this one too. I'm not a big contemporary fan but this was one I loved. I think because the characters were so flawed. It felt very realistic and engaging.
    Cassi @ My Thoughts Literally

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