Main Character: Laurel
Love Interest: David
Series: None
Author: Website|Facebook|Twitter|Goodreads
Sixteen-year-old Laurel’s world changes instantly when her parents and brother are killed in a terrible car accident. Behind the wheel is the father of her bad-boy neighbor, David Kaufman, whose mother is also killed. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Laurel navigates a new reality in which she and her best friend grow apart, boys may or may not be approaching her out of pity, overpowering memories lurk everywhere, and Mr. Kaufman is comatose but still very much alive. Through it all, there is David, who swoops in and out of Laurel’s life and to whom she finds herself attracted against her better judgment. She will forever be connected to him by their mutual loss, a connection that will change them both in unexpected ways.
While this book reminds me of Gayle Forman’s If I Stay, this book is completely different in the way that the characters and events happened. In If I Stay, Mia’s entire family was in a fatal car accident and she was the only person that survived but in this story, Laurel opted to not go for ice cream with her family and so she lost her entire family and she wasn’t even there. In this story, we see Laurel’s grief at losing her entire family and we see her deal with her new life, after the accident.
Laurel’s family went to her neighbors house for dinner. The Kaufman’s. After dinner, the family’s decide to go out for ice cream but Laurel has homework she needs to finish so instead, she goes home and the Kaufman’s son, David has “homework” that he needs to finish over at his friend’s house so he doesn’t go on the outing either. When Laurel gets the news about the accident and her family, her whole life crumbles around her and she has no way how to react, how to be without them.
This book was emotional and it was raw. It dealt with the loss of the people you love most in the world and it deals with the reality of grief. Never once did I feel like David and Laurel’s grief wasn’t real. David lost his Mom in the accident and his Dad is in a coma so he’s very much alone in the world because he doesn’t get along with his grandparents. Laurel lost everyone and has a great support system with her grandmother coming to live with her but having her grandmother doesn’t making losing the rest of her family any better.
David is mad at the world and Laurel is just trying to get through the day and she needs someone to blame so she turns the force of her anger and the blame onto David’s father because he was driving and he had been drinking. Having to deal with all of that and then go to school where people stare and they whisper and they pity you, it becomes too much for her to deal with. Through this all, she finds herself getting closer to the one person who knows exactly how she feels.
David. David isn’t very reliable though and she starts to look forward to the emails he’ll send her from wherever he is and over the course of this book, you see them bond and your heart breaks and it melts because you just can’t imagine going through what these two have gone through.
This book is wonderfully written and the story flows so well. It’s so easy to fall into the grief and the characters and I absolutely ate all of this up. Having lost my Mom not too long ago, I felt exactly what these guys felt and so I connected with them on a level that made me more emotional than I would have been otherwise. It’s a great read and I totally recommend this book to anyone in the mood for something with a little more oomph than the lighter reads that have been coming out this summer.
..and that’s your scoop!
Book cover and blurb credit: http://barnesandnoble.com
I think you liked this one more than I did.
I don’t know why but I had a harder time connecting with David and Laurel, 😉
Still, it was a nice read all around.