John Green meets Rainbow Rowell in this irresistible story of first love, broken hearts, and the golden seams that put them back together again. Henry Page has never been in love. He fancies himself a hopeless romantic, but the slo-mo, heart palpitating, can’t-eat-can’t-sleep kind of love that he’s been hoping for just hasn’t been in the cards for him—at least not yet. Instead, he’s been happy to … he’s been happy to focus on his grades, on getting into a semi-decent college and finally becoming editor of his school newspaper. Then Grace Town walks into his first period class on the third Tuesday of senior year and he knows everything’s about to change.
Grace isn’t who Henry pictured as his dream girl—she walks with a cane, wears oversized boys’ clothes, and rarely seems to shower. But when Grace and Henry are both chosen to edit the school paper, he quickly finds himself falling for her. It’s obvious there’s something broken about Grace, but it seems to make her even more beautiful to Henry, and he wants nothing more than to help her put the pieces back together again. And yet, this isn’t your average story of boy meets girl. Krystal Sutherland’s brilliant debut is equal parts wit and heartbreak, a potent reminder of the bittersweet bliss that is first love.
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Grace Town is new to Henry’s high school. Once seen, she isn’t easily forgotten. When they are thrown together to be co-editors of the high school paper, so begins their story. Hearts will be cracked, love will be tested, and friendship will broken.
This is my first read by this author and I absolutely loved all the sarcastic wit and humor. I know, for some, it will be irritating and annoying but then … teenagers so … it fits and I laughed and enjoyed.
Even though this is essentially a sad book throughout it’s refreshing to see the dark side of love done in a way that isn’t an obsessive one.
Sometimes love stories aren’t meant to be good ones. Sometimes they are meant to help the other person and sometimes they are just a blip in our lives and memories to be held deep within, even when painful.
One of my new favorites! Sutherland takes you on an emotional roller coaster that keeps your stomach churning long after the ride is over. Cannot recommend this book enough for those who love contemporary romance!
Oh my goodness this book is amazing!!
This young adult coming-of-age novel is deftly written, and had everything I wanted in a modern YA romance. The characters were a delight to read, had depth and all sorts of emotions, heart break and feelings – it had its funny and also heart wrenching moments. You are going to want to talk to someone about this book after you read this.
This novel explores two very different people and what love is. It also explores issues on PTSD, trauma, loss, anger, and frustration.
This one is really fantastic. I highly recommend this amazing book.
Also, if you haven’t seen the Amazon Original film go watch it, it is amazing!
This has been sitting on my shelf for a long time and I see it is being made into a movie and streaming in August so I decided to finally pick it up. It is very, very sad. I think it is a fairly well written story but had some repetitive language that got borderline annoying. Henry was a bit quirky and I loved his personality except that I felt his obsession with Grace went a little overboard and felt a bit forced. All I kept thinking about Grace’s character is that broken people hurt people. It would be horrifying to lose the love of your life at such a young age. She is very unhealthy in the way she is grieving and I was glad to see her come out of some of that at the end of the book. I was very upset with her for how I felt she used Henry to satisfy physical senses. Henry believes himself to be in love with her. I’m not sure I bought into that but felt like maybe he was in love with the idea of being the one to help her heal and get over her loss. It was very hard for me to like Grace because of the way she treated Henry even though I understand it was because of what she was dealing with. This is one where I’m thinking I might enjoy the movie version better. We’ll see.
This was not your typical YA Romance. First of all, there actually was very little romance, at least not that wasn’t one sided. This story shows how not all relationships are meant to be. How you can fall for someone and have them not fall for you back, even when it seems like they have. How we can sometimes project the way we want people to be onto them, instead of accepting them the way they are. It also shows a lot about grief and how differently it affects different people.
Another thing that was very prevalent in this book was the support of good friends, and how the true friends, while always supporting you, will also tell you when you’re not acting right, or when you’re making bad decisions. It’s so important to have these friends in our lives. Friends that don’t judge, but will also set you straight when you are doing something that’s not good for you.
The ending is not what you’d typically expect from a novel in this genre, but it was perfect for the story told here. I’m very glad to have received this book as a Christmas Gift and get the opportunity to read it.
I’m not quite sure how I feel about this book. On the one hand I really liked Henry, or at least most of the time. I found his character to be funny and whitty, and maybe even a little bit nerdy, but in a cute way. At first he really seemed to have his head on straight. I loved his friends Lola and Murphy. They were funny and really great friends, especially Lola who seemed to be the voice of reason and clearly the smartest of the bunch. Henry’s family was awesome too. His parents tried a little too hard to be cool, but also let him naturally experience things that teens his age would do since their oldest daughter Sadie was such a bad girl and got into lots trouble. Henry’s relationship with his sister was another thing I really liked, and she would give him some solid advice and inquired about things in his life when necessary.
My issues were that Henry became so absorbed and obsessed with Grace. It was so bad that his grades suffered and he all but abandoned his role as lead editor for the newspaper he worked years to get and needed for college applications. Uhhh what? And while this is happening his parents never notice and the school doesn’t contact them. BUT! The school officials do everything in their power to keep Grace and Henry separated when they realize she is a clear distraction for him. I found Grace to be a terrible person despite her clear grief. It was clear very early on that Grace was using Henry in the worse way possible and lying to him at every turn. The girl clearly needed help and I thought the story was going to work towards that because what she was doing was not healthy in any way.
I found this book to be just ok. There were some things to really like about this book and I think Henry learned a lot in this book.