Series: Standalone

Genre: LGBT (f/f)

Rating: 2.5/5 stars

Cover: Nothing special, but okay.

Buy: Amazon

Trigger warnings: depression, suicide attempts, alcohol

Description: Samantha Latham is a little socially awkward and a lot brilliant. When she arrives at Yale, thrilled to finally escape her rural Vermont hometown called Stowe, the focused and driven Sam knows exactly what she wants: an illustrious career as a medical researcher and a relationship with her new best friend Natalie, a talented yet capricious girl who keeps Sam guessing. Everything changes when Sam must suddenly withdraw from school to care for her invalid mother back in Vermont. Moving back to Stowe means no more brilliant career in medicine, and definitely no more Natalie. As she finds herself alone, faced with a life she never wanted, Sam slowly learns to recalibrate what she considers success, discovering the artistic side of Stowe, a community of lesbians she never imagined existed there, and a new woman who inspires Sam to rethink everything she thought she knew-especially about love.

Review: This book makes it not easy to get a feeling for the characters. They are rather stereotypical and… well… If you introduce a character (Samantha by the way) as socially awkward, then show her that way? I don’t think of her as socially awkward. The big and many time jumps didn’t help either.

After finishing I still don’t know why Sam is in love with Natalie. Seriously, why? It didn’t make sense and there wasn’t any chemistry between them.

Part two contains the changes for Sam – I seriously thought the whole book would be about them and what’ll happen after dealing/learning to live with them, but the reader experiences Sam’s college life, too. Anyway, this part was better. The characters were interesting (I especially love Pauly) and Sam herself makes more sense in my eyes.

It still feels kinda unfinished. Not because of the open end, but because there were some things introduced but nothing really came out of it (Sam’s poetry for example).

If the description would have been different, maybe I wouldn’t have been as bored while reading. Because what you read there? That’s the book. It’s more of a summary than a description, I think.
Disclaimer: I was provided by Ylva Publishing with a free copy in exchange for an honest review. Thank you.