Dedication - Nicola Kraus & Emma McLaughlin.

Published: July 2007
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Pages: 356
Buy this book: Amazon US

Synopsis:
What if your first love left town, without a word to anyone, days before graduation?  What if he went on to become one of the biggest recording stars on the planet, and every song he's famous for is about you?  What if, after thirteen years of getting on with your life - walking past his face on newsstands, flipping past his image on TV, tuning him out on the radio - you get the call that he has landed back in your hometown for an MTV special two days before Christmas?  What if you finally had the chance to confront him?  What would you do?

This is the dilemma faced by Kate Hollis, a woman on the threshold of her thirtieth birthday, who discovers that the only way to embrace life as a fully-fledged, well-adjusted adult is to re-visit seventeen.

The cover...

The UK cover is simple yet eye-catching.  Half of a girl leaning/pondering on top of an overflowing suitcase, it kind of makes you wonder, where is she going and why?

How did I find out about this book?

I was just looking through the books at ‘The Works’ store and it caught my eye.

What is this book about?

This book is focusing on a girl named Kate and how she has never really gotten over her ‘first love’.  She’s turning 30 and her friend calls her up to say he’s back in town and she basically gets the next available flight back to her home town.

My opinion...

I enjoyed the story of this book, however to find the story it seemed liked you had to read between the lines and make up your own parts sometimes.  To explain, a lot of the wording seemed confusing, which I didn’t like at all.  It was like the two authors knew the story and how it should go but they both had different ideas as to how it should be told and these ideas were combined to make a jumbled up explanation.  If that makes any sense?

Another problem was the explanation of characters.  I like to know a bit about who I am going to be reading about from the beginning and then find out their story as I go along.  This book seems to just jump into the story, with the sequence of ‘present’ chapter, ‘past’ chapter and so on... with the ‘past’ chapters going up in school grades.  The ‘past’ chapters are when you find out who the characters are and what they are all about.

Again, in relation to the wording, it’s like a teenager is writing it, for example when a teenager writes a diary they are not going to think about how they are writing, they just want to get their thoughts etc down before they forget them.  That’s essentially how this book seems, however, the ‘present’ chapters are written in this way also, with some situations bringing up the question of ‘you’re 30, would you actually still act like that?’.   Especially with the beginning: Kate essentially already has her suitcase packed and is ready to go when her friend calls her up letting her know her first love is back in town; which makes me question, ‘where’s the effort?’.

I do like the story though but was not pleased with the ending, I wanted something more.  I am somewhat of a ‘happy ending lover’.  I was expecting more, I wanted more, but it just wasn’t there.  There was even a character mentioned half way through the book once or twice that I was thinking, maybe this is going somewhere, but no, he was never heard of again.   The only thing about the ending was that it brought up how the story came about in the first place.

If you enjoyed this book: what to read next...

Hmmm, I’m totally unsure with this one.  After reading this all I really thought about was reading the Nanny Diaries series, so perhaps that’s a route to go down?  Maybe I’ll come back to this one...