Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Age recommendation: 12+
Genre: YA Romance
Synopsis:
New town, new friends, new guy . . . and an old bucket list.
After her dad is sentenced to prison time, seventeen-year-old Lucy Nelson and her mother move across the country to start over in the town—and farmhouse—where her mother grew up.
Once settled, Lucy is determined to keep her mind off anything “real” and decides to pass the time by reading a stack of her mother’s childhood books, which has sat in her grandmother’s home for decades. When Lucy finds her mom’s old summer bucket list shoved between the pages of a worn copy of Anne of Green Gables, she’s eager to write her own list to escape her inevitable summer boredom. Feeling brave, she fills it with challenges she’d never normally do and also adds the one thing that her mother had never crossed off the original list: Visit Susan’s grave.
When Lucy befriends Mira and her handsome cousin, Jack, she begins to feel almost normal as they help check off her list. When she asks her mother about Susan, she refuses to talk about her. As Lucy falls for Jack, she yearns to tell him the truth about her dad and her old life but lies about everything instead. When her friends see through the lies and her mom reaches her breaking point over questions about Susan, Lucy must learn to trust her friends, try to bring peace to her mother, and to somehow find the courage to forgive her dad.
My Review:
I have loved every book in this series, (Love, Lucas), and this one was not a disappointment. As with all the earlier books in this series, Sedgewick paints a picture of brokenness, and pain, and then throughout the book, healing from that brokenness.
So let’s break it down. Starting with the premise.
If this wasn’t by Chantele Sedgwick, I don’t think the blurb would have caught my attention. In my opinion the blurb was too long and gave to much information, but the actual premise of the story wasn’t bad. Lucy’s Dad has been arrested, and her and her Mom move back to her Mom’s home town to escape the rumors that now surround there family and get a new start. But her Mom still has baggage around this town, but she won’t talk about it.
I think that’s a pretty solid premise.
Next, the Characters: The main character, Lucy, was very relatable. She was socially awkward, a book worm, and a girl who was not excited to leave her old friends to find new ones. Lucy had a lot of pain, and handled it in a way that was believable, and relatable.
Jack is a cowboy, that does not fit the cowboy stereotype. I was happy with that, as I am not a fan of cowboys in general. Jack is quiet, highly sensitive, socially awkward, and has never had a girlfriend. He’s adventurous though, and not afraid to try something new every now and again. I loved him.
Mira is outgoing, extremely talkative, and definitley has her ‘gang’. She, like the others, has gone through a lot of pain, and she doesn’t always cope with that pain in the best ways.
The plot was well done. No one fell in love too quickly, and the mystery was solved at a believable pace. that’s about all I can say without giving spoilers.
This was a very satisfying ending to the series. All of the characters had distinct endings to their story lines, and the future looks bright.
Content:
Violence: Not present.
Sexual content: Two characters kiss a few times. This is not drawn out or overly described.
Magic: Not present
Other concers: Mentions of a character who committed suicide, another who overdosed on drugs. One character is said to have drowned, though none of these events happen in the story, they are only mentioned.