Alexis

If it hadn't been for situational context and the names for each character, I'd have had no idea who was who; it felt like every character had the same voice. This book was disappointingly bland in the sense that, for me, it brought no deeper look into such an awful occurrence as school shootings beyond scratching the surface of such an event. Would not recommend this book.

When I was first looking at this book, it was at an elementary school book fair on the adult table. After reading the back and seeing the emphasis on the romance aspect of the book, I decided not to buy it. The next time the book fair was back, it was buy 1 get 1 free, so I figured “why not?”.

I'm so glad I bought it.

I'm not a huge fan of novels that focus solely on romance with little other plot line, and turns out this book wasn't one of those novels. The author does a spectacular job of creating this world with refreshing descriptions without overdoing it. The storyline is fairly quick-paced and never, in my opinion, gets dull. Though there is an emphasis on an intense romance later in the book that is an extremely important aspect of the book to create the given ending, it does not feel like it overpowers the other things going on.

One thing I'll admit is I'm glad I read some of the reviews first, solely because I was given a heads up about the changing between times/story lines, so with that in mind I was more easily able to keep the alternate story line in mind throughout the main plot.

I feel like this review is not as clear as I wish I could make it but the best I can say is to give this book a shot. Definitely will be reading again in the future and will recommend to friends.

I enjoyed a great many of the ideas in the book but unfortunately the writing style killed it for me. I could understand the writing from the child's perspective and his train of thought if it was only his that was written like that, but the adults' portions were equally as “stream of consciousness” for most of the book.

3.5 stars

I liked the overall premise of the book, and in particular I enjoyed the plot for the first third to half of the book. The writing felt a bit inconsistent, though, both with style and some of the grammatical approaches to Henry's speech. Overall not a bad book.