starsaga

If the job of an author is to make the reader feel then this author did her job.
I read this book with mixed feelings because I read some of the 5star and 1star reviews. Clearly, this book covers topics that divide people. The writing style of the book is divisive. Some of the behaviour of the characters is divisive. Much of the book is about the sweet relationship between two very young, super young people, but there are also some rough moments that were very painful to read. I can't say then, that I enjoyed the book, but was it a good book, I think it was. For a lot of the book, I was quite unbelieving of the storyline, I could not accept that these young people appeared to skip right over childhood and go almost straight from preteens to adulthood. But then, there was the background, at least for Amber and Jake, and if that was so, I guess, who could blame them for growing up superfast, if they had already seen such misery as children.
The character of Liam, seemed almost to just disappear amongst the rest of the story, but I think the goal here was to make him a foil for Amber's life, like a stoic wall against which Amber would be battered but would keep standing and hold her up. I actually liked the end, since that was the first time in the entire book where I was comfortable with the h and H being a couple, they just seemed slightly doomed through most of the book. There were some really sweet moments in the book, regarding the intimacy between a very young girl and her young protector, this was a sensitive topic for the author to handle and for the most part she did it well. The other part was Amber's introduction to her sexuality which was not well handled, making her vacillate between a scared child-like creature who incites pity, to a brazen and pretentious woman-child very aware of her effect on her boyfriend and her need to display it to the world. This last de-humanized this young girl, but maybe that's what she needed to do to feel freedom for the first time in her life and we all know how intoxicating freedom can be, especially the first time. So at the end, I cannot say I liked the characters or a lot of their behaviour, but I did like the book.