Book description:
Aspen Kirkland is a slut. Or at least,
that's what she's spent all of high school believing. So when she goes to visit
her estranged father the summer after graduation, she has no reason to believe
things will change. But then she finds her childhood best friend Sean again,
and everything changes. Sean is smart, driven and Harvard-bound: everything
Aspen isn't. But the more time she spends with him, the more she feels their
old connection. He makes her feel like the person she was before high school,
before her life did a 180. But Aspen doesn't want to change, and she doesn't
want to make any more mistakes. Between her renewed friendship with Sean, a
cute local boy and the revelation that her father may not be as clueless as she
once thought, Aspen feels the ground shifting beneath her every day. As the
summer unfolds, she finds herself working to reconcile her past, present and
future, and carve out a place in her constantly changing universe to call home.
Purchase a copy of this book on Amazon.
About the author:
Elizabeth Murphy is a YA author with one
book published and many more to come. She began writing her first novel, Home,
when she was a senior in high school. She is also the author of Aspiring
Authors Unite, a blog for writers of all genres. She is a forever Potterhead
and serious Star Wars nerd who will read pretty much anything. She is currently
in college pursuing her BA in public relations with a minor in creative writing
and working on her second novel.
Review:
*** 3.5 stars
This is the debut novel of Elizabeth Murphy. She pens down a girl’s struggle with her past, her parents and the future. Aspen Kirkland has problems in all of these areas and we follow her tackle these problems one by one. At the end of the book I was really satisfied and although it seemed hopeless in the beginning, it really is a feel good story.
Aspen has a tenuous relationship with her
father at the start because he was not much around, she only spoke to him like
four times a year on the phone, he’s even always away when she arrives at his
place for the summer. And then he springs another surprise on her and she
doesn’t even know how to feel about it. He’s also always asking her about what
she’s going to do in college. Frankly, she doesn’t really have any idea yet
what she wants to do in her life. And then last of all, she’s been feeling bad
about herself, sleeping with so many guys, starting in her junior year with a
guy named Nick. It wasn’t at all how she imagined it to be. At the time she
thought it gave her power over them, but it really just leaves her with a hole
in her heart afterwards. She’s not proud of her past, yet finds it difficult to
change. Old habits die hard. Luckily she has her friend Hannah and I really
liked what a good friend and voice Hannah was. And she also reconnects with her
former best friend Sean, the one she had to leave to go live with her mother in
Austin when her parents divorced. She meets him again at a chance encounter and
they pick up right where they left off. She forgot what fun it was to be around
him. But then a hot looking high school student pops up and she’s feeling her
old tactics resurface.
This was certainly an enjoyable read but I still found
it a bit hard at times to follow her actions in the past. I still don’t fully
comprehend why she went through so many guys if it didn’t give her any
satisfaction and that it was all coming forth from her first bad experience, or
why she and Will really had to break up, her thinking pattern is hard to
follow. I guess that’s a teenager for you, it’s not always very logical. On the
other hand, I really liked how it all evolved into positive things, and I loved
the last chapters, I even felt a bit emotional.
*I
received a free copy of this book from GenuineJenn in exchange of my honest opinion*
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