“You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.” ― Annie Proulx
Rating: 8/10"He hadn’t exactly been looking for her, but they had an uncanny habit of stumbling across each other nonetheless. Not that this was unwelcome. It was, in fact, the highlight of his days." "Perhaps she was just as odd as the rest of her family, only without the brains to back it up." "A red circle with a tiny arrow jutting down like a spike of lightning announced you are here, and she couldn’t help wishing it were always so easy to locate herself." "Self-sufficient, if lonely; independent, if a little lost." "It had refused to stay a footnote. It had refused to be forgotten." "It was like he’d been born a blue flower in a field full of red ones and had only now been plunked down in a meadow so blue it might as well have been the ocean." "I’m not a big fan of birthday parties. It’s like anything where you have high expectations." "Though he knew there was no time for this kind of thing, he stood there for a moment anyway, just watching her. He couldn’t help it." "For the first time in his life Peter understood what the opposite of lost was: that it had nothing to do with maps or directions or staying on course; that it was, in fact, nothing more than being found." | This book wasn't bad. I didn't enjoy it as much as Jennifer E. Smith's other novels, but it was still a good read. The characters had depth or appeared to but then at the heart of it there wasn't a hole bunch to them. I kept wanting Peter to have a reason he loved battlefields and traveling rooted in his mother, but for the most part, it looked like just something he was really interested in. It was so sad when Emma described her and Peter's relationship as her tolerating him. He was in love with her and got completely rejected. She was all over the place and he still followed her around. He deserves better, and I'm glad everything worked out in the end but I'm also not completely satisfied. The whole dead brother thing was kind of weird and the whole storyline in general was slightly out of left field. But it wasn't completely bad. Just not my favorite book of all time. I did like the alternating points of view though! "She wasn’t exactly normal, but she wasn’t exactly abnormal enough either." "It was like being on a roller coaster, pitched forward and then jerked back, ignored until he felt he barely existed in the house anymore, and then loved so fiercely and briefly it nearly took his breath away. It was like falling and falling and falling until the very last moment, when you were absolutely sure you’d hit the bottom, and then being swept upward again." "He seemed mostly to prefer his own company, though he’d always been different around Emma." "But a small part of him also knew that the reason he’d never ventured anywhere was because of the worry that the reality of the world wouldn’t match up to his dreams." "Peter accepted this information the same way he did most everything else, without comment or judgment, only a thoughtful and unreadable nod of his head." "He knew—had always known—just exactly when her birthday was, despite the fact that his was only a few days later and she unfailingly missed it every year." "He grabbed her hand—just for a moment—as they were shunted through a gated entrance, then let go again once they made it to the other side. If it bothered her, she didn’t say anything, and this was enough to make Peter feel like skipping the rest of the way." "He watched the guy ring them up, half wishing—despite the sweatshirt’s scratchy material and shoddy lettering—that he could put it on right away, though he at least had the good sense to be embarrassed by the significance he knew he’d attach to it because Emma had picked it out." "It wasn’t like she was blind. She knew that he liked her, had known it since the moment he pulled up to the rest stop in the blue convertible and she realized just what she’d asked of him. She thought maybe she’d even known it before he did. But until now it had seemed more of an annoyance than anything else, an added complication to the million other complications on this trip, like a bug she was forced to continually swat away." "The veterinary technician slid him off the gurney like he was serving a pancake." "For once in his life, he’d failed at something. But at least he’d done it by trying, rather than standing off to the side like a coward." "There was nothing more to be done except kick herself for always choosing the wrong times to be silent and the wrong times to make a fuss, for always managing to get it all so perfectly wrong." |