Got this one from the library and it was a whole lot darker than I anticipated.

This is about a 15 year old girl at boarding school where she doesn't quite fit in. She makes a friend -- who is a boy -- and they fall in love but they are too young to actually realize that's what happened for a very long time. They have complicated family dynamics. They make stupid decisions, as HS kids do, and there's a whole lot of fall out.

It's all kind of depressing.

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I received an e-copy of this story for an honest review.
Mercedes Helnwein has written the utterly perfect chaos that is Teenage Life! The emotions, angst, hormones, and complications of family. Also thrown into that mess is school, peers, boys, girls, drama, learning about love, and sex. And, on top of all that, you have to learn things like Math, Science, English, etc; you know, those things that are supposed to help you become a “Successful Adult”.
Utterly. Perfect. Chaotic. Teenage. Life!
I laughed, cried, snickered, hurt, rolled my eyes, and shook my head a lot while reading this. But, mostly, I thanked all the Gods and Goddesses in the known Universe that I was no longer a teenager myself. ( )

This is going to be a hard one to review. There were things that I liked about this book and things that I didn’t care for at all. I am glad that I decided to go with the audiobook for this read because I think that narration was very well done and helped me stick with the book. Overall, I would say that I did like the book and the things that I liked were very well done.

Let’s get the things that I didn’t like out of the way first. The book opens with a scene between Grace and the teacher that she claims to be in love with. This isn’t a normal crush on a teacher that I maybe could have understood, although I wouldn’t have liked that either. This love for her teacher was way overdone and really made my skin crawl. Unfortunately, it popped up several times in the book. The book would have been so much better without this plot point. I was also kind of bummed that the book didn’t give me the happy ending that I hoped for but it was realistic so that isn’t such a huge deal.

There were a lot of things that I did like. First of all, Wade. I liked everything about this character. He was a genuinely likable character despite the things that he has been through. I actually liked the fact that Grace wasn’t all that nice. She said what she thought and didn’t try overly hard to fit in with her peers. She did have a lot of insecurities which we know since the book is told from her point of view. I liked the fact that the author addressed some tough issues in this story.

Jesse Vilinsky did an amazing job with the narration. She was able to really bring Grace and the rest of the characters to life. I thought that her voice was perfect for Grace and I loved the emotion that she put into her reading. I believe that I liked this book a lot more because I decided to listen to the audiobook.

I would encourage anyone who wants to try this book to do so. There were a lot of things that I found enjoyable about the story and I am glad that I decided to pick it up.

I received a digital review copy of this book from Wednesday Books via NetGalley and purchased a copy of the audiobook. ( )