This was such a lovely book that reminded me a lot of works by John Green and Jennifer Niven, two of my favorite authors.

These kids are so strong even when the world has done then SO wrong. It's a tragic story with a beautiful meaning.

I want to know these characters. I want to be a part of their life. I want to be a Wildflower.

A full review will be up on my blog soon! ( )

This book preaches kindness and compassion. Although religion plays a role, it it not a major one. The story goes through an entire year of these young adults' lives and rollercoasters through and the reader is taken on a journey. ( )

This is not remotely a subtle book. Characters don't speak in paragraphs so much as they speak in sermons, and everyone has full detailed and articulated understandings of each other's characters, struggles, and moral arcs. Emotional inner struggles are quickly replaced by detached, clear-headed analyses of problems and their necessary solutions. With perhaps the sole exception of the bully who is secretly unloved by her family and therefore jealous of friendship(!), characters are either fully good or ridiculously, blatantly, evil. Christianity doesn't show up too often, despite the eyerollingly look-how-clever-my-character-names-are moment at the start, but it is treated with reverence as something significant... oh, and angels or ghosts or something exist, inexplicably. Drugs and alcohol are inescapable vices, never to be pursued by truly good citizens, who likewise never feel inordinate sexual desire.

And yet... it can't be denied that this book means really well and is surprisingly kind toward its focal characters. Even the gay characters are treated as human instead of demons, despite the religious affiliation--instead, homophobes are the ones vilified! For any readers who find themselves in similar situations (emotional or otherwise) to the characters, this might be a genuinely helpful book, showing that these children deserve (and will benefit from) love and support and friendship. For anyone else reading this, it may be hard to avoid the odd eye roll, but yes, friendship and comradeship really are as important as this book thinks they are.

(This review is based on an ARC provided from a free giveaway.)