My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Summary from GoodReads
Natalie Cleary must risk her future and leap blindly into a vast unknown for the chance to build a new world with the boy she loves.
Natalie’s last summer in her small Kentucky hometown is off to a magical start... until she starts seeing the “wrong things.” They’re just momentary glimpses at first—her front door is red instead of its usual green, there’s a pre-school where the garden store should be. But then her whole town disappears for hours, fading away into rolling hills and grazing buffalo, and Nat knows something isn’t right.
That’s when she gets a visit from the kind but mysterious apparition she calls “Grandmother,” who tells her: “You have three months to save him.” The next night, under the stadium lights of the high school football field, she meets a beautiful boy named Beau, and it’s as if time just stops and nothing exists. Nothing, except Natalie and Beau.
Emily Henry’s stunning debut novel is Friday Night Lights meets The Time Traveler’s Wife, and perfectly captures those bittersweet months after high school, when we dream not only of the future, but of all the roads and paths we’ve left untaken.
BUY ON AMAZON | BOOK DEPOSITORY
REVIEW
Before I begin this review let me tell you that it was very hard to decide on what to write. So far on 2016 only two books have made me have so many feels to the point of refusing to review them, yet I gave them solid gold 5 stars. Those were "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern and the "Weight of Feathers" by Anna-Marie McLemore.
On the other hand I read so many conflicting reviews about this book which also made me want to read it even more. So, we have Natalie, a girl who lives with her adoptive family and is a senior. While her life seems to be normal, strange visions and dreams plague her to the point of coming into an extraodinary discovery.
In all this she meets a boy, Beau, who will help her change and discover more about her life and heritage.
While the summary does the book justice it took me almost to the middle of the book in order to understand what was happening. True, the mystery thickens very much and the way Emily Henry portays Natalie's struggle with her Native American heritage and past is well written. You get this feeling when waiting for fireworks to explode and when they come you scream with laughter.
That was how the book made me feel. There was also an extra mysterious character; the "Grandmother" who in fact quite reminded me of Grandmother Willow from Disney. When I also reached the point in the book where her true identity was revealed? I admit I really never expected that!
All in all this book deserves patience which can be very rewarding for the reader. The romance though a little fast, develops very nicely and the ending is very, very satisfactory. I'll stay true to my word and not only will I praise the author for this stunning debut, but I'll also read anything else she'll write!
About the author:
She tweets @EmilyHenryWrite.
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