By Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka.
This is a very thoughtful and interesting book.
Siena and Patrick have been together for three years of high school. They are pretty much an ideal, perfect, happy couple...except for how Siena is having the teenage equivalent of the quarterlife crisis. Am I too involved with Patrick? Do I have my own identity or do I just do Model UN because Patrick does Model UN? Maybe I should break up with him and see what it's like to be Single Siena again, she thinks. So she plans to break up with him. However, this gets thrown awry when Patrick tells her that surprise, his family's moving a few states away for his senior year!
You'd think this would make Siena be all "Sweet, here's a good excuse to break up!" but instead, she finds herself in a bit of a panic and committing to an LDR. Which....actually kind of works for her on some level in the relationship? Absence is making the heart grow fonder (and hornier), and theoretically this gives her some breathing space to quit Model UN and find her own thing...whatever that may be. (I loved her thing, btw.) Patrick obviously misses home and Siena, but is managing to find new things and people where he lives too.
I rather liked that these two didn't break up....well, I have to vaguely spoiler this one but you might have guessed it given the title: for most of the book, they stick it out despite whatever weird feelings one or both of them may be having. These two are thoughtful and caring towards each other, even if finding where they are different and not just PatrickandSiena has some weirdness to them. They seem pretty well adult for 17-18-year-olds and even if there's some pre-quarterlife-crisis-angst going on, they find their way through, and I really appreciated that. I don't think we see too many romances where the couple have been together enough to feel "stale" and then realize they still do want each other, but the authors make it work.
Four stars.
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