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maydaykoigo's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
tuxa's review
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
worsecatch's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
It is what it is.
90sinmyheart's review
4.0
I didn't like either of the protagonists and traditionally find it hard to follow novels that go reverse chronologically, but friend breakups do deserve whole novels.
kilinandi's review
1.0
I can't believe my eyes. I kept waiting for the story to start and the feels to start but nope. Great and important topic but the story didn't come through.
joannaautumn's review
5.0
WHY DOES THIS BOOK HAVE SUCH A LOW RATING??? It’s beyond me.
I don’t think a lot of people will find this book 5-star worthy unless they have been through a similar situation.
The writing isn’t a thing that will win you over with this book, because it’s nothing spectacular, but it is clean and precise and actually in tune with the ages of the characters.
What will win you over is how much you will feel for these characters, how much frustration their miscommunication will bring you, as an objective observer.
The friendship they had ended because of the abovementioned and drifting apart.
If you read only Kat’s chapters or only James’s you could easily antagonize the other – every story has two different sides, or three, as they say, my side, your side, and the truth which is often in the middle. This book is that middle.
The book is set in the current time when both girls have dug up a time capsule they buried when they were 14, through flashbacks the reader gets to see how their friendship disintegrated.
James is an athlete and has an introverted personality, she has a 15-year life plan and her inspiration is her parents – high school sweethearts that have it all.
The thing with this thinking is that at 17/18 years that’s how you think. You don’t necessarily think that sometimes things fall apart and that it’s a normal thing in life.
During her separation from Kat, James has let go of her insecurities (that people would hang out with her just because she was Kat’s friend) and she has gone out of her comfort zone and broadened her horizons with volunteer work and more interactions with people, and ultimately felt comfortable in herself and her decisions.
I don’t know if this is because I am somewhat similar to James in terms of emotional responses, but I couldn’t judge her for what she did and I understood completely from where she was coming from.
The main thing that distinguishes her and Kat is how they deal with emotions – James isn’t really a girl who will show them while Kat always lets them show when she is upset.
Although reading Kat’s chapters prove that keeping everything bottled inside leads to negative conclusions.
Kat(herine) is an optimistic and popular girl who is well-liked by almost everyone in high school.
Kat doesn’t have plans, she just impulsively does whatever she thinks will bring her happiness and in that spontaneity, she is the exact opposite of James. Leading James to believe that she is selfish and doesn’t think of others. Fairly, Kat is a bit selfish in the begging, but she tries her best.
She did prioritize her relationship over her friendship with James; which is not uncommon a lot of the people do this. Friendships drift apart even if the person that they are dating is superb (and Quinn was superb, I really liked her character!).
She did try to get the two to hang out but James isn’t the type of person who opens up and forms friendships as easily as Kat. Kat is always seen hanging out with friends outside of James, and James is only shown with Kat, her boyfriend Logan, and some track team members.
The main problem that Kat is facing is that in her persistence for everything to be fine and good she overlooks the things that are concerning and bad without talking about it – as with idolizing her girlfriend and not pushing James to open up. She does mature in the current timeline, and realizes that moving on is also normal:
Both of the girls are changed by the things that happened but It’s the build-up of small things and hiding certain information that snowballs into something bigger that ultimately damages the relationship.
By this point, you have realized that I relate to James and that my background is somewhat similar to hers. I have stopped being friends with a person I used to hang around and talk to every day of my life. And that was painful, for it to end. But I found so many parallels between my experience and this book that it's insane.
Also, the realization that whatever you had at that time with that person was something beautiful and you should cherish it in your memory because no matter the ending it still was everything for you at that point in your life, and it couldn’t have been meaningless.
This is a second book that I have read that is centered around the ending of a friendship, the first one being [b:Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage|41022133|Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage|Haruki Murakami|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1533141634l/41022133._SY75_.jpg|24593525]– which I highly recommend.
I appreciate these books that portray one part of life that is painful but common and not really written about in detail. I hope nobody goes through this, and for those of us that did go through it, there are books written about it so we won’t feel as alone. This was an emotional read for me and a very subjective 5-stars, a book that I will do doubt return to again in the future.
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Personal five stars from me. People who haven't been through a breakup with a close friend probably won't like this book as much as I did. Review to come.
I don’t think a lot of people will find this book 5-star worthy unless they have been through a similar situation.
The writing isn’t a thing that will win you over with this book, because it’s nothing spectacular, but it is clean and precise and actually in tune with the ages of the characters.
What will win you over is how much you will feel for these characters, how much frustration their miscommunication will bring you, as an objective observer.
The friendship they had ended because of the abovementioned and drifting apart.
If you read only Kat’s chapters or only James’s you could easily antagonize the other – every story has two different sides, or three, as they say, my side, your side, and the truth which is often in the middle. This book is that middle.
The book is set in the current time when both girls have dug up a time capsule they buried when they were 14, through flashbacks the reader gets to see how their friendship disintegrated.
James is an athlete and has an introverted personality, she has a 15-year life plan and her inspiration is her parents – high school sweethearts that have it all.
Spoiler
The divorce of her parents makes her spiral down and question her perfect plan, resulting in her detachment from Kat (because she had always idolized her family image, and James didn’t want to make her sadder than she was at the time), breaking up with her now college boyfriend and taking up volunteer work: everything in an effort not to end up like her mother, who had ended the marriage and found someone new in her life.The thing with this thinking is that at 17/18 years that’s how you think. You don’t necessarily think that sometimes things fall apart and that it’s a normal thing in life.
Spoiler
And that both parents deserve happiness, someone who you saw was fit for you at 15 sometimes isn’t the person who is fit for you at 45 and that’s okay.During her separation from Kat, James has let go of her insecurities (that people would hang out with her just because she was Kat’s friend) and she has gone out of her comfort zone and broadened her horizons with volunteer work and more interactions with people, and ultimately felt comfortable in herself and her decisions.
It’s a little hard to believe that despite how much time I’ve spent with my track teammates, I’ve only recently realized I’d have this much fun hanging out with them beyond practices and meets. I wonder how this year—how high school—would have felt had I realized it sooner.
-James
I don’t know if this is because I am somewhat similar to James in terms of emotional responses, but I couldn’t judge her for what she did and I understood completely from where she was coming from.
The main thing that distinguishes her and Kat is how they deal with emotions – James isn’t really a girl who will show them while Kat always lets them show when she is upset.
It’s embarrassing enough when I cry when I’m alone; I can’t even imagine having so much emotion that it’s crashing against and then over my inner walls.
-James
Although reading Kat’s chapters prove that keeping everything bottled inside leads to negative conclusions.
Kat(herine) is an optimistic and popular girl who is well-liked by almost everyone in high school.
Spoiler
Her mother has died a few years prior to the plot of the book and now her father is looking for love and dating. Which doesn’t sit well with Kat, thinking that her father has forgotten about her late mother. She also realized that she is bisexual (hooray for the rep!!) and has started to date a girl named Quinn. Spoiler, bisexuality was represented in a good way and there was support everywhere in the book.Kat doesn’t have plans, she just impulsively does whatever she thinks will bring her happiness and in that spontaneity, she is the exact opposite of James. Leading James to believe that she is selfish and doesn’t think of others. Fairly, Kat is a bit selfish in the begging, but she tries her best.
She did prioritize her relationship over her friendship with James; which is not uncommon a lot of the people do this. Friendships drift apart even if the person that they are dating is superb (and Quinn was superb, I really liked her character!).
She did try to get the two to hang out but James isn’t the type of person who opens up and forms friendships as easily as Kat. Kat is always seen hanging out with friends outside of James, and James is only shown with Kat, her boyfriend Logan, and some track team members.
I’ve actually always liked that my track teammates aren’t really a part of my life, outside of practice and matches. Not everyone needs every part of me.
-James
The main problem that Kat is facing is that in her persistence for everything to be fine and good she overlooks the things that are concerning and bad without talking about it – as with idolizing her girlfriend and not pushing James to open up. She does mature in the current timeline, and realizes that moving on is also normal:
It’s not Dad going out with Diane that’s erasing Mom, I realize. It’s time and distance and death.
-Kat
Both of the girls are changed by the things that happened but It’s the build-up of small things and hiding certain information that snowballs into something bigger that ultimately damages the relationship.
By this point, you have realized that I relate to James and that my background is somewhat similar to hers. I have stopped being friends with a person I used to hang around and talk to every day of my life. And that was painful, for it to end. But I found so many parallels between my experience and this book that it's insane.
Also, the realization that whatever you had at that time with that person was something beautiful and you should cherish it in your memory because no matter the ending it still was everything for you at that point in your life, and it couldn’t have been meaningless.
This is a second book that I have read that is centered around the ending of a friendship, the first one being [b:Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage|41022133|Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage|Haruki Murakami|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1533141634l/41022133._SY75_.jpg|24593525]– which I highly recommend.
I appreciate these books that portray one part of life that is painful but common and not really written about in detail. I hope nobody goes through this, and for those of us that did go through it, there are books written about it so we won’t feel as alone. This was an emotional read for me and a very subjective 5-stars, a book that I will do doubt return to again in the future.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Personal five stars from me. People who haven't been through a breakup with a close friend probably won't like this book as much as I did. Review to come.
whitneymouse's review
3.0
I am a little unsure what to make of this one. I really, really enjoyed [b:The Summer of Jordi Pérez|31246717|The Summer of Jordi Pérez (And the Best Burger in Los Ángeles)|Amy Spalding|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1523305710l/31246717._SX50_.jpg|51900047], so I gave this one a try. I also have drifted apart from my high school best friend, so I thought this would "hit me in the feels". And honestly, it's less a story about friendship than it is about the importance of communication.
I feel like the story is a lot of miscommunication and people who don't know how to advocate for themselves or listen. James and Kat have been best friends since Kindergarten, but their relationship starts to decay as James' life starts to fall apart and Kat starts a new relationship with Quinn, the neighbor girl.
Kat was...irritating a lot of the time. A character calls her "self-centered" and while that character is morally reprehensible for other reasons, they aren't wrong about that. Kat shares EVERYTHING she is feeling, one hundred percent of the time. Rarely, if ever, does she ask James how she's feeling or what's going on in her life. She uses James' friendship when it's convenient and doesn't stop to consider how James might feel. There are times they'll make plans and James shows up to find there are other people involved when she thought it was just going to be her and Kat. As someone who identifies more with James, bottling her emotions and liking things to be planned, I can see where that would get frustrating very quickly.
James, however, also has issues with communication and with how she views her life. She upends EVERYTHING in her life because her parents get divorced. It's really sucky that happened to you, but a LOT of people have divorced parents. It doesn't mean your relationship is doomed to fail. It doesn't mean you have to bottle everything. It doesn't mean everything you've worked hard to achieve suddenly isn't going to work. She lets her mom get into her head too much, and I think that plays a large part in why she starts viewing Kat through such a hypercritical lens and why she stops communicating with her. Yes, it'd be nice if Kat was more aware, but she also isn't a mind-reader. She can't just know things you don't share with her.
The ending chapter was a confusing choice for me, as well. The entire book goes back and forth with the timeline, but Spalding ends on the chapter that takes place before the start of the book, which didn't lend to a satisfactory conclusion. I would've liked something more concrete or at least hopeful because of what's happening now, not what happened in the past. It doesn't always work out that you become friends again or even super close. So that was a miss for me.
The book was entertaining, so I can't give it below a 2. However, I also can't give it above a 4 because it wasn't something that I think I would read again. For that reason, I went with a ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5. It was right in the middle of the road for me.
Popsugar Reading Challenge Prompt: A book set in a city that's hosted the Olympics (Los Angeles)
I feel like the story is a lot of miscommunication and people who don't know how to advocate for themselves or listen. James and Kat have been best friends since Kindergarten, but their relationship starts to decay as James' life starts to fall apart and Kat starts a new relationship with Quinn, the neighbor girl.
Kat was...irritating a lot of the time. A character calls her "self-centered" and while that character is morally reprehensible for other reasons, they aren't wrong about that. Kat shares EVERYTHING she is feeling, one hundred percent of the time. Rarely, if ever, does she ask James how she's feeling or what's going on in her life. She uses James' friendship when it's convenient and doesn't stop to consider how James might feel. There are times they'll make plans and James shows up to find there are other people involved when she thought it was just going to be her and Kat. As someone who identifies more with James, bottling her emotions and liking things to be planned, I can see where that would get frustrating very quickly.
James, however, also has issues with communication and with how she views her life. She upends EVERYTHING in her life because her parents get divorced. It's really sucky that happened to you, but a LOT of people have divorced parents. It doesn't mean your relationship is doomed to fail. It doesn't mean you have to bottle everything. It doesn't mean everything you've worked hard to achieve suddenly isn't going to work. She lets her mom get into her head too much, and I think that plays a large part in why she starts viewing Kat through such a hypercritical lens and why she stops communicating with her. Yes, it'd be nice if Kat was more aware, but she also isn't a mind-reader. She can't just know things you don't share with her.
The ending chapter was a confusing choice for me, as well. The entire book goes back and forth with the timeline, but Spalding ends on the chapter that takes place before the start of the book, which didn't lend to a satisfactory conclusion. I would've liked something more concrete or at least hopeful because of what's happening now, not what happened in the past. It doesn't always work out that you become friends again or even super close. So that was a miss for me.
The book was entertaining, so I can't give it below a 2. However, I also can't give it above a 4 because it wasn't something that I think I would read again. For that reason, I went with a ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5. It was right in the middle of the road for me.
Popsugar Reading Challenge Prompt: A book set in a city that's hosted the Olympics (Los Angeles)
ageorgallis's review
2.0
My main issue with this book was that the dual POV combined with the dual timelines that started from different points made for a very confusing book. I was never sure where exactly we were in the story, or which characters had or hadn't been introduced. It also made it hard to keep track of the characters. The two main characters were also a little flat to me, and I would have liked more depth to each of them as well as to their relationship.
z_brarian's review
4.0
This book shattered my heart. It's a love story about a life long friendship that somewhere takes a turn, causing a breakup. Told from two different POV, in two different timelines, James, who is stoic at times, keeps her thoughts to herself and Kat, wild child who always wants to be in the spotlight. I think the ultimate demise of this friendship was that one always wanted to be the center of attention, without actually "Seeing and hearing" what the other had to say. The story also focused on LGBTQ storyline, as well as the breakup of a love story, along the same lines as the friendship breakup. The ending had me questioning some things, however, I think this would be a great book for high schoolers to read, showing them that it's ok if those life long friendships fade away, it's inevitable. People move on, it's a part of life.