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melbsreads 's review for:
I'll Meet You There
by Heather Demetrios
Trigger warnings: war, explosions, loss of a limb, shitty parenting, alcohol abuse, cheating, car accident, death of a friend (in the past), death of a parent (in the past), racial slurs, poverty, mental health, grief.
8/12/2020
Bumping this down to 4 stars (and that's probably generous tbh). Honestly? This is kind of dated now. But it's still a very frank look at war and the impact it has on teenage soldiers. It's still a very frank look at poverty and the struggles to escape from both it and your life in general. The romance is...a little rushed and slightly cringey five years on, but it was still a very compelling story and I flew through it. So. There's that.
30/6/2016
I stand by everything I said last time. Adorableness and feels. I teared up repeatedly on the plane to Seattle while reading this. That said, my physical copy included the bonus letter from Josh to Sky and I may have squeed because it totally made up for the open endedness I complained about last time.
7/2/2015
4.5 stars. First things first - I'm classifying this as a new adult book. Why? Because it's set during the summer between Sky graduating high school and leaving for college. She's dealing with new adult problems, despite being seventeen. Plus, it felt oddly squicky to class a book featuring a relationship between a 17 year old and a 19 year old as YA, and I can't explain why...
Aaaaaaaaaanyway.
This book contains a lot of things that I love. Diversity? Check - love interest with one leg and PTSD, and a Mexican-American best friend. And a teen mother who doesn't get slut shamed every five minutes. Dogs? Check (don't worry - nothing happens to said dogs). Teenagers swearing and drinking and being actual teenagers? Check. Slow burning love stories? Check. Stories about old-before-their-time teenagers set in a Californian motel where significant moments take place adjacent to diving boards (*cough* [b:Fairwil: Wilfair Book 4|13564101|Fairwil Wilfair Book 4|Alysia Gray Painter|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1332952100l/13564101._SY75_.jpg|19140935] *cough*)? CHECK.
I'd also heard amazing things and I was really looking forward to jumping into this one. And for the most part, I loved it. I think Demetrios did a brilliant job of capturing small town life and the desperation that teenagers living in incredibly small towns must go through, the fear they have of being stuck there forever, the fear of becoming their alcoholic parents who are stuck in dead-end jobs, the fear of getting pregnant to their high school sweetheart and not being able to leave.
I loved the characters. Sky's been through some insanely tough times, and now that it's finally time for her to leave and go off to college, she's dealing with a lot of fears about how the people she's leaving behind will cope. Josh is back from Afghanistan minus a leg and with PTSD after seeing a lot of his friends die in horrible ways. He's on a million different medications, sees a therapist, has phantom limb pain, and is struggling to know what to do next because he's nineteen and the life he thought he was going to have - being a Marine - may well be over. They're both a little damaged, and a little unsure of themselves despite putting on a brave face, and a little prone to fucking up, and their relationship was adorable. Chris and Dylan and Marge are brilliant supporting characters, and while this comes with the obligatory negligent parenting that so plagues YA and NA books, at least there was an excellent surrogate parent courtesy of Marge.
Demetrios was really respectful in the way she told Josh's story, and she'd clearly researched it extensively. There's no glorification of the military, but there's also no sentiment that the US being involved in Afghanistan and Iraq is a bad thing, no sense that young men shouldn't join up. Instead, she deals really nicely with the realities of life for an injured veteran - the nightmares, the dread of checking your email for fear that someone else in your unit will have died, the way you can't quite relate to your fellow soldiers or the real world any more, the awkwardness that comes with people thanking you for your service. It was a really nicely balanced approach to telling a very important and often unseen story.
Where it lost half a star for me was the ending. Things were a little open-ended, but also felt a little too neatly wrapped up. I'm not saying that I wanted a definitive happily-ever-after, and I'm not entirely sure how I would have liked to see things end. But there was something about the ending that felt too sudden. Honestly, though? That's a really minor niggle in an otherwise fabulous read.
8/12/2020
Bumping this down to 4 stars (and that's probably generous tbh). Honestly? This is kind of dated now. But it's still a very frank look at war and the impact it has on teenage soldiers. It's still a very frank look at poverty and the struggles to escape from both it and your life in general. The romance is...a little rushed and slightly cringey five years on, but it was still a very compelling story and I flew through it. So. There's that.
30/6/2016
I stand by everything I said last time. Adorableness and feels. I teared up repeatedly on the plane to Seattle while reading this. That said, my physical copy included the bonus letter from Josh to Sky and I may have squeed because it totally made up for the open endedness I complained about last time.
7/2/2015
4.5 stars. First things first - I'm classifying this as a new adult book. Why? Because it's set during the summer between Sky graduating high school and leaving for college. She's dealing with new adult problems, despite being seventeen. Plus, it felt oddly squicky to class a book featuring a relationship between a 17 year old and a 19 year old as YA, and I can't explain why...
Aaaaaaaaaanyway.
This book contains a lot of things that I love. Diversity? Check - love interest with one leg and PTSD, and a Mexican-American best friend. And a teen mother who doesn't get slut shamed every five minutes. Dogs? Check (don't worry - nothing happens to said dogs). Teenagers swearing and drinking and being actual teenagers? Check. Slow burning love stories? Check. Stories about old-before-their-time teenagers set in a Californian motel where significant moments take place adjacent to diving boards (*cough* [b:Fairwil: Wilfair Book 4|13564101|Fairwil Wilfair Book 4|Alysia Gray Painter|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1332952100l/13564101._SY75_.jpg|19140935] *cough*)? CHECK.
I'd also heard amazing things and I was really looking forward to jumping into this one. And for the most part, I loved it. I think Demetrios did a brilliant job of capturing small town life and the desperation that teenagers living in incredibly small towns must go through, the fear they have of being stuck there forever, the fear of becoming their alcoholic parents who are stuck in dead-end jobs, the fear of getting pregnant to their high school sweetheart and not being able to leave.
I loved the characters. Sky's been through some insanely tough times, and now that it's finally time for her to leave and go off to college, she's dealing with a lot of fears about how the people she's leaving behind will cope. Josh is back from Afghanistan minus a leg and with PTSD after seeing a lot of his friends die in horrible ways. He's on a million different medications, sees a therapist, has phantom limb pain, and is struggling to know what to do next because he's nineteen and the life he thought he was going to have - being a Marine - may well be over. They're both a little damaged, and a little unsure of themselves despite putting on a brave face, and a little prone to fucking up, and their relationship was adorable. Chris and Dylan and Marge are brilliant supporting characters, and while this comes with the obligatory negligent parenting that so plagues YA and NA books, at least there was an excellent surrogate parent courtesy of Marge.
Demetrios was really respectful in the way she told Josh's story, and she'd clearly researched it extensively. There's no glorification of the military, but there's also no sentiment that the US being involved in Afghanistan and Iraq is a bad thing, no sense that young men shouldn't join up. Instead, she deals really nicely with the realities of life for an injured veteran - the nightmares, the dread of checking your email for fear that someone else in your unit will have died, the way you can't quite relate to your fellow soldiers or the real world any more, the awkwardness that comes with people thanking you for your service. It was a really nicely balanced approach to telling a very important and often unseen story.
Where it lost half a star for me was the ending. Things were a little open-ended, but also felt a little too neatly wrapped up. I'm not saying that I wanted a definitive happily-ever-after, and I'm not entirely sure how I would have liked to see things end. But there was something about the ending that felt too sudden. Honestly, though? That's a really minor niggle in an otherwise fabulous read.