A review by gggina13
Meet Me in the Middle by Alex Light

4.0

Okay, Alex Light is a REALLY good writer. She knows how to have a little bit of poignant reality alongside some more light-hearted moments - very true to life.

My issue is that I thought this book was a romance, when really, it is a contemporary that has a romance in it. If you don't read a lot of romances, you may not know the difference straight away, but this is definitely a regular story first and a romance second.

That being said, it was good! It just is hard to come back from having your expectations subverted. No one gave me those expectations - I just looked at the cover and compared the book to Alex Light's first book, which was definitely my first mistake. This is basically completely unlike The Upside of Falling. The characters are out of high school and living on their own, it's a lot heavier than her first book, and like I said, it isn't a romance.

Truman and Eden grew up together, but they didn't really spend it *together* - Eden was Katie's best friend, and Truman was Katie's brother. If anything, Katie tried to keep them apart because she thought it was weird for them to interact. Until one night they finally find their way to each other and kiss - while Katie was sneaking out and getting into a really bad car accident. That was 5 months ago, Katie has been in a coma ever since, and the two of them haven't spoken.

Eden is working and living her life, dealing with the guilt of not being there for Katie, dealing with the stress of trying to afford rent, dealing with life after high school without Katie with her like they planned... she's just going through the motions. So when Truman gets back into town from god knows where, it throws her off. It not only brings up the unfinished feelings she had for her, but it brings up a lot of the grief and confusion about Katie's accident that Eden has been ignoring since it happened.

Truman has similar issues to Eden - he also feels guilty over that night, he feels confused about his relationship with Eden going forward, he is also sort of just getting through his days.

There's decently fleshed out side characters, a kind of suspenseful storyline as far as Katie's fate goes, and like I said, good writing that gets the depth of the feelings across. I am totally going to read whatever Alex Light writes next, and I'm going to be a little more thorough in finding out what the next one is about, because it isn't fair of me to be docking stars and stuff just cause of my own expectations being off lol this is definitely worth the read if you don't always want to read the happiest endings!!