Title: Come Back To Me
Author: Coleen Patrick
# Of Pages: 187
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Publication Date: March 5, 2013
Source: Purchased
Level: Young Adult
Rating: 4 Hearts
Synopsis
(From Goodreads)
Whitney Denison can’t wait to start over.
She thought she had everything under control, that her
future would always include her best friend Katie… Until everything changed.
Now her life in Bloom is one big morning after hangover,
filled with regret, grief, and tiny pinpricks of reminders that she was once
happy. A happy she ruined. A happy she can’t fix.
So, she is counting down the days until she leaves home for
Colson University, cramming her summer with busywork she didn’t finish her
senior year, and taking on new hobbies that involve glue and glitter, and
dodging anyone who reminds her of her old life.
When she runs into the stranger who drove her home on
graduation night, after she’d passed out next to a ditch, she feels herself
sinking again. The key to surviving the summer in Bloom is unraveling whatever
good memories she can from that night.
But in searching for answers, she’ll have to ask for help
and that means turning to Evan, the stranger, and Kyle, Katie’s ex-boyfriend.
Suddenly, life flips again, and Whitney finds herself on not only the precipice
of happy but love, too, causing her to question whether she can trust her
feelings, or if she is falling into her old patterns of extremes.
As she uncovers the truth about her memories, Whitney sees
that life isn’t all or nothing, and that happy isn’t something to wait for,
that instead, happy might just be a choice.
My Verdict
I’ve been in a reading slump for the last couple weeks and
really needed a good book to pull me out of it. Come Back To Me was just the right book. I read the first 80% without
stopping then took a small break before returning to finish it off.
The story centers around Whitney, whose voice I really
enjoyed. She was honest, believable, and easy to relate to. Having recently lost her best friend,
Whitney is still trying to figure out how to move on from her haunted past, and
the best solution she’s discovered is to hide out in her bedroom, drinking.
After hallucinating and passing out drunk next to a ditch at her friend’s
graduation party, her parents decide to enroll her in rehab. When she gets out
there are only 57 days left until she moves to Colton University to start a new
life, a life where people don’t know her past. Now all she has to do is find a
way to pass those 57 days. In order to fulfill some outstanding volunteer
hours, Whitney starts to work at a little tea shop that she wanders into when
following Evan, the mysterious boy who delivered her home drunk to her parents.
I really enjoyed the relationship between Whitney and Evan.
Having been the one to bring Whitney home when she was completely trashed it
would have been easy for Evan to judge her, but he doesn’t. He is super sweet
and reaches out to her a few times before Whitney can bring herself to face him
again. The one small issue I had was that I wished their relationship had been
developed deeper. I feel like the background and building up to the
relationship was really great but then once they went on a first date it was
like vrrroom, everything flew by so fast and then the book was over.
Overall, this was a great contemporary romance with the
additional substance of a girl struggling to overcome her best friend’s death,
her drinking problem, and fix the strained relationship she shares with her
parents. A great debut from author, Coleen Patrick, whom I look forward to
seeing more from!
