Ashley Schumacher

A stunningly soulful novel that takes the reader inside the poetic minds of two lonely band nerds.

Weston feels like his parents' divorce burned down everything good in his life, tainting his childhood memories and condemning him to the outskirts of life in his gossipy, holier-than-thou small town. He identifies with a bird he did a report on that was the last of his kind, singing his part of a duet and waiting for a mate to fill the blank spaces.

Anna has a great friends group and a loving show more family, but still struggles with what she calls the shadows when she feels like she may not measure up to everyone's expectations. When she's struggling with a duet in band, she convinces Weston, against all his instincts, to help her with it. The two find themselves drawn to each other, filling in the missing spaces in the duet of each other's lives.

I adore this author's work so much! This book captures your heart with lyrical writing, then takes you on an emotional roller coaster. I wasn't expecting to end this book crying, but I did. Prepare to have your heart shredded and put back together by the end of this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for the advance review copy of this book. show less

i didn't mean to read two books with grief at their core back to back. i didn't actually know what either of these were about before listening to them, but as it happens, everything the edge of falling, which i liked, was missing, this book had.

i love so much of this. i always love books that are love letters to books and the magic in books and the worlds they create, to the healing they gift us, to the other realities they create for us. there's a little magic in this book that isn't book show more related, and i love the way its woven in. the friendship and chosen family, the story of the strength found in other people and how those people can help us find our own strength is just lovely. this is about grief and vulnerability, about friendship and chosen family, and about how to choose your own path and live your own dreams. and each of those strands is handled so well.

i don't feel like there needed to be any romantic component at all and i'm a bit disappointed there was; it almost diminishes the message about friendship and connection. i also didn't love the way she first discussed photography, and amelia's "one shot" thing, but that didn't last long. these are the only nitpicks i can find; i really liked this.

i think i will even listen to this one again, something i have yet to do with an audiobook. (and maybe i'll feel differently about the romance then.)

"...I slowly start to populate the bleak world with things that make life worth living. When I'm done rebuilding the world, it is made up of love, the loss of it, and the finding of it. It is the finding, the possibility of discovering more, that I love in this lifetime..." show less

Amelia loses her best friend in a car accident and the grief paralyzes her from making decisions about her future. I loved this one so much more than I was expecting to.

It made me want to visit the small town in Michigan and read the Ormond Chronicles, the fictional fantasy series Amelia loves. More than anything, it made me want to visit Valerie's, the bookstore that's central to the plot. Some of the characters seem cranky, but they show their love through actions, not words. They are show more fiercely loyal and defend their friends that need protection from the outside world. I loved the story of two broken people finding each other through their pain.

It’s not just a love story, it’s about grief and growth, and figuring out what you want in life when the world turns upside down, and being brave enough to go for it.

"There’s something about the absence of light mixed with near exhaustion that loosens tongues and strengthens relationships." show less

What a weird combination of "just a bit boring, really" and "absolutely delightfully perfect" this YA romance and exploration of grief was for me. Amelia and Jenna are such good friends, they're practically sisters--and Jenna's parents have just about raised Amelia throughout her high school years. The girls' graduation present from Jenna's parents is a trip to a book festival where they'll get to meet the teenaged author of their favorite book series, a series that has special meaning to show more them, especially to Amelia. Things go awry and the author cancels, but through a weird twist of fate, Jenna meets him briefly and Amelia doesn't, which causes a bit of a rift between them. And then Jenna unexpectedly dies. And through some more strange twists of fate (or of Jenna's machinations?), Amelia meets and befriends Nolan, the author she so admires, and they form a connection over shared experiences of similar grief.

Some of Schumacher's turns of phrase throughout the book, and her ways of talking about reading and what it can mean to people, and her understanding of the joy of sharing books with others, just made me grin while I was reading. But I never really felt like I got "in" the story, and I kept stopping to say, "wait? is this believable? would this person really do x?" or "hang on, does this motif work? How is it connecting up to the rest of the imagery in the story?" Ultimately the book was a bit unsatisfying and flat for me, though it definitely had its moments that simply delighted me. show less