I read Air in one morning, ditching work just to be able to read it the second I received it in my Kindle account. I was super impatient to read more of Iris's and Zeke's story because I knew it would be good.

Although there's a lot less surfing this time around, if anything, the novel is even more intense. All the emotional drama, the well-rounded characters, the guessing about Zeke was what drew me in and I couldn't put it down until I finished it.

The first thing that impressed me was how the two protagonists were the perfect mixture of their old characters and a few new traits that instantly showed that a lot has happened since Blue, that they live a different sort of life, that their relationship has changed. It was like meeting old friends that are just changed enough for you to want to know what has happened since you last saw them.

I loved how the tensions between Iris and Zeke escalated subtly as the story developed, leading to an intense finale. Zeke's secret was alluded to masterfully throughout the novel, but never too obviously so that once it was revealed it was just as much a shock to me as it was to Iris. It felt so real, the way Lisa Glass had Zeke and Iris struggle with how they went from barely knowing each other to practically living with each other. Such a thing can be really stressful for a young couple and I thought she wrote it so well. All those little things that people annoy each other with, the tiny problems that just keep piling up.

The linguist in me was again thrilled with how authentically young the language sounded, the dialects, the slang, the surfing expressions, all of it. The writing style is so effortless and perfect for a young adult novel.

I respect authors that I can rely on to deliver because I appreciate how difficult that is. But with Air, there is no second-book syndrome. If anything, I thought it was perhaps even more accomplished, especially character-wise, than Blue.

I’m sure I’ll be skipping work some time next June again when the third book in the series, Ride, comes out. ( )