Nell worships her older sister, Layla.
They’re one unit, intertwined: Nellayla. As Nell and her best friend, Felix,
start their freshman year in high school, on Layla’s turf, there’s so much Nell
looks forward to: Joining Layla on the varsity soccer team. Parties. Boys.
Adventures.
But the year takes a very different turn.
Layla is changing, withdrawing. She’s
hiding something, and when Nell discovers what it is, and the consequences it
might have, she struggles. She wants to support Layla, to be her confidante, to
be the good sister she’s always been. But with so much at stake, what secrets
should she keep? What lies should she tell?
This
book was raw. That’s the best word I can come up with for it. Nell feels like
her Layla are one and the same. They’re practically like twins, and they’re
what I would call “sibling endgame”. Kind of like Dean and Sam Winchester. And
yes, in the beginning I thought there might be some Nellayla-cest coming my
way. I wasn’t okay with that, and luckily it never showed up.
It
was an amazing book though. In the beginning, I wasn’t too sure how I liked the
structure of the book or Nell’s character. It’s written similar to a diary or a
letter to Layla without chapter heads. So it’s told in first person from Nell
to Layla (you). It was weird and confusing after just reading Killer Instinct
(another book that uses a second POV of sorts), but I really got into it. And
the reason, I see now, I didn’t like Nell initially is because she wasn’t her
own person. She was the second Layla—at least she certainly tried to be.
It
was very raw to see Layla pull away from Nell and for Nell to have to find
herself and become a singular when she’d always kind of been a plural. Layla
was always the constant in Nell’s life, and then she stopped. Anyway, it was
really great. The way it was written gave great insight into the situation and
into Nell’s internal struggles against the person she’d always been.
Plus,
there’s Felix. Oh my did I adore everything about Felix. He and Nell are my one
of my favorite ships. I don’t know if it will ever sail, but it did in my
heart. I’m not sure if that’s a spoiler or not…. But it’s definitely a book to
read. All the characters’ struggles really tore at my heartstrings. Even Layla
was a great character to read. She was horrible to her sister in a lot of ways,
but I know it made Nell a stronger person by the end of the book. Everyone in
this book had growing up to do, and it was amazing to read.
As
for what I didn’t particularly like, well, that’s hard to pinpoint. The setting
was great, the writing was beautiful, the characters soared. It was all really
awesome. Some things I would have liked to see would have been the reason
behind the story’s style. Was it a letter to Layla? Was Nell an avid diary
writer? The way it was written worked incredibly well but I wish I knew why it
had been done that way. I also wish there’d been a little more familial
conflict for the Goldens in that the parents are divorced and the father is
remarried so there should have been a little bit of tension between those two.
These
are really small things though. I didn’t think I was going to end up liking
this book, but I really did and I hope everyone reads it just so I can talk
about it to people.
XOXO Tia
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