Review Detail

*I received an ARC copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for a review

Aspen is the kind of book that sticks with you. It leaves you with a thousand unanswered questions, but the good kind. Not the kind of questions you don't want to have, but the kind that leave you thinking about the characters and their lives. For me that means Katelyn in particular, throughout the majority of the book it was Aspen that most interested me, but by the end Katelyn story became one that intrigued me on a level similar to Aspen's.

I also loved Ninny's character. She was the most flawed out of all of them, and that was what made her the most interesting. It was immensely enjoyable to watch her struggle in her relationship with Aspen, I felt for the two of them and I had trouble not laughing at their more hilarious moments. Even Ninny's moments with her daughter's love interest, which she probably shouldn't have been realistically having, made me like her more. I really appreciated how she made no effort to hold herself back. I will admit to hating her in the beginning, mostly because of her relationship with Toaster, but her quirks quickly turned my opinion of her around entirely. Unlike many parental figures in YA Ninny served an actual purpose in Aspen's life, there was more to their relationship than her merely hanging around for Aspen to have a parent. It gets old quick when the parents in books just stand around and nod or frown at everything their children say, real parents have both good and bad moments with their children like Ninny did. Without her Aspen would have been much less memorable and marginally less enjoyable, the author did a great job of giving all of the characters a purpose even if they weren't main characters. Ninny was a great example of this, she existed outside of the main character's lives and was just as interesting as they were. With such character mastery as this however, almost every character could be considered a main.