Review Detail

Juliet Newman’s life is going exactly according to plan. She has a perfect family, a perfect boyfriend, and the perfect plan for her future: ace the SATs, get accepted to Harvard, get her happily ever after. That was before her dad left, her mom can’t cope, and Juliet’s careful plan begins to unravel. To make things worse, new boy Declan understands her in ways no one else does and makes her second guess her perfect future.

This book ended up being a pretty quick read that still dealt with some major issues. The plot really focused on Juliet and the way she dealt with with the changes in her life and her growth.

I found myself empathizing with Juliet through a lot of the book. She put so much pressure on herself to succeed, to be the person she thought she needed to be, and she never really gave any thought to the person she wanted to be. She was forced to do a lot of soul-searching. On top of her perfect plan failing apart, she also had to deal with other family drama, friends, relationship drama, and also what making changes to her plan meant for the present.

One thing I couldn’t get passed was the cheating and the lack of consequences for it. Juliet and Declan did seem to really get each other and he did open her eye to things she’s never considered, but Jason, her boyfriend, was also a great guy who deserved a lot better than how Juliet treated him. I felt like he was almost being made out to be the bad guy because he didn’t understand why Juliet was making so many out of character decisions and that gave her the right to go be with Declan, who did understand. I just couldn’t get behind it. I could have been alright if there had been consequences since cheating does happen but it felt like Juliet got away with it.

I did like the side story of Declan and his family having a band. That was a lot of fun and I really liked the dynamic of it, at least the little we got to see. I would have liked to have seen more of them. It felt like there was more to their story and I would have read that.

As mentioned, it was a quick read. It wasn’t a long book and the pacing was pretty fast so it was easy to finish it in a day.